A Day in the Life of a Data Engineer at Sysco LABS

Marianne Sloan is a Data Engineer at Sysco LABS. It’s her job to collect data from across the company and compile it into marts that executives can query to understand how Sysco is performing.

At a company like Sysco—with 58,000 employees and customers in 90 countries—there is no shortage of data. Between our ecommerce platform, our delivery trucks, our warehouses full of fresh food, and our global sales teams, Sysco collects new data every minute. Thanks to the Sysco LABS data team, those millions of disparate numbers can become useful pieces of information.

”One part of the company can tell you about a delivery, but they can’t necessarily tell you if that delivery went to one of our top 100 customers. Our team makes it possible to do that.”

Here’s what a typical day looks like for her.

9:00 am to 10:00 am
Catch up
”First, when I get started, I check my email to see if there are any urgent requests from coworkers or executives. I take a look at our data marts to make sure that everything’s live, that all of our nightly pulls came through. If something isn’t working, we’ll fix it if it’s urgent, or prioritize it for later in our schedule.”

10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Meet with product managers
”We work with all of the product managers around the company. We provide them with data, and discuss what they’re going to be wanting to understand in the next 6 months to create their product roadmaps. Part of setting that up is getting to know other departments around Sysco, understanding what kind of data they have and how we can get updates as their data changes. Then we can build marts so people can query that data themselves.

We want to try to stay organized as a team and we want to make sure we’re focused on what’s important at the executive level to help product managers succeed. Our data analysts meet with the product managers to make sure we understand how to help them meet their goals.”

12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Work through tickets
”After we’ve created a plan, I work through Jira tickets. Lately, one of the tickets for me has been tracking how guest shoppers become customers. We look at our customer accounts and measure how long it took between when they logged in as a guest, created their account, and then placed their first order.”

4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Assist teammates
”Another role of our team is helping the entire organization become data driven. We offer quarterly data trainings to new employees, and help teammates understand how to access data for themselves. If anyone has questions about a piece of data, they can send us an email and we’ll help them find what they’re looking for.”

5:00 pm
Hang out with her family and play with her puppy, Cosette
”I’ve had dogs before who were much easier to train. We’re struggling to get past the puppy stage. In fact I’m searching for a dog training expert to come to my house to help us get past the difficult puppy stage. I’m worried that i’ll never be able to put on socks again without her trying to steal one!”

Want to join the team at Sysco LABS as a Data Engineer?