“We all have a strong engineering mindset which brings lots of new ideas internally and even externally.”

Typical Day

First Things 

  • Wake up around 6am and have some breakfast
  • Check critical emails and Slack; Chat with the US colleagues to sync up the client engagement status and newly released features
  • Deal with kids’ school run

Mids 

  • Prioritization planning of the platform engineering opportunities; Development of selected features
  • Engagement with clients, whether it’s training, updates, or conversations on their goals and how our platform can achieve them
  • Making sure documentation is kept up to date and being recorded
  • Provide guidances and internal trainings for the new members
  • Occasionally, step out to deal with kids extracurricular activities

Last Things

  • Engineering discussion with EMEA/US colleagues; Exchange and propose new feature designs, find the common challenges across global clients, etc.  
  • Project works and future roadmap planning
  • After work, the rest of the day is dedicated to family and personal hobbies/interests

Position

I joined Beacon as a Senior DevOps and Platform Engineer. As we’ve continued to grow the position split into two separate teams globally. But, as the Tokyo team is smaller, I still maintain both roles. My work entails the engineering of new features to the platform with the focus on the reliability of it, managing client support functions and some parts of client engagement mainly for the APAC clients. As I closely work with the APAC clients with my widely-covered platform knowledge, I always actively seek opportunities for optimization through their experiences. I learned our clients appreciate our platform, so it is getting a mission critical component for their businesses. Therefore, my mandate is geared towards HA/DR (high availability & disaster recovery) roadmapping, along with enhancing the features together. 

Great Startup Opportunities

Before Beacon, I was at Goldman Sachs for 11 years. I was engaged in the quantitative volatility high frequency trading desk, but I felt my contribution was not so easily recognized by the clients, and instead, my aspiration to improve technical excellence outside grew so much. At Beacon, the opportunities are endless and not only my input is wanted and appreciated, but everyone. The environment inspires new ideas and creative solutions. People are very keen on how to seamlessly adopt digital transformation for clients. That mindset helps to bring in a lot of new ideas, internally and externally. This kind of healthy discussion is something I feel really enriches my technical skillset.

What Motivates Me

I love that I get to be a part of something new and for the future with highly tech savvy people. Also, the Tokyo office is highly appreciated by our clients in the area, and that motivates me to continue doing the best I can. We have been encouraged to engineer more and more, which is occasionally difficult in large global firms, especially the headquarters that are not in the APAC region. In addition, feedback from clients and colleagues gives me the energy and a different perspective to enhance our platform. 

Upcoming Goals 

I can think of many goals that I would like to accomplish personally in the company and as a whole. I would like to establish a more standard roadmap for clients and clearly document the process for our future ones as well. In addition, I hope to expand and engineer new features to keep Beacon a leading cloud-based platform, and contribute to the clients digital transformation significantly.  

Fast Trivia:

Music

EDMs/Alternative rock in general

TV/Movies

Fast and Furious series

Favorite Travel Location

Maldives; Hawaii; Okinawa

Food

Sushi, Ramen

Favorite Things

Swimming, Bike, Running (Participated Ironman Triathlon in 2014), and travelling with family

Joined Beacon

July 2019

Education

Masters Computer Science, Waseda University

Home

Tokyo, Japan

Work Location

Tokyo, Japan

Developer