Life at Treasure Data: Q&A with Kohki Sato, Senior Technical Support Engineer

At Treasure Data, our customers are served by a dedicated team of Support Engineering rockstars. Kohki Sato, Senior Technical Support Engineer, leads our UK team. He is responsible for keeping Treasure Data customers feeling empowered. We caught up with Kohki to learn more about his background, his journey across the globe, and his work building the future of data with a customer data platform.

Q: What was your background before joining Treasure Data?

Kohki: After graduating from college in Japan, I studied abroad for about eight months in a language program, and then worked in customer support at a foreign travel agency. I taught myself programming and computer science, and then started working as a technical support engineer at a SaaS company that provided a messaging platform. It was my first experience working as a technical support engineer, and since it was a small company, I was also responsible for various roles like a technical account manager and post sales. I joined Treasure Data in 2019 because I wanted to apply myself in the field of data utilization—and Treasure Data is a progressive company in Big Data and Customer Data Platforms.

Q: What motivated you to begin studying programming?

Kohki: I had enjoyed my precious work, but I felt I wanted to tackle more challenging problems. When I thought about changing careers, programming was an area that interested me.

Q: Are you currently living in the United Kingdom after moving from Japan?

Kohki: I moved to the UK from Japan in March 2022. I transferred from Treasure Data K.K., the Japanese subsidiary of Treasure Data, to Treasure Data’s UK subsidiary.

Q: How do you like the atmosphere in Manchester?

Kohki: It’s a very diverse city, with a university, a student district, and a diverse ethnic population. It is said to be the second largest city in England, but it seems quite compact compared to London.

A day in the vicinity of St. Peter’s Square (photo by Kohki Sato)

Q: What kind of work do you currently do?

Kohki: As a technical support engineer, I respond to inquiries from a variety of customers by answering technical questions and investigating the causes of errors. Most of our customers are in the UK and Europe, but we also deal with customers in India, and the U.S.

Q: What is your impression of your team members?

Kohki: The support team at Treasure Data is very technically knowledgeable and smart. We are all engineers with strengths in different fields, and I am often stimulated, and always learn a lot from them.We often receive comments from customers that Treasure Data’s support is superior to that of other cloud services, and that the response time is quicker. I think I have a kind of “pride” in providing support that makes CDP, a technically complex service, comfortable.

Q: What are some of the challenges you would like to take on in the future?

Kohki: I would like to play a role in connecting members in different time zones. Treasure Data’s support team responds to inquiries on a global basis. I would like to facilitate communication by acting as a “hub” and sharing the good initiatives between each of us.

Q: What kind of people do you like to work with? Any advice for people looking to join the team?

Kohki: It’s nice to work with people who can overcome troublesome problems together while sympathizing with each other. At Treasure Data, I think you will be fine as long as you actively learn technical matters after joining the company. If you are willing to gather information on your own and ask questions to those around you about things you don’t know or understand, you will be fine. We are hiring for roles in Technical Support Engineering across the globe. If you are interested in joining our team, please explore our careers page to learn more!