While the thought of handling 'big data' may leave many baffled, it's second nature for Bury's Simon Thorley, senior data engineer at Stockport technology firm, CDL, whose world class skills have seen him achieve international recognition as one of the first Elastic Certified Engineers globally.
The accreditation from the fast-growing tech company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year, marks his proficiency in the powerful search and analytics engine, Elasticsearch, used by high-profile brands, such as Uber and Barclays Bank.
Simon, who settled in Bury twelve years ago, joins an exclusive community of individuals across the globe who have successfully demonstrated their expert tech skills by passing a rigorous, performance-based exam.
In a world where 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced each day, the ability to act on relevant information in real-time is key to the retail industry, especially in the world of high-volume online sales.
Simon said: "It's a great achievement to have my skills professionally confirmed on a global level, especially being one of the first in the world to receive the certification. I have been an advocate for Elasticsearch throughout my career and the combination of Elastic Training courses and my time working at CDL has enabled me to vastly develop my knowledge of the product."
Simon utilises Elasticsearch on a daily basis to provide CDL's market-leading solutions to the financial services sector, including helping companies tackle fraud before it happens.
CDL data services manager, Shane Blinkhorn, added: "CDL is always looking to be ahead of the game in our adoption of technologies and supporting our people to achieve industry-recognised certifications is one way of doing this.
"Simon is a prime example of the talented team we have at CDL and we hope to utilise their knowledge of Elasticsearch to diversify our client offerings going forward."
CDL's data services team now boasts over 45 accreditations, ranging from Amazon Web Services (AWS) Associates to Google Could Engineers.