Backblaze is growing, and with it our need to cater to a lot of different use cases that our customers bring to us. We needed a Solutions Engineer to help out, and after a long search we’ve hired our first one! Lets learn a bit more about Nathan shall we?
What is your Backblaze Title?
Solutions Engineer. Our customers bring a thousand different use cases to both B1 and B2, and I’m here to help them figure out how best to make those use cases a reality. Also, any odd jobs that Nilay wants me to do.
Where are you originally from?
I am native to the San Francisco Bay Area, studying mathematics at UC Santa Cruz, and then computer science at California University of Hayward (which has since renamed itself California University of the East Hills. I observe that it’s still in Hayward).
What attracted you to Backblaze?
As a stable, growing company with huge growth and even bigger potential, the business model is attractive, and the team is outstanding. Add to that the strong commitment to transparency, and it’s a hard company to resist. We can store – and restore – data while offering superior reliability at an economic advantage to do-it-yourself, and that’s a great place to be.
What do you expect to learn while being at Backblaze?
Everything I need to, but principally how our customers choose to interact with web storage. Storage isn’t a solution per se, but it’s an important component of any persistent solution. I’m looking forward to working with all the different concepts our customers have to make use of storage.
Where else have you worked?
All sorts of places, but I’ll admit publicly to EMC, Gemalto, and my own little (failed, alas) startup, IC2N. I worked with low-level document imaging.
Where did you go to school?
UC Santa Cruz, BA Mathematics CU Hayward, Master of Science in Computer Science.
What’s your dream job?
Sipping tea in the California redwood forest. However, solutions engineer at Backblaze is a good second choice!
Favorite place you’ve traveled?
Ashland, Oregon, for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the marble caves (most caves form from limestone).
Favorite hobby?
Theater. Pathfinder. Writing. Baking cookies and cakes.
Of what achievement are you most proud?
Marrying the most wonderful man in the world.
Star Trek or Star Wars?
Star Trek’s utopian science fiction vision of humanity and science resonates a lot more strongly with me than the dystopian science fantasy of Star Wars.
Coke or Pepsi?
Neither. I’d much rather have a cup of jasmine tea.
Favorite food?
It varies, but I love Indian and Thai cuisine. Truly excellent Italian food is marvelous – wood fired pizza, if I had to pick only one, but the world would be a boring place with a single favorite food.
Why do you like certain things?
If I knew that, I’d be in marketing.
Anything else you’d like you’d like to tell us?
If you haven’t already encountered the amazing authors Patricia McKillip and Lois McMasters Bujold – go encounter them. Be happy.
There’s nothing wrong with a nice cup of tea and a long game of Pathfinder. Sign us up! Welcome to the team Nathan!
