Michael Tapson, CTO of closerlook, is keenly watching developments in machine learning and natural language processing. Like many players in marketing technology, his company is constantly looking for an edge in analytics, and the only way to maintain that edge is by automating as much of the process as possible.
We spoke with Tapson about the technologies that fuel closerlook’s marketing solutions for pharmaceutical companies, the biggest technological hurdles his company faces and what closerlook seeks in potential engineering hires. (Spoiler: don’t forget to brush up on your computer science fundamentals.)
Which technologies power your business?
We use a wide variety of technologies to power our business. Since we are a Microsoft partner, we use a lot of their technologies on our software development team, and .Net and SQL Server are core to what we build. We are also utilizing Redis, Elasticsearch and the React framework for one of our newest products.
What are the biggest projects you’re working on this year?
We are working on a marketing intelligence application for non-technical users that will help our clients uncover insight in their data.
What is the biggest technological hurdle you’ve faced, and how did your team overcome it?
For the product that we are building right now, we were faced with the challenge of figuring out how to take a process that used to require a developer and 15 minutes of compute time, and make it responsive enough to be used as a web application that provides results in milliseconds. There was a decent amount of trial and error early on in finding the right combination of technologies and architecture to overcome this hurdle. In the end, our lead architect was able to make use of some really smart caching techniques to provide a solution that made the product perform better than we had originally expected.
What are the most important technological developments you’re watching?
For us, it’s definitely machine learning and natural language processing. If you’re looking to find meaning in data quickly and easily, machine learning is the only viable option out there right now. Combining that with NLP creates an opportunity to build solutions that are incredibly powerful and very simple to use.
What sets your team apart?
Flexibility. The team is able to fail quickly and change direction pretty seamlessly. They are working inside a marketing agency, not a pure software shop, and working in that environment can be challenging for a lot of developers. Our team handles it very well, and it has a great appreciation for the overall business strategies.
What do you look for when hiring for engineers?
I always look for flexibility, passion and a good understanding of the fundamentals of computer science. There are many modern tools and frameworks that abstract how software really works and it can be detrimental if engineers rely too heavily on these tools without a firm grasp on the fundamentals.
