Aries Systems Corporation

Tell us a little about yourself – how long have you been working for Aries? What did you do before joining Aries?

I joined Aries in March 2008 as Junior Software Engineer. I have a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and a Master of Science in Information Systems. Prior to working at Aries, I spent ten years with Digital Equipment Corp/Compaq/Hewlett Packard as a Systems Engineer in their Enterprise Storage Division’s Systems Integration lab. Prior to my entry into the tech sector, I spent several years as an Oil Burner service man, house builder, and a baker and pastry chef.

What have your roles at Aries been?

In my current role, I perform software engineering tasks on new feature work and/or defect mediation on Editorial Manager® (EM). Having significant experience with the applications code base – and more importantly – a fundamental understanding of the business requirements in the publishing space is always beneficial to the organization and our customers. Customers are always our number one focus, and their experience interacting with Editorial Manager is the top priority of anything I am working on. If during development the application behaves in ways that I find to be questionably logical or somewhat cumbersome, then the customer is also going to have that same negative experience. My goal is to mitigate those cases whenever possible. Responsibilities in my role have evolved mostly in regard to changes of processes, and my title has grown from Junior Engineer up through the various engineering levels and brackets as denoted by the organization over the years.

How have your previous roles helped you in your current position?

My ten years at Digital/Compaq/Hewlett Packard’s Enterprise Storage Division Systems Integration and Testing lab was an absolute gold mine of intense and broad technical knowledge and training. In that role, I performed integration testing and evaluation on HP’s entire line of Enterprise Storage hardware and software solutions including testing third-party software vendors and hardware vendors such as Sun, IBM, Intel, Oracle , Backup Exec. etc. We had to quickly set up entire Enterprise level systems from the server to network switches, host bus adapters, large Terabyte disk arrays, and tape libraries. Starting with the OS installation of virtually every server level operating system in the IT world such as all versions of Windows Server, Sun and HP Unix, Red Hat and Suse Linux, Novell, etc. we then had to configure SCSI and Fibre channel host bus adapters for both direct attached, networked, and SAN storage solutions. The required knowledge of how to manage all these components from understanding driver issues, OS commands, network troubleshooting, to configuring the software solutions so that a functioning Enterprise level test environment was quickly established, was extremely important.

To that end, I worked with other Engineers on the importance of spending the time to evaluate repeated processes and develop automated solutions via scripting and application development. As a result, we replaced step by step instructions for test technicians with installation discs that had all set-up parameters programmed and all they would have to do would be to throw the disc in which booted up to the network, accepted certain required arguments then installed a complete enterprise level solution in a couple hours. This experience was invaluable to me moving forward in my career and also allowed me to develop a more homogenous, standardized internal development environment from one machine to the next which saves time and resources and supports new members to the Aries team.

How do you stay up to date with customer needs and industry trends?

Being aware of how our customers use EM and their experience with the application is very important to me as a developer. I was one of the first members of the Aries Engineering team to attend our user group meetings (EMUG), as it is critical to get a better understanding of what customers and users of our application are doing on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, I often view publications on the web to understand how some of the features and data being submitted is used and how it maps back to the programming level. As developers, it’s very easy to become hyper focused on code and lose focus on what the code is being used for. By reviewing scholarly journals and publications I can better grasp “Oh this is what a DOI is and how it is used” and things of that nature. This extra exposure gives you just a little bit more of a leg up on resolving issues and introducing new enhancements. Also, I have a lot of experience in our Submission Export/Import space so I am often reviewing JATS standards and customer needs and requirements for how to seamlessly exchange data across internal and external systems as that is a fast and ever changing part of the publishing ecosystem.

Additionally, we are allotted a number personal development days to use throughout the year so I utilize those and Plural Sight courses to stay up to date on technical trends and solutions.

Tell me about your department and the people you work most closely with.

I work under Engineering of the Submissions Platform Group. I work as part of an agile squad of developers and QE engineers. We are tasked with introducing new features, defect mitigation, and custom script requests. As an all-remote group, we collaborate using the industry standard tools such as Zoom and Slack.

How do you collaborate with other departments within Aries?

We often collaborate with the Aries DBA group and Platform and Release Group on coding standards, process improvements, branding, etc. The EM application is complex, broadly scoped, and very configurable. Being able to work across a team exposes you to different parts of the application, its business logic and requirements, and its code base to support these requirements. Each team generally covers a specific area of that space and cross-collaboration is important to expanding the knowledge base of Engineers in totality.

Describe your typical workday.

Walk the dog, get ready for our daily stand up, start coding – that’s pretty much my daily routine! Typically, I review business logic and requirements and either design or fix code to align with those requirements. The complexity of EM and the business logic in the publishing space can require so much up-front research that it can take days to understand and configure the application before you even start looking at the code.

What do you most enjoy about your job? What do you enjoy most about working for Aries?

As a musician and an artist, I like creating and building things. I appreciate craftsmanship and the satisfaction of the final creation. Developing software is not unlike writing and recording a song or building a house or some fine furniture. I enjoy being able to do that. Creating well crafted and designed solutions to feature requests and defect mitigation is very satisfying for me.

What are you currently reading, listening to, or watching?

I have been on a Levon Helm kick lately – I just read his book This Wheels on Fire for the second time and watched his documentary I Ain’t in it for the Health. As a result, I have had The Band’s Jericho album on repeat for the last month! I had the wonderful opportunity to have my band open for The Levon Helm Band just before he passed away and also played in a special tribute show to him after his passing in upstate New York along with Larry Campbell and Levon’s daughter, Amy Helm. All wonderful people along with being incredibly gifted musicians!

Tell me about some of your hobbies/interests outside of work.

I am a singer songwriter and photographer. Additionally, I spend a lot of time on the road hiking and exploring with my dog Simon.