William Ruiz
Current position: Computer Systems Technology/Systems Administrator, Raytheon Technologies
Education (degrees and school):
Associates from the Community College of the Air Force
B.S. in Information Technology from Northeastern University.
Hobbies:
I love playing soccer, riding my motorcycle, doing home improvement projects, reading and learning about new technology in the world, spending time with my fiance and traveling to new places together.
Where were you born and where did you grow up? Where did you go to high school?
I was born in Providence, Rhode island but raised in Central Falls.
I lived in Central Falls for the first 21 years of my life before moving out and living on my own.
I attended Central Falls High School from 2003-2007
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to work in law enforcement in some type of capacity. And I am still pursuing that dream and hope that’ll come true soon. (FBI computer analyst)
How did you get into computer science?
My first interaction with computer science was when I was about 12-13 years old. My brother, who at the time was going to school for network engineering, had to put together a computer from scratch and brought the project home with him. I watched him put it together and from then on I was fascinated with technology. I then saved up my money and bought some new and used computer parts to put together my own computer.
Fast forward to 20 years old, I was attending the University of Rhode Island for a B.A in Sociology. I dreaded going to class everyday to study a subject I had lost interest in. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t choose a Computer Science degree path instead.
I didn’t want to attend school anymore as I was just wasting time and money at URI. I then joined the R.I. Air National Guard for a career in Cyber Systems Operations. This is where my career in computer science took off and led me to learn so much that I know today.
What other jobs have you had?
Upon coming back from training from the Air National Guard I found an entry level job at a software company in Massachusetts named Meditech. I was a software support technician for six months and then quickly rose the ranks to become a Computer Performance Engineer/Technical Performance Analyst. I held that position for 7 ½ years until I found my current job..
I am still serving in the Air National Guard. It’s been ten great/tough years as I juggled full this part-time career with my full-time career as well as going to school. My current position in the ANG is Cyber Systems Operations Craftsman and I hold the rank of Technical Sergeant (E6).
What is an average day at work like for you?
When I come into work I have a list of things/projects that need to get done. It may range from setting up new hardware like servers and networking gear down to troubleshooting issues with software that is used in our various environments.
Also, as you know, automation is number one in the technology world. In my free time at work and at home, I am writing automation scripts that’ll do tasks that would take human beings hours to do, where my scripts will do them in minutes. I am proficient in both Windows and Linux so I’m constantly writing scripts in command line (CLI), powershell, and bash.
I often work with engineers to help troubleshoot issues they may be having with their hardware and/or their code. I try to pinpoint and cut out inefficiencies in what they’re trying to accomplish.
What is your favorite part of your job?
At my job at Raytheon technologies, we are constantly churning out products for use within the government sector and now the commercial space. My favorite part of my job is when the whole team finishes a project from start to finish and we have created something that can help/protect people. Is it truly amazing to see what the team has been working on for months finally come to fruition.
What is the best opportunity you have had because of computer science?
Because of computer science I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of a lot of special things that spanned across multiple places I’ve worked/studied. I believe because of my schooling at Northeastern University I was able to see multiple different topics within computer science. In school I studied many various topics like Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interfaces, Web Design, and various computer programming languages (Java, C++, Python, R programming). I really enjoyed learning about all of these different topics and it opened up my eyes as to how much is out there.
Any great stories about working in computer science?
At school for my senior capstone project, I had to work with any organization that needed some type of help to better whatever they were currently doing. I found a company called LifeStory Health (LSH) which is a Bio-Tech company out of Boston. I especially feel proud of this project because of the mission of LSH. Their mission is to be able to pinpoint whether or not a woman is predisposed to certain illnesses or diseases in their future based on their blood samples. As an example, they are working on ways to be able to predict whether a certain female was predisposed to Alzheimer’s and their chances of being diagnosed with the disease decades before it happened. Which in turn would help someone prepare or even possibly live their life differently to help avoid the future diagnosis.
My mission with LSH was to help their team come up with a way to transfer all their data real time in a SQL database by the simple push of one button. They were originally keeping all their results in data points in several different excel spreadsheets, which was almost impossible to track as their data spreadsheets went into the millions. By the end of my capstone project, I was able to have them at the push of a button on an internal web page I built for them, run their code and at the same time save off their data into a large SQL database with several built-in queries to find the data they needed almost instantly. It felt great to be a part of something that is doing something good for people.