Kam Wells '17

Where are you working now? Where else have you worked since graduating from Knox? 

I am currently a data engineer for baseball systems for the Boston Red Sox. Prior to that, I was a data engineer for The General insurance and a data analyst for Under Armour. 

What do you do as a data engineer?

I consider myself a mailman for data—data tracking events happen, the data comes to me, and I store it in its associated tables in our database. For this analogy, consider a [piece of] data as a piece of mail just like someone would mail a package, and then the mailman delivers it to where it needs to go. A data engineer delivers data to where it needs to go. When play happens on the field, there are thousands of different data points to be captured by our tracking systems. That’s where my team comes in and gets the data stored in these systems and “delivers” them to our database for data analysts and decision-makers to leverage, just like a mailman would bring the mail to your mailbox for you to use.

What led to your interest in this field?

I knew I had a passion for baseball and also an interest in computer programming, so when looking into career fields, working as a data engineer for a professional baseball team was the best of both worlds.

How do you think Knox prepared you for “after-Knox” life? 

I think Knox has had a huge influence on my life. Whether it was talking to Professor Spacco [Associate Professor of Computer Science Jaime Spacco] about database theories, being able to self-design a minor to tailor my studies to a field I was interested in, or Professor Dooley [Emeritus Professor of Computer Science John Dooley] helping me land my field internship post-college, I think they all played a role in how I got where I am today.

What was your favorite part of Knox?

I think my favorite part of Knox was the people. I met some of my best friends at Knox—people who challenge me to think critically, challenge me to strive to be better in all aspects of life. I'm grateful for my time at Knox for bringing these people into my life.