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0:00 Caller: Hey Jed, it's George in Storm 4. How are you?
0:00 You: This call will be recorded.
0:04 You: Hello.
0:08 You: Hello, George.
0:11 You: I'm well and yourself.
0:11 Caller: How was, uh, how was your...
0:14 Caller: Ah, yeah, good, mate, good. I, uh, I apologize for, um, you know, calling a few minutes later.
0:20 Caller: just came off a previous meeting, but yeah, thank you very much for, you know, booking in the calendar.
0:20 You: We're going to be.
0:26 Caller: Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about to speak with you.
0:29 Caller: You know, I saw that you've previously spoken with a few of my colleagues.
0:35 Caller: I think, you know, most recently, I think late Lassier spoke to the Morgan.
0:40 Caller: and previously Ryan as well.
0:40 You: probably it's unclear how the storm number companies are related
0:43 Caller: Yeah, and I think those guys...
0:48 Caller: Yeah, yeah, got you.
0:49 Caller: So I guess a bit of background there.
0:51 Caller: So Storm 3 is more based on our sort of like health tech side of things.
0:55 Caller: Storm 2, more on the FinTech side, and then, you know, myself...
1:00 Caller: as part of the Storm 14. We're more focused on the sort of energy transition and
1:00 You: Thank you.
1:06 Caller: infrastructure. Now I specialize in you know AI machine learning, software and
1:13 Caller: data hiring across the energy transition and yeah you know I'm currently
1:18 Caller: partnered with quite a cool energy.
1:20 Caller: training company and yeah they're looking to to bring on a lead platform engineer
1:20 You: We're going to be.
1:26 Caller: now yeah you know obviously and I'm sure you had a little bit of a look at the JD
1:32 Caller: itself you know wanted to jump on a quick call Jed just to learn a bit more about
1:36 Caller: yourself a little bit about your background your sort of current situation
1:40 Caller: and about what it is you're looking for in your sort of next role in your next jump and you know obviously very happy to run you for a bit more about the company itself tell you a bit more about the role itself you know how this position has opened up and basically see if there could be you know a good fit on on both sides so um yeah i mean how does
1:40 You: understood
2:00 Caller: How does that sound?
2:00 You: It sounds fine. Just a quick heads up. I do need a hard stop at 1220 only because I have another call after this.
2:07 You: So to try and speed through this, the through line of my career has been automation, started in finance at Sochgen, continued through marketing technologies, through big tech at Spotify, bigger tech at meta, and most recent...
2:08 Caller: Cool.
2:13 Caller: Yeah.
2:20 Caller: Yeah.
2:20 You: at Rowe. So Rowe specifically, I was originally brought on to help the underwriting function because at the time they were generating credit limits and calculating the creditworthiness of card clients using spreadsheets. So I did away with the spreadsheets. I automated document ingestion, document processing, I automated the underwriting process. Now to the
2:40 Caller: yeah yeah yeah
2:40 You: point where the underwriting team has 400x capacity for processing applications. So not only did it
2:46 You: clear out the backlog of credit applications, but also increased the granularity with which
2:52 You: creditworthiness could be re-evaluated for different clients as new data came in. And more importantly, can
3:00 Caller: mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm
3:00 You: better manage the underlying portfolio. And after achieving that, the attitude from
3:06 You: leadership was, what else can you do? And so I met with various other teams and started
3:12 You: automating away a lot of their processes. So any gaps that could benefit from engineering
3:17 You: attention, but were not wide enough to justify...
3:20 Caller: Sure.
3:20 You: allocating a full engineering squad came to me and now I'm at the point where every leader consumes something from me directly as well as their respective teams now as for why I'm looking a couple weeks ago a founder cold emailed me after looking at my GitHub suggesting I should interview with them and I figured
3:40 Caller: Sure.
3:40 You: It might as well be worth poking around to see how my accumulated skills, knowledge, and experience would be valued in the present market.
3:50 You: What else?
3:51 Caller: Sure.
3:51 You: And then what I'm looking for in the next role, three things.
3:54 You: The first is data is both present and necessary.
3:56 Caller: Okay.
