Alumni Profile: Scott Patterson

Scott Patterson is a relatively recent member of the Deloitte alumni community, having left the firm 3 months ago to join BNZ in Wellington. A digital specialist, he combines a day job of working with innovative technology with daring airborne adventures at the weekend. We caught up with Scott to talk about his experience at Deloitte, the world of cloud tech and his adrenaline-filled hobbies.

What was your role at Deloitte and when were you here?

I came into Deloitte as part of an acquisition of API Talent, and was a Manager in Cloud and Innovation.

Do you have any memorable moments from your time at Deloitte? 

I had a lot of fun at the Manager Milestone Programme in Auckland. We got to make a lot of new relationships and walked through a roleplaying game based on real situations. The conversations that emerged were amazing - it was so cool to realise that other people were facing the same challenges and situations that I was.

Were you offered any strong pieces of advice at Deloitte that you still use?

Yeah, definitely. I think one of the really strong things about Deloitte was the amount of learning that you can do – there’s just a wealth of knowledge. One thing I've actually used recently for my new team was human-centred design, which I learnt at Deloitte through a project. It’s been great to be able to share that knowledge.

What do you do at BNZ?

I'm a Product Owner of AWS platform, within Technology and Operations. I'm responsible for enabling a team that's going to take BNZ off on-premise infrastructure and data centres and into AWS cloud.

How does that compare to your work at Deloitte?

My old role was more consulting and helping customers with solutions for a particular problem. Product ownership is a different to consulting in some ways, but not in others. I still feel a bit like a consultant internally, as we have to sell our platform to our internal customers, so the consulting skills that I got at Deloitte have been really useful. I learned to know who my customers are, who my stakeholders are, who I have to talk to and I’ve really applied that since coming over to BNZ.

Why is it enjoyable working at BNZ?

I really like watching the team grow and succeed. When we started, some people were quite new to the technology but just seeing them pick that up and absolutely love what they're doing, it's been really rewarding.

As someone who works in the tech space, which emerging technology is most exciting to you?

Definitely the cloud. I specialise in the serverless aspect of cloud technology, a way of running code without managing servers, and I think that is the future. I'm actually writing a textbook about it, which is exciting! It's called 'Learn AWS serverless computing' and it will be published later this year.

What do you do for fun outside of work?

I've got way too many hobbies. At the moment, I'm building a car from scratch and it's going to be a race car that you can drive on the road. I've also recently picked up paragliding as a hobby, which is great – lots of jumping off cliffs and seeing how far you can go through the mountains! 

How long have you been doing that for?

Around two years. I was in the nationals earlier this year and Deloitte actually gave me sports leave for that, which was amazing. The nationals is like a race - you get up to about 8500 feet and navigate through a course that has waypoints in the air.

If you could bring three things with you on a desert island, what would they be?

A helicopter and fuel to fly off? I don't know, I feel like the objective if you're stuck there would be to get off! That, and 'how to fly a helicopter' manual!