Meet Sören Hams, a Data Analytics Engineer at our Cologne office. He joined TrendMiner in April 2019 shortly after finishing his master’s degree in Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany.

What’s your role at TrendMiner?

As a Data Analytics Engineer our main purpose at TrendMiner is to work with our customers on their process related issues, so that they can use our product to their own benefit. This involves training sessions remote and on-site either working with our end-user on exercises that we think are beneficial to them or work on their own process data supporting them solving their use cases. We are also working on different forms of content, such as online trainings and webinars to showcase what our product can do. As part of our role, we do demos together with out sales team to support them, so that the customer can see how the tool works firsthand before they sign a contract with us. We also provide feedback to the product team about feature ideas to improve the product which we receive from our users or are based on our own experiences working with TrendMiner. I would say it is a role with a lot of variety.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My day typically starts with a cup of coffee, then sometimes I go for a morning run and after that I get ready for work. First thing I do at work is to go through my emails to check if there is an issue that needs to be taken care of in the morning such as support chats or customer tickets about with functional questions. Then the rest of my day can be very different every day. Sometimes I spend most of the day working directly with customers on their data or providing trainings, other days I have internal meetings where we discuss product feedback and improvement projects.

The DAEs also keep an eye on the TrendMiner Support Chat, where customers can ask questions. Sometimes, we can easily help them via the chat but other times we need to do a remote meeting to solve their problem. Every once in a while, if a tougher issue occurs, we have to check with with other DAEs to be able to come up with a solution or forward technical issues to our support engineers.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I like that I can help our customers to do their job better and to solve their process related issues. Often it is about how to use the tool properly but it can also get quite technical and I need to understand the chemical process behind the problem which is very interesting for me as a biochemical engineer.

I also enjoy collaborating with the team because we help each other a lot and knowing that you can rely on your team members is one of the best parts for me.

What would you say is the most challenging aspect of your role?

That we are in contact with many different people every day. We are in direct customer contact and meet end-users and project managers or even their people from IT. Internally we work very closely together  not only with members of the customer success department in Cologne but with our colleagues from Belgium and the US as well as with other teams such as the product team or the sales team.

What advice would you give to someone looking to become a Data Analytics Engineer?

We have customers in various industries such Chemical, Pharma, Oil &Gas, Food & Beverage, Pulp & Paper and Metal & Mining. Hence, you need to understand different topics and processes quite fast in different areas. The role as a Data Analytics Engineer involves a big part of thinking about solving typical chemical and process engineering challenges by analyzing process data so good analytical thinking skills as well as an interest in process data and data science is needed. But in the end, it is a self-service analytics tool and we support our users to answer their own process related questions, so you need to collaborate with and help our users. If that is something you like, you should definitely apply for a role as a Data Analytics Engineer.

Why TrendMiner?

I saw an announcement at my University about TrendMiner but at the time I only knew that it was a company in IoT, Analytics and Big Data. Then at a wedding I met someone who was already working at TrendMiner and I heard him talking passionately about his job. That triggered my interest in the company. By the time I graduated from the University, I was still interested in the company, so I spoke to the same person I met at the wedding. He still had the same positive feedback about his job. That is when I decided to apply for a job at TrendMiner.