3:57 Caller: Okay.
3:57 You: Instinct and insight are good, but I'm of the opinion.
4:00 Caller: Sure.
4:00 You: must always be backed by data. The second is a place where I have the relative freedom to pursue
4:04 You: what I genuinely think is the best solution to a problem. My experience is quite diverse, and it's
4:10 You: getting longer, so I want to be able to bring forward the earned skills, knowledge, and experience
4:14 You: into the next role. And the last is a place where the phrase, that's not my job, doesn't exist.
4:20 Caller: sure sure no that's great that i mean really appreciate that um yeah i mean i guess one thing i'm very
4:20 You: that as a sign of bureaucracy and I'm trying to avoid it. So I know that's, I know I covered
4:25 You: maybe five minutes of back and forth in 90 seconds. Is there anything you need me to go deeper on?
4:36 Caller: interested in in particular is a little bit of your background
4:40 Caller: at Mehta as well. You know I can see that you built a 40 terabyte per day and our pipeline. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that please? Because that seems very very relevant.
4:40 You: So meta, I was at on Instagram notification systems team.
4:55 You: So in Instagram, there's the notification pane, and I was responsible for all of its tele...
5:00 Caller: Sure.
5:00 You: So every impression, click, long click, tap, long tap, rage shake, etc., any event that happened there went through my systems.
5:05 Caller: Sure.
5:07 You: So that represented roughly 1.7 million events per second baseline sustained with 60% peaks, usually Christmas, New Year's, and Diwali.
5:17 You: All of that represented 1.5 pedibular.
5:20 Caller: We're going to be,
5:20 You: bytes a day worth of raw telemetry, that was then processed into multiple pipelines enriched
5:22 Caller: I'm going to do.
5:24 Caller: And so
5:25 You: for consumption by machine learning, by data science, product management, and product growth
5:26 Caller: you're going to
5:27 Caller: and
5:29 Caller: you know
5:30 Caller: and
5:30 You: analyst.
5:31 Caller: you know
5:31 You: Basically, anyone who needed that data and the information generated from it to determine
5:33 Caller: I'm
5:34 Caller: I'm
5:36 Caller: I'm
5:36 You: if the experiments they were running in Instagram Notet...
5:37 Caller: and
5:38 Caller: I'm
5:39 Caller: Thank you.
5:40 Caller: got you got you okay cool cool um and got you
5:40 You: We're serving the whatever North Star metric we were chasing at the time.
5:47 You: And then the underlying systems are custom to meta.
5:50 You: So I understand how to build them independent of meta, but at least specifically with the meta stuff, it was me standing on top of libraries built by very...
6:00 Caller: Got you. Cool, cool, okay. Awesome. And just to confirm, where are you currently based, where are you located, Jed?
6:00 You: talented engineers that allow me to scale even further i'm out in new york city so long island city
6:14 You: specifically and commutable to manhattan
6:20 Caller: So are you open to that on-site work as well in New York City?
6:20 You: I'm not correct.
6:25 You: I'm not concerned about on-site.
6:26 You: The only accommodation I would ask for is the flexibility to attend to my disabled wife and our
6:31 You: autistic son when emergencies arise.
6:40 Caller: Cool. Okay. Sure, I mean that shouldn't be a problem there. Okay, cool. And in terms of like your, you know, target, salary or compensation, Jed, do you have any idea what sort of range you be looking for or what sort of range you need to be seen to even be interested in sort of jumping ship or, you know, moving on to your next role?
6:40 You: We're going to be.
7:00 Caller: So I do, it's pretty, it's quite broad at the moment, they haven't given me a specific number, but I think they can go anywhere really from that sort of like 250 to around that sort of 300 or just over on the base and then they would have an equity opponent as well.
7:00 You: do you happen to have the budget for this rule
7:20 Caller: So I don't have any specifics, really unlike the equity itself, you know, I have to, yeah.
7:20 You: Understood. That's fine by me. The only feedback I have there is any diligence into their
7:26 You: cap table preference stack and the EIP, the employee incentive plan. I'm sure you don't,
7:37 You: and that's okay. That's a...
