Meet Chris Patino: Zartico’s Data Engineering Lead
Chris Patino is Zartico’s Data Engineering Lead. He has a background in aerospace engineering and a love for solving problems and making connections. Located in Brock, Texas — a community about 70 miles west of Dallas — Chris is a father to three boys and brother of fellow Zartican JP Patino. The Patino Brothers, as we call them, and the other members of the Zartico Technology Group (ZTG) work to bring in dozens of petabytes of data and organize it to power the insights within ZDOS®.
Keep reading to learn more about Chris and what inspires him.
How did your interests, education, and career path lead you to Zartico and the type of work that you do?
By nature, the extent of my education is mechanical and physical. I graduated from school with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I very much expected to be working on aircraft design. I worked at Lockheed Martin right out of college, and for the most part, I was doing just that — working in the wing group, designing and testing wing design on the F-35.
It was, in part, chance and circumstance that led me to Zartico. Before the COVID pandemic began, Lockheed was trying to set up data engineering teams to design, build, and deploy data pipelines that would ingest data from suppliers, from other Lockheed assets, military flight tests, and simulation flight tests.
Lockheed had been outsourcing this to contractors, but COVID and security needs began to limit the data the engineering teams could process. Moving this into secured, in-house labs increased exponentially the scope of data available for reporting, data analysts, and data scientists.
I was chosen to lead one of two teams of data engineers. It was a trial-by-fire experience, but at the end of it all I found out that my passion didn’t lie in a particular field like aircraft design, but just problem solving in general.
The problems we were trying to solve were only solvable by having the right data, in the right place, connected in the right way. Being the gatekeeper in charge of getting the data to the right people is challenging, yet so rewarding when you witness the data getting to the next layer and you start seeing all these previously unforeseeable things come together. (Zartico Data Science team, I’m looking at y’all…).
Shortly after, I left Lockheed Martin, hoping to find a data engineering role in which I could expand my knowledge of data outside of the scope of aerospace applications. Zartico and I found each other, and after a few passionate conversations with Jay Kinghorn and John Schmidt, I knew this was the place for me. I’ll be celebrating my third Zartico anniversary in May.
If you weren’t doing this work, what do you think you would be doing instead?
I would 100% be a teacher and coach. After working at Lockheed for about two and a half years, they lost a defense contract, and I was laid off. The industry was hurting at that time, and it was very difficult to find a job.
To bridge the gap, I taught high school engineering and computer science and coached baseball and football for three years. The rapport and relationship I had with my students and athletes was next to none, and I felt that I learned from them as much as they learned from me. I tell my wife all the time that when I’m done with engineering I am going to return to the classroom.
Where do you go to learn or to find inspiration? Who or what are the people, books, podcasts, activities, etc. capturing your attention lately?
When I have a mental block and need a fresh look or to find a way to gain inspiration, I spend time with my three little boys. Playing with them and spending time with them presses a reset button mentally and gives me a fresh approach to a problem or a task.
I have always resorted to golf as another means to reset and find that motivational mindset. I like to always maintain a growth mindset, especially in a field where almost every week there's something new or groundbreaking to learn.
On a more personal note, there's a podcast that I listen to on my drop-off drive with my oldest, Eli. The podcast is called Uniquely Human, and the primary topic is educating parents and others who have a child or relative with autism. Eli was diagnosed with autism at a young age, and I feel I owe it to him and myself to find the resources that can help me be the best parent to him. It truly helps me learn more about what he deals with daily, what he feels, and what he struggles with so that I can be his best advocate to help him grow.
Tell us about a place you love — what do you love about it, and what would you tell someone who is planning to visit for the first time?
One of my favorite places to visit is the Grand Canyon. I was in high school the first time I saw the Grand Canyon, and it was the first time I experienced what Zarticans call “wonder.”
Even seeing it through my own eyes, it felt surreal. It felt like I was looking at a canvas, and I remember thinking, What other places are like this in the world?
What is your “bucket list” travel destination?
There are three places on my list right now: Norway, to see the northern lights; New Zealand; and the Colosseum in Rome.
What do you love about working at Zartico?
Within ZTG, I love the sense of being “in phase” with one another. We have a sense of camaraderie and a clear vision of what we are doing. We’ve recently adopted the ideology of Talanoa, a form of dialogue that helps us get productive conversations started. We’ve made strides to encourage discussion and cultivate ideas from anyone and anywhere.
Company-wise, in my almost three years here, I’ve felt that across organizations, you can always find a sense of empathy from one team to another. I love the broad scope of backgrounds that we all come from and how we all have our own story of how we got to Zartico. I have also felt that our upper leadership team has awareness for the employees and has always seen us not just as colleagues or workers, but as people.
Our Data Engineering team is hiring! Check out open roles at any time on our Careers page.
