Get to Know: Nate Kupp, Manager of Technical Infrastructure
Nate Kupp came to Thumbtack as a data scientist — but about two months in, he decided to switch gears to help the company build out its data infrastructure. In this interview, he talks about what he’s learning as a manager, a few of his proudest accomplishments, and the challenges his team is tackling next.
What does Thumbtack do, and what do you do at Thumbtack?
Thumbtack is essentially two apps — one for people looking for a local service professional, like a landscaper or a DJ, and another for those professionals, to help them manage and respond to job requests. I lead a team that’s responsible for our data and core platform infrastructure. We also support the rest of the Engineering team by creating tools to help them be more productive.
My work now is actually pretty different from what I thought I’d be doing when I started here a couple of years ago. I imagined I’d go back to my machine learning roots, doing statistics and modeling. But I realized pretty quickly that we needed to build out our data infrastructure first, and I decided I’d rather tackle that.
Tell us a bit about your career before Thumbtack, and what brought you here.
I started my career as an electrical engineer, and did my Ph.D. in semiconductor manufacturing. My doctoral work involved machine learning, and I saw a ton of opportunity to leverage large-scale data with that. After my Ph.D., I ended up at Apple, working on the iOS battery life team and then the watch team, using data to inform and drive product improvements.
That was an incredible experience and I loved my time at Apple, but I got tired of working seven days a week. So I started looking for a startup with legs. I’d chatted with tons of companies, and the way Thumbtack’s co-founders talked about their vision really resonated with me. I was also blown away by the caliber of the people here. There are no egos, no bad apples. We’re proud of that, and we work hard to maintain it.
What are your proudest accomplishments from your work here?
I’m particularly proud of the way we’ve democratized data. A lot of companies have a centralized analytics team, and you have to put in a request for everything you need. At Thumbtack, data is used to drive business decisions across every department — more than 300 people here have written a SQL query! It’s incredibly empowering for our Marketing and Product teams to be able to ask and answer their own questions.
“There are no egos, no bad apples. We’re proud of that, and we work hard to maintain it.”
Another point of pride for me is our near-real-time events pipeline. We’re streaming an incredible volume of data, about 150 million events per day, and we provide less than 30 seconds latency from a user action to queryable data in BigQuery, enabling a whole new class of insights.
What has it been like moving into managing a team?
It’s been challenging, but a great experience — I’ve really appreciated the mentorship and guidance of Mark, our VP of Engineering, as I’ve transitioned from an individual contributor to an engineering lead role. Lately we’ve been talking a lot about how to articulate the values of the Engineering team, to make sure the team’s humility and pride in craftsmanship is preserved as we grow. Ensuring productivity is another common topic. We’re looking at ways to distribute work in this rapidly changing group without sacrificing quality or culture.
What other challenges are you facing?
I think we’re still figuring out the balance between being thoughtful in our architecture and testing everything to its extreme — and just constantly innovating and cranking out code. We’re upfront about that with new engineers, because we want people to join with open eyes. We want people who are up for the challenge. Also, Thumbtack is nine years old, so we’ve accumulated a decent amount of technical debt. But because we’re constantly re-imagining our systems, there’s a lot of opportunity for someone new to come in and impact big projects, not just make minor tweaks.
“We’re constantly re-imagining our systems, so there’s a lot of opportunity to impact big projects.”
Engineering processes have also changed dramatically as we’ve grown over the years. How do we plan projects differently for a team of 20, 50, and now more than 120? We have team members from Google, Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, and elsewhere who have all come to Thumbtack with great experiences from how those engineering organizations are run. Thumbtack is answering the question, “How do we want to do this for ourselves?” right now, and we all get to be part of that.
On the human side of things, we’ve given a lot of thought to preserving team culture and values as we scale. We care a ton about building an amazing engineering team that people want to be a part of, and that’s something that takes a lot of work throughout rapid growth.
Do you use Thumbtack yourself?
I do! My wife and I have rented a town car to take us to Napa and we’ve hired a personal chef for a dinner party. Just this week I hired a photographer to take pictures of my sister and her new baby.
Whenever I use the site, I’m struck by how far it’s come — and I’m excited by how much there still is to do. Our biggest lever right now is retention; we want to make sure new users come back to us for their next project. The average U.S. household has about 10 projects per year we could help them complete, but our users are only using a few times per year on average. That represents a huge opportunity as we move forward. I’m also really excited about Instant Match and what we’re building there. I think it’s the right move for the product.
Interested in learning more?
Check out open roles or get in touch at recruiting@thumbtack.com
