Employee Spotlight: Mike DeCosta

Synergy’s Employee Spotlight series profiles some of the best and brightest of Syniverse who make mobile work for our customers around the world.

What’s your title and role at Syniverse?
I am an Advisory Systems Engineer in Syniverse’s Service Provider Group. I work remotely at a home office in Massachusetts.

How long have you been at Syniverse?
This year will mark my 12th with Syniverse.

What are you working on this month?
Currently I’m working on fulfilling a range of customer requests, maintenance requests and update requests related to our environment. These include requests for projects like new builds, new software installations and technical troubleshooting. The environment consists of virtual machines and bare-metal, stand-alone servers. Virtual machines are software-based systems that emulate a physical or stand-alone server, and they have their own operating systems and storage capability. From a user’s perspective, they are indistinguishable from a physical server.

What’s one of the most valuable lessons you’ve gained during your career in mobile?
Staying up to date with changing technologies and having the ability to integrate new equipment and processes with current systems in the best way for our customers and business operations. This is crucial with the fast-paced evolution of mobile technology today.

What’s been one of your best moments at Syniverse?
Finishing the migration of our data center from Tampa to new facilities in Chicago and Dallas. The magnitude of this project, the complexity of it, and the way that everyone worked together to make it a success made the completion of this project extremely rewarding. Plus, the new environment in Chicago and Dallas has provided a much more stable and robust environment for our business.

What’s one of the best things about working at Syniverse?
The people. The camaraderie that we have within our company and the ability for everyone to work with different groups to sometimes accomplish the impossible. When dealing with deadlines and timelines, we all come together and work as one.

Tell us about your mobile lifestyle. What kind of mobile phone do you use?
I use an iPhone 6S.

What’s your favorite app or tool on your phone?
I have several favorite apps on my mobile phone, but the one that I probably use the most is Yelp. It’s an application that let’s you search for and find directions and reviews for restaurants, nightclubs, shops and just about anything else that you can think of. It’s great when you’re traveling or looking for a new restaurant you may want to check out.

In the last year, what’s the longest you’ve gone without using your phone?
I really can’t think of many times when I have intentionally not used my phone or not been able to use it. Living here in Massachusetts, I have made weekend trips to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where coverage has been pretty spotty, and this has forced me to lose connectivity temporarily.

What do you like to do outside of work?
I’m a motorcycle enthusiast, and I love riding my Harley. It has over 100,000 miles on it, and I have ridden it all over the East Coast. And last year, I took it to Sturgis, the mecca of all motorcycle riders. Most weekends, you can find me riding up in in the mountains in New Hampshire, along the coast, or up around Cape Cod. I love the freedom of the wind and the way it just clears your head of everything.