7:40 Caller: cool cool yeah got you of course yeah no i completely understand that and that's something they'll
7:40 You: question at the offer stage, but that's the kind of diligence I would ask for.
7:47 Caller: run through with you as well um yeah cool cool um okay and yeah okay i mean yeah i mean i think from from your
8:00 Caller: about kind of self-threads and it seems that there could be a really strong fit
8:00 You: You know,
8:01 You: the
8:03 Caller: of you know from my side of things so let me tell you a bit more at the company
8:06 Caller: itself and feel free to step in asking questions along the way and yeah hopefully we
8:13 Caller: can yeah see if there could be a strong fit so the company I'm actually representing
8:20 Caller: is called fractal power. Have you ever come across these guys before? Cool, okay. So
8:20 You: I have not.
8:27 Caller: fractal power are a vertically integrated energy company. So they basically
8:33 Caller: develop, own and operate distributed battery and power assets. Now they own these power
8:38 Caller: assets mainly in Texas.
8:40 Caller: even though their offices in New York City.
8:40 You: I'm
8:45 Caller: Now, the reason they do that is because they place their assets at areas on the grid
8:53 Caller: with high price volatility and with the Texas electricity marketing Oercords.
9:00 Caller: most volatile, so that I can profit off of it as more money to be made.
9:00 You: I'm
9:08 Caller: And, yeah, I mean, rather than, like, other companies that simply develop the cell projects,
9:13 Caller: these guys will develop the projects themselves and then trade power from these assets
9:16 Caller: and then capture value from energy arbitrary to grid services.
9:20 Caller: and like we said, the local price differences.
9:20 You: We're going to be.
9:23 Caller: Now other companies as well may only trade Pelf across the grid or from assets in the grid.
9:28 Caller: They may only optimize assets, but yeah, from fractal power, they do the whole life cycle
9:34 Caller: and that way they capture the full value stack.
9:40 Caller: Now, the company itself is, well, they've been around a couple of years now.
9:40 You: Thank you.
9:46 Caller: They've been founded by a couple of, like, real experts in space,
9:50 Caller: coming from backgrounds of the likes of equilibrium energy.
9:53 Caller: They're leading sort of like portfolio management over there.
9:58 Caller: So, yeah, they've been trading for a couple of years.
10:00 Caller: now, they have around 10 assets, I believe, in Texas right now.
10:00 You: Thank you.
10:05 Caller: And yeah, I mean, they're backed by some of the world's leading infrastructure and deep-tech investors,
10:11 Caller: including like sort of riot, definition and world build.
10:15 Caller: But, you know, although they've been operational for one,
10:18 Caller: now they are still quite a niche team.
10:20 Caller: scaling aggressively I mean they're around 10 at the moment 10 people although
10:20 You: We're going to be.
10:24 Caller: they've just put on a couple more highs as well to add to that now basically
10:31 Caller: as they've got these assets they you know want to improve and develop their
10:38 Caller: platform for optimization for trade
10:40 Caller: and to do that they want to bring someone in to help scale their platform so this
10:40 You: I don't know.
10:42 You: I'm
10:44 Caller: role would be this lead platform engineer you know basically controlling the
10:50 Caller: development of the whole internal platform owning and executing the design
10:56 Caller: system architecture you know building a
11:00 Caller: maintaining these real data pipelines and yes one that has had background surrounding
11:00 You: We're going to be.
11:05 Caller: like machine learning models and that sort of stuff now I know as you said that you
11:13 Caller: you know want to be in an environment where no one says that's not my job no this is
11:20 Caller: exactly the environment that you're looking for where everyone wears multiple hats
11:20 You: Thank you.
11:25 Caller: everyone's picking up and you do send everyone's getting stuck in very hands-on wearing
11:30 Caller: multiple hats and yeah obviously I know you said that you want to be able to have
11:34 Caller: your own ideals have you built up the skills and you want to be able to sort of
11:40 Caller: you know, come to solutions through your own way and being able to solve problems yourself.
11:40 You: I'm
11:46 Caller: I mean, that's definitely aligned with these guys.
11:49 Caller: You know, in this role, you would have high autonomy.
