In 2006, a small company formed, specializing in MySQL database consulting at a time when very few companies had fully embraced open source. This small company quickly grew, riding the wave of open source adoption within the greater enterprise market and became the Percona we know and love today.
My first awareness of Percona came at a time when I was part of a large enterprise MySQL DBA team. It seemed that suddenly all of my web searches for information were returning blog posts written by Percona employees, and without fail these posts always had the correct information I needed to resolve my current issue. This pattern repeated over the years until finally, I decided it was time for me to apply for a position at Percona, as it was clearly apparent to me that the best minds in the MySQL world worked here.
After an extremely thorough interview process, I joined Percona as a member of the TAM (Technical Account Manager) team in 2016. As Percona is almost always hiring for various positions, I wanted to detail my experience in working here as a TAM, my thoughts on the company as a whole, and why YOU should submit an application to work for Percona.
The TAM Role
As a member of the TAM team, I am responsible for a subset of clients, advocating for them and meeting regularly to discuss both technical and business issues. As with all worthwhile work, some days are tougher than others, but overall there is a great satisfaction to be gained from putting all the pieces together and helping a client achieve something that they initially thought was impossible, or resolving that critical outage quickly and hearing the sighs of relief on the other end of the conference line.
The Company
Percona is unique in that it is one of the few companies with the majority of the workforce working remotely, and has done so since the very beginning. As such, Percona has a vast amount of experience with remote collaboration and has arranged the entire company culture around this.
Video meetings keep everyone connected internally and help put faces to those names you work with on a routine basis. Occasional onsite meetings and conference meetups allow some real-world interaction as well, so we’re not always trapped behind our webcams.
The best part of Percona, however, is the employees themselves. I have never worked for a company with so many incredibly bright minds gathered in a single place. If you have an interest in open source technologies and want to rub shoulders with some of the best talents in the industry, you’ll likely find those people virtually strolling the halls of Percona.
We Want You!
As mentioned, Percona is almost always looking for great talent, and always looking for TAM’s to increase our team capacity, in both the EMEA and Americas regions. While in many companies the TAM role is not very technical, this is not true of the TAM role at Percona. A Percona TAM generally comes from a DBA or consulting background, and this allows a depth of knowledge not typically seen in this role. A great Percona TAM will exhibit the following qualities:
Expertise
Percona TAMs are often SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) in many areas of database administration. Percona TAMs come from a professional DBA (or consulting) background, with experience managing large and complex database installations.
Efficiency
As a TAM, you will be involved with a customer’s planning/testing both before and after any major changes, such as database upgrades, architecture and design, and project planning. This work often includes documenting the procedures that are followed during planned events, reviewing active support tickets, and analyzing customer environments.
Continuous Learning
TAMs should review the latest white papers, blogs, and newsletters to stay up to date on various database technologies, including MySQL, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL. Our clients need the latest information to stay current, compliant, and secure.
TAMs are also exposed to all of Percona’s products and services with a unique internal insight. This enables us to offer expert advice to our customers to take full advantage of our products and services to optimize their database infrastructure.
What Else?
There is, of course, much more to the TAM role than just these areas. Some of the other regular duties a Percona TAM might perform are:
- Hosting regular meetings with Percona clients to better understand the business/technical environment, infrastructure, goals, and challenges.
- Taking ownership of support tickets and retaining that ownership through to a successful resolution.
- Providing an internal escalation point for client support and consulting projects.
- Perform implementation reviews, discuss new product features, and ensure prompt and proper resolution of technical challenges.
- Staying current with any ongoing and upcoming client projects and initiatives.
TAMs are equipped to use all this information to assist customers with proactive solutions and best practices for recommended changes to production. As a Percona TAM, our commitment is to be honest, empathetic, and exceed expectations, whether a client is using a Percona product or not.
Up For The Challenge?
So do YOU have what it takes to become the next great Percona TAM? Apply today, and find out!
