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EM Employee Spotlight: Denis Haskin

EM Employee Spotlight: Denis Haskin

Name: Denis Haskin

Position: Senior Software Architect 

Translation: I provide overall technical vision and direction for our backend software. 

Fun Fact: I was born in Singapore and lived in Indonesia until college. 

Hometown: Jakarta, Indonesia

Current city: Needham, MA

Hobbies: Choral Singing 

 

How would you describe your career path?

I’ve been in software development for the last two decades. I really like writing code. That’s the part that really gets me excited. Ever since I was in high school, I’ve been messing around with computers. Sometimes, I can’t even believe that people pay me to do this. I enjoy solving problems. My role is to make sure that we’re not merely solving lots of little problems, but achieving our overall, future-focused goals. I straddle the line between considering business needs and forging a plan to accomplish them. 

 

Your resume lists an impressive chronology of software experience. What brought you to Elemental Machines, and why did you choose EM over all of your other options? 

I chose Elemental Machines for the people. I had known (Elemental Machines Director of Software Engineering) Andrew Eberle for quite a while. We knew each other in college, and worked at many of the same places, though not always at the same time. Andrew had tried to recruit me for the past couple of years. Once I had the chance to connect with the team, I was struck by the combination of knowhow and humility and decided to accept his invitation.  

 

How would you describe the people you work with at EM?

My first impression has proven correct. There’s almost no other place I’ve worked that can compare. 

 

What has surprised you about working for EM?

I’ve worked at startups before, so I was a little hesitant about coming back to work for a startup. But it’s been thoroughly enjoyable. We work hard and move quickly, but we don’t operate in the stressed, manic environment that plagues many startups.

 

How have you grown personally or professionally as a result of your current role?

Even though I’ve had a lot of experience, this role has introduced me to a lot of new technology I haven’t had the chance to work on before. Google Cloud among them. I also love being in the biotech domain. I get to serve customers who are doing really important things. I’ve also enjoyed being at a company that makes hardware -- and I wouldn't have expected to enjoy that as much as I do. When our electrical engineer talks about laying out circuit boards and component selection, it’s a fascinating discussion to witness.

 

What’s been one of your favorite puzzles to solve? 

In the last couple of months, I put together a set of software emulators for our hardware devices that give us a great advantage for testing. We no longer need a physical piece of hardware to test our backend pipeline. The big challenge was replicating realistic behavior. For example, ambient light had hit at realistic times of the day. So we looked at all the historical data from a real device and played it back through the emulator. It’s basically a high-tech playback machine but with some semi-nondeterministic behavior thrown in. 

 

What is your perspective of the future of Elemental Machines?

We’re very well positioned, have a quality product, an incredible team, and are continuing to build that. The attention this company pays to ensuring a strong cultural fit among team members is head and shoulders above what others are doing. I am extremely enthusiastic about our future. 

 

Interested in joining Denis and the rest of the Elemental Machines team? View our open positions at elementalmachines.com/careers.



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