Welcoming Relaborate’s New CTO, Grant Gavares
May 7, 2013 | By Andy Boyer | No Comments">No Comments
At the core of every Tech start-up is the word, “Technology.” So that means it’s vital to have an all-star “Technologist” at the controls. Here at Relaborate, we couldn’t be more excited to announce that Grant Gavares has chosen to join the team.
Like the rest of us, Grant started somewhere else, found his way to Seattle and hasn’t been able to leave. Before coming to the Pacific Northwest, Grant received his BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Texas, so he brings a little more southern flair to the office. But that’s not what has us feeling so lucky.
In Grant’s last gig, he was one of the early lead software engineers at Apptio, one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in the Northwest. In three years he designed and developed Apptio’s software deployment and lifecycle management system and also was instrumental in defining the next generation distributed platform.
Before that, Grant was over at Amazon.com, one of the early software development engineers hired on the Amazon Web Services team. He worked on the design and development of the AWS data warehouse and developed operational back-end and portal systems, including a multi-petabyte indexing and storage system as well as the AWS Metering system. (I’m just going to pretend I know what that means.)
Now, I do know what patents are, and while I can’t tell you what these specific ones actually do, I know that it’s am impressive feat to have been part of the Amazon Technologies team that was awarded two of them in 2012. The first, for a dynamic tree determination for distributed data processing, and the second for a method by which data can be processed in parallel across a cluster of nodes using a parallel processing framework.
You can see the whole press release here. But since Relaborate is all about Q&A, we thought we’d help you get to know Grant a little better, with a few items that didn’t make the official release. Feel free to stop by our Facebook page and welcome Grant as well.
What’s your work history prior to joining Relaborate?
I started off writing software in the defense industry during and immediately after college in Austin. I the took a job with Amazon Web Services in late 2004 when they were just getting started, and stayed there for just under 5 years.
After AWS I took about 6 months off to figure out what I wanted to do next. In April of 2010 I took a job with Apptio.
Where do you draw your ideas from; what inspires you inside and outside of work?
I’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best engineers in the world. I think it’s natural to take inspiration from people like that.
Who are your favorite technologists? Who do you follow that pushes you?
I read pretty broadly within the technology sphere. The one person that I’ve found myself drawn to repeatedly over the years is Paul Graham.
What intrigued you the most about joining the Relaborate team?
The Relaborate team had put together a very compelling offering that seemed to be without a true competitor in its space. The company was still early enough that the interesting technology problems hadn’t been solved or even necessarily discovered.
After meeting with the team and board members, I was sold.
What are you most excited about towards the future of Relaborate?
For me, it’s the realization of the vision. Being a part of the team that executes that vision is a rare opportunity that I’m glad to have in front of me.
You can see the full press release about Grant Gavares here, or check out the article in Geekwire.
