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Meet Dan Brown

Data Technician

Dan's job title is Product Manager in the data team at Google

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What I do

My role involves liaising between the businesses that use us and technology teams to understand what they need from us in terms of features – what kind of stuff is needed to support various business applications whether that be analytics, transaction risk scoring, fraud protection etc. I work with the businesses to get those requirements and then sit with the engineering team to build those solutions and get the features rolled out.

Dan Brown and his team, posing for a photo in their office.

Hear more about Dan's role by watching the video below...

How I became a technician

I was always interested in technology and programming. I played a lot of Lego when I was younger and when I got older I played a lot of computer games and wanted to try and rebuild what was happening and replicate what some of the games were doing.

How I became a technician

I was keen to do something more practical so I joined Visa on an apprenticeship programme when I was 18. The first five and a half years were more in hands-on software development engineering roles, and the last three years I moved into this halfway house between technology and business. This allows me to have a much bigger impact because we are working more strategically across things, but I can still be hands-on and have conversations with the engineers and get into the nitty gritty, which I love. I’ve recently started a new job at Google - which is exciting!

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A typical day in my
working life

No two days are the same. By and large the main purpose of the role is working with stakeholders to find out what needs to be done. We have a quarterly and yearly roadmap so we figure out what the business needs, plan for that and then work with the engineering team to build that out.

A typical day in my
working life

Every day we are working on the specifics of each individual item, while then also prioritising new requests that come in. The job of the Product Manager is to balance the needs between business and technology and to try to deliver the most value possible, accounting for constraints of time, people and cost.

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A little more about
my everyday role

What I love most about my job

My biggest interest has been in using data to make better decisions. There is so much data, you need machines to trawl through it and come up with insights.

The most exciting thing I’ve achieved so far in my job

Visa Inc and Visa Europe were separate companies and, in 2017, Visa Inc bought Visa Europe. At that time, I got really into our databases and our data warehouse where we store all the information. I flew to the US to represent our team from a European perspective to start planning how we would migrate all of the business rules over. This was just the start of my travels. I ended up going back and forth to India a lot and ended up staying there for six months. I also lived in Bangalore and worked with the engineers to drive all our stuff over. That was a really memorable experience.

The next steps in my career journey

I have always been keen to give back. I recently joined a mentoring programme as a mentor, helping others early in their apprenticeship journey. I could see myself in a management role in three to four years’ time. My long-term goal has been to have my own business but I don’t know what yet.

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