A naturally curious mindset combined with a passion for technology drove Robert Metzker towards his career as a Technical Specialist and Data Architect with PSI. Over the last 30 years Robert has dedicated a large portion of his time to bettering business processes and learning about new and evolving technologies.
A Career in Data Management
“I have been professionally involved with data management since around 1989,” said Robert. “My various jobs in the tech industry have introduced me to all aspects of data, from designing tables, processing the data both inside and outside of the database environment as well as analyzing and reporting on the information through various business intelligence tools. I have always been fascinated by the type of information businesses find important and how they use the information to better business processes.”
Robert landed his first gig in the data management field in the early 1990s when he worked at Business Objects doing technical support. His job consisted of troubleshooting and providing a better user experience. He began writing white papers to provide more complex solutions and unveil common business issues that benefitted from documentation.
Realizing the value of his skills, Robert took his experience at Business Objects and designed custom solutions for a variety of other customers, including a few financial institutions that eventually merged and brought him onboard to support the conversion. Robert ended up spending 17 years in the financial sector until he decided to branch out to other companies.
Working as a PSI Consultant
Fast forward to today, Robert now works remotely supporting the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation (BWC) as a PSI consultant.
“With nearly 1,600 employees and assets of approximately $21 billion, BWC is one of the largest state-run insurance systems in the United States,” he said. “At BWC, we actively take a look at the compensation claims to provide a better experience for the injured workers. Using machine learning, we have been trying to determine if additional coverage should be allotted to individuals based on other, similarly injured individuals, as well as medical conditions that may be related to certain types of injuries.”
Robert explained that the team he works with at BWC does the majority of the code maintenance through code reviews in GitHub. For new data practices and patterns, the team typically approaches the solution through an initial series of mob programming sessions which allowed them to build out a fairly robust system through a combination of code, nocode, and lowcode solutions. By providing these various integration layers, they have a method that allows internal clients to be self-sufficient while also allowing the development team to quickly churn out products that have built-in vetting.
On a daily basis Robert spends a fair amount of time in either conference calls participating in mob programming sessions with other members of the team. He also supports the Data Architects when they have a more complex business process they are trying to represent in the form of tables. Robert builds most of the code through Visual Studio Code, built on a development box, and maintains the code bases through GitHub repositories.
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A System of Support
“PSI supports me by being the interface between myself and the upper management,” Robert said.” “They are there to answer any questions that I may have about the project or the intended scope of the engagement. They also work with the business to ensure that they are happy with the results and provide me with the necessary feedback to make sure my clients needs continue to be met.”
Robert said the work with PSI and BMW has been fulfilling and has continued to broaden his scope of technical skills as well as expanding his network.
“PSI is engaged with quite a number of businesses, so there is no shortage of connections that makes expanding your network possible. I would definitely recommend PSI to friends.”
Robert Metzger