Professional Development: Informational Interview Report - UMGC

This document is an informational interview report, detailing a conversation with Jonathan Mc Call, a senior software development engineer. The report outlines Mr. McCall's professional background, including his experience at various companies like HBO and Zillow Group, and his proficiency in programming languages and system administration. The interview highlights his career path, daily responsibilities, and the challenges he has faced. It also provides insights into the skills and knowledge required for aspiring software engineers, emphasizing the importance of programming fundamentals, hands-on experience, and networking. The report concludes with Mr. McCall's recommendations for career development, including attending seminars and IT fairs to stay updated with industry trends. The report is a valuable resource for students seeking career guidance in the software engineering field.

Running head: MY INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW 1
My Informational Interview
Your name
University of Maryland Global Campus

MY INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW 2
Name of the interviewee:
Jonathan Mc Call
LinkedIn Profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmcc
Biography of professional background
Mr. Jonathan is an experienced professional software engineer highly proficient in the
system administration and software programming field of expertise. He started his professional
career as Support Porgrammer for 1 year in Prometheus Research LLC, where he got promoted
to Junior Systems Administrator and served the company for 2 years and 2 months. He then
changed his company to Rocket Fuel where he was employed as a data engineer for 1 year and 3
months. The next company he joined is NewsCred for 1 year and 9 months in the position of
software engineer. He then worked as site reliability engineer at HBO for 3 years. Presently he is
working at Zillow Group, New York in the position of Senior software development engineer.
He has completed his bachelor’s degree in Physics with minor in Maths from South Connecticut
State University. He has proficient technical knowledge in Python, SQL, PHP, HTSQL, Unix
Shell Scripting, LINUX, Python, CSS and HTML. He mainly developed his career in the domain
of programming, database design, configuration management, software design and integration of
distributed s ste sy m . He has hands-on-experience in design and development of transaction data,
delivery of reports and monitoring of such data with processing as per client’s needs. He worked
on projects across his professional career on setting LDAP Kerberos, configuration management
with using programming languages like My SQL to migrate data. He is acquainted with pip and
apt servers. He acted as coordinator in collaborating with the team and the management for
monitoring and evaluation of data. In HBO, he has built and assisted in the designing of ERP

MY INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW 3
model systems in discourse platform. He performed holistic application of data server systems
serving many clients through using digital products to analyze. He is abreast with new
configuration technologies like Puppet and Ansible.
Interview Highlights:
The adaption to various innovative technologies created the spark in this career field for
Mr. Jonathan. There is a good compensation package with added benefit of working in
flexibility. A typical day in this career option consists of working in a team and maintaining the
database through client checking and reporting to managers after completion of targets. The
typical duties involve the design, implementation and preparing prototype solutions till final
approval. The challenging nature of developing designs and models of software life cycle
interests him more in this field. The various obstacles one has to face in this career is the
changing client needs and the failure of system testing. The inadequate resources of the company
pose a big threat here. The work –life balance can be effectively maintained through executing
projects from home once or twice a week and collaborative team work through digital interactive
communication. The students who are fresher’s in this career field should possess excellent
knowledge in the basic programming languages like HTML, SQL, Java and C++ for coding
initially during the training period of software design models. The more they gain hands-on-
experience in working over various projects where they have to build and implement certain
system designs; the career growth will progress at a speedier rate. For better career guidance,
networking is essential with software developer managers or data coders who are successful
professionals in this field over 2 years of experience. The seminars and information technology
fairs can help in better and diverse knowledge about this field with new upcoming trends.

MY INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW 4
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