11:50 Caller: You always be working, you know, very collaboratively with the CEO and with VP of portfolio
11:56 Caller: with the portfolio management, with the quantitative researchers, but...
12:00 Caller: Yeah, you know, there would be this aspect of astronomy in this.
12:00 You: Is the CEO Francisco Enrique?
12:07 You: Excellent.
12:08 Caller: Yes, he is indeed, yes.
12:09 You: Okay, so I found the right company.
12:12 Caller: Yes, that's that, yeah.
12:14 Caller: So, as you can see, you know, they are pretty small at the moment.
12:17 Caller: I think there's cold people that have been brought on recently.
12:20 Caller: aren't necessarily on the people's page on LinkedIn.
12:20 You: I said.
12:21 You: You know,
12:22 You: I'm using
12:23 You: It's
12:24 You: I'm
12:24 Caller: But, yeah, I can also send you a couple of links
12:25 You: We're going to be.
12:27 You: We're going to be.
12:27 Caller: to company formal job description as well.
12:29 You: I'm
12:31 Caller: But, you know, I appreciate it thrown loads of information
12:34 Caller: that you here as well, Jed.
12:36 Caller: But is this type of company type of opportunity
12:38 Caller: that you would be interested?
12:40 Caller: in learning a bit more about yeah yeah yeah yeah
12:40 You: Yes, the biggest question I'd have in the next round is the business problem they're hoping to solve with this role, especially with the advent of AI, I assume it could have already been built. Why hasn't it been? And then just only because we're running low on time in terms of housekeeping, I'm a U.S. citizen.
13:00 Caller: Cool.
13:00 You: So work authorization is settled. No sponsorship necessary. Notice period is officially two weeks is in practice closer to four to six weeks only because my surface area is large and handing if all of it off is going to take time.
13:01 Caller: Sure.
13:14 Caller: Sure.
13:15 Caller: Yeah.
13:16 You: Oh, and I also have other processes in flight.
13:20 Caller: Cool. Cool.
13:20 You: So we're already at the second and third stages for the furthest along,
13:27 Caller: Cool.
13:27 You: just to set expectations for fractals process.
13:29 Caller: Yeah.
13:31 You: And then is there anything else to cover quickly?
13:32 Caller: Yeah.
13:33 Caller: No, I think that's all set on mine.
13:37 Caller: Thank you for us, you know, running for it very quickly.
13:40 Caller: That seems very fine.
13:40 You: Thank you.
13:41 Caller: And look, I'll try and push you forward in this process as quick as I can,
13:44 Caller: given that you're already at some latter stages of other companies.
13:48 Caller: And, yeah, I mean, in terms of, like, what they're trying to build,
13:52 Caller: I mean, they basically want someone, you know, someone,
13:54 Caller: and a real expert coming from a big company, like yourself, Meta, Spotify,
13:59 Caller: that's really had background.
14:00 Caller: and specials, real, like, tenure in these companies.
14:00 You: Thank you.
14:05 Caller: There's you come and, you know, make sure that what they set up is really, really well set up.
14:09 Caller: They don't necessarily want to be using AI or any shortcuts.
14:12 Caller: In terms of, like, they're, you know, sets, like, goals for six months, 12 months on the line.
14:20 Caller: don't have that specific information but what I'll do Jed is I'll put you from
14:20 You: Sounds good. Forgive me. It's one minute to my next call.
14:24 Caller: front of my clients and I'll try and set a conversation for you with them and from
14:27 Caller: there you can ask them that and hopefully they can go a bit more detail about their
14:31 Caller: goals and business model and stuff like that cool cool
14:40 Caller: No worries.
14:40 You: But I believe that's everything.
14:42 Caller: Yes.
14:42 You: Anything else that need to cover, you have my email, you have my, I believe you have my LinkedIn,
14:43 Caller: Yes, I do.
14:47 You: and we can follow up then.
14:48 Caller: That's right.
14:50 Caller: Thank you very much.
14:51 Caller: Have a great day.
14:51 You: You as well.
14:52 Caller: Cheers, no worries.
14:52 You: Thank you, George.
14:55 Caller: Bye.