This edition of SingleStore’s engineer showcase puts the spotlight on software engineer Yamil Molinar. Hear how Yamil’s degree in robotics led him to the database space, his favorite tools, the best thing about working at SingleStore and more.
Whether they’re finding new ways to quickly and effectively operationalize data, or empowering companies to support massive, multiple workloads concurrently, it’s no secret our data and software engineers are building a database that helps customers stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. And, we’re always looking for more innovators.
Join the SingleStore engineering team
To highlight the incredible work our engineers are doing — not to mention what awesome people they are — we’ll be featuring members of the SingleStore team in our engineering showcase series. Next up: meet Yamil Molinar.
Q: What’s your name and role at SingleStore?
A: Yamil Molinar, Software Engineer
Q: Where are you located?
A: Chicago, Ill.
Q: Give us a bit of background on yourself. How did you get into databases?
A: I got my degree in industrial robotics, but early in my career I started to transition into pure software by writing software tests for avionics systems using C. I started to “go up the stack” and switched to the big data space when I had to do some system administration and automated testing on Hadoop clusters. Eventually, I transitioned fully into cloud computing and started writing backend services in Java using Spring Boot, while also doing some greenfield system architecture for a consulting firm.
The COVID pandemic made me seek greater engineering challenges — I joined SingleStore because database building is an engineering discipline with hard problems, and SingleStore is very well positioned to dominate present and future enterprise workloads. It was the best decision ever, as SingleStore is the best employer I’ve ever had.
Q: What is the best thing about working at SingleStore?
A: That I’m constantly collaborating with top-notch engineers that care about customers, and are passionate about building systems that solve difficult problems.
Q: Aside from SingleStore, do you have any favorite frameworks, languages or tools?
A: I really like working with Go. It’s a fast, elegant and well-designed multi-paradigm systems language. Also, I love open source and free (libre) software, so GNU/Linux is probably my favorite software tool.
Q: What advice would you offer to developers as they navigate the crowded, often confusing database market?
A: Take time to understand the tech behind every database, their tradeoffs and the market trends. Ask yourself why that particular technology is being used and why customers like it. That’ll point you in the right direction.
Q: What’s the biggest misconception developers have around databases (in your opinion)?
A: Many open source developers think that NoSQL databases are a de-facto superior technology because of their novelty, flexibility and because they can scale with relative ease. In my opinion, this is an incorrect understanding as the throughput, transactionality and explicitly typed schema structures that a distributed relational database can give you is more valuable for most production grade use cases.
Q: Where do you hope to see SingleStore in five years?
A: I would like to see SingleStore dominate the cloud RDBMS space for data intensive use cases.
Q: What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?
A: Every piece of technology is just a tool at an engineer’s disposal. Always use the right tool for the job at hand.
Q: What technology can you not live without?
A: Too many options, but game engines are probably the ones that I appreciate the most in my everyday life.
We’re hiring!
To work alongside engineers like Yamil, explore open positions with SingleStore today.
