Steve Tarzia

Steve Tarzia has a diverse work experience spanning different roles and industries. Steve currently works as the Director of Engineering at MongoDB, where they oversee query optimization for the North America region and is involved in rewriting the optimizer. Prior to that, they served as the Software Engineering Lead at MongoDB. Before joining MongoDB, Steve worked as the Sr. Engineering Manager at Ocient from March 2021 to December 2021. Additionally, they worked at Northwestern University in various roles, including Assistant Professor of Instruction in CS and Director of MS Programs in CE and EE, where they taught classes and managed the MS program. Steve also served as a Sr. Computational Research Consultant at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, assisting in research projects. Outside of academia, Steve founded the National Gun Violence Memorial, a non-profit project, and worked as a Professional Fellow at Northwestern University's Knight Lab to study sustainability in data journalism. Steve has also held positions at FastModel Sports, Signal (formerly BrightTag), Pumpkin Box LLC, and VaporStream, Inc., where they worked in engineering and management roles.

Steve Tarzia pursued their education in the field of Computer Engineering, beginning with their Bachelor of Science degree at Columbia University from 2001 to 2005. Steve later went on to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Computer Engineering at Northwestern University, which they successfully completed from 2006 to 2011.