Engagement Management at MongoDB: Meet Lalitesh Pal

Jackie Denner
December 21, 2021

I sat down with Lalitesh Pal, Senior Engagement Manager at MongoDB, to learn more about the Engagement Manager role and why joining the EMEA team is an exciting opportunity.

Jackie Denner: Hi, Lalitesh. It’s great to meet you! Thanks for sharing some insight into Engagement Management at MongoDB with me. Can you start by telling me a bit about the Engagement Manager role? What are Engagement Managers responsible for?

Lalitesh Pal: Engagement Management is a services sales role within the Professional Services organization at MongoDB. We ensure customers understand the value of MongoDB technology and drive the adoption of our technology in line with MongoDB best practices. Engagement Managers are engaged in the sales cycle early on in the process, typically right after the Account Executive has done their qualification. An Engagement Manager will then help gather the learning needs, drive the right services proposal, and determine how MongoDB can help customers develop applications on top of our data platform. Since a lot of MongoDB customers are new, or are new business units within existing customers, Engagement Managers also prepare tailored enablement plans to enable them with our technology, helping them become self-sufficient in the long run.

JD: What skills and experience make someone successful in the Engagement Manager role?

LP: Engagement Manager is a key role that enables our Sales team and helps further proliferate MongoDB product adoption in our customer base. To be really successful, you need techno-functional skills combined with strong commercial proposal and sales experience. If you have a winning and stretch mindset, you can ensure success is guaranteed. Needless to say, an Engagement Manager needs to have the collaborative spirit and be able to orchestrate things amongst multiple stakeholders - both internal and external. Finally, Engagement Managers need to feel confident working hand-in-hand with Account Executives to ensure that MondoDB is well-presented and positioned with the customer.

I have been in services sales for about 7 years out of my 14 years of work experience. Engagement Managers need to understand technology on a high level. At the end of the day, the most successful Engagement Managers have a sales mindset and are able to connect with business stakeholders and explain the value of MongoDB Professional Services.

It’s important to note that Engagement Management is not a delivery role. There are two aspects of Professional Services at MongoDB: one is services sales, the other is delivery. Engagement Managers work with a customer up until the deal is closed and have their own individual quarterly quotas. Once the deal is closed, an internal kickoff takes place with a Regional Delivery Manager and Project Manager who handle all aspects of delivery.

JD: What is interesting and exciting about this role?

LP: As an Engagement Manager, you’re not just a champion to your Account Executives and MongoDB, you’re also adding immense value to the customer and are their trusted advisor. In some cases, customers may reach out to you before reaching out to their Account Executive. For the customer, you are someone who is turning their ideas into reality by providing a way to make it happen. What really excites me about this role is the impact Engagement Managers have on our customers and the trust that we are able to build, which further reinforces the partnership spirit with them.

JD: What learning and growth opportunities are there for someone in Engagement Management? What does the next career step look like?

LP: Engagement Managers are currently aligned to Regional Vice Presidents and work at all levels of accounts, from our strategic “POD” accounts to the enterprise and the mid-market. From the Engagement Manager role, there is an opportunity to become a Senior Engagement Manager and eventually a Principal Engagement Manager. We offer career paths for those who want to remain individual contributors and those who are interested in managerial roles leading a team. MongoDB is also very committed to internal mobility, and there is an opportunity to transfer to other roles such as Customer Success or Practice Leads, both of which are global teams.

JD: What is the team culture like?

LP: Our EMEA team currently consists of six Engagement Managers who report to the Director of Engagement Management, and we’re growing rapidly. We have regular team catch-ups where we discuss weekly forecasts, what’s working and what’s not within our accounts, and share best practices with one another. There is a true open door policy across the entire team -- everyone is just a ping away!

We also have a very defined onboarding program for Engagement Managers. Onboarding is spread over five weeks, and new hires will participate in our Sales Bootcamp, new hire technical training, and a services-specific onboarding program where you’ll be assigned to a buddy who is responsible for helping you get settled in.

JD: The Professional Services function at MongoDB is still taking shape. What has the Engagement Management team’s journey been like so far?

LP: I joined MongoDB a year ago, and we’re always looking for Engagement Managers to change the way MongoDB sells professional services. When I started, we were doing volume-based selling with small deal sizes and packages or “off the shelf” offerings for customers. Now, it’s much more strategic and we’re selling bespoke offerings with project or program-based delivery. Instead of merely advising on how to set up our data platform, we now engage in developing the complete application and working with customer contacts such as C-levels and VPs instead of just architects. We are working on end-to-end projects that innovate on top of MongoDB, showing customers how to deliver faster and better thanks to our technology. All of this results in MongoDB’s reputation as a strategic partner.

JD: Why did you join MongoDB, and what makes you stay?

LP: What really got me excited initially was MongoDB’s well-structured hiring process that helped me understand the culture, people, and products. It was the culture at MongoDB that made the difference. The people here are truly fantastic, and the hiring process allowed me to interact with a lot of individuals. The second thing is the product. MongoDB’s products are amazing, and there’s nothing else like it on the market (at least nothing that’s competitive). You also receive a lot of autonomy here in general, but in the Engagement Manager role specifically, you’re given the freedom to reach out to customers directly, run your own pipeline generation plan for accounts in line with account strategy, and many times speak to customers one-on-one without an Account Executive present. Employee recognition is an important part of our culture as well. If you are good at what you do, MongoDB will applaud you at all levels. I saw that I could really contribute and add value here, and I still feel that to this day.

Interested in pursuing a career in Professional Services at MongoDB? We have several open roles on our teams across the globe and would love for you to transform your career with us!

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Joyce, a Decentralized Approach to Foster Business Agility

Despite all of the tools and methodologies that have arisen in the last few years, many companies, particularly those that have been in the market for decades, struggle when it comes to leveraging their operational data to build new digital products and services. According to research and surveys conducted by McKinsey over the last few years, the success rate of digital transformations is consistently low, with less than 30% succeeding at improving their company’s performance. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them can be summarized in a sentence: A digital transformation is primarily an organizational and cultural change and then a technological shift. The question is not if digital transformation is a good thing nor is it if moving to the cloud is a good choice. Companies need (badly, in some cases) a digital transformation and yes, the pros of moving to the cloud usually overcome the cons. So, let’s try to dig deeper and analyze three of the main problems companies face when they go on this journey Digital products development Products by nature are customer-driven but companies run their businesses on multiple back-end systems that are instead purpose-driven. Unless you run a very small business, different people with different objectives have ownership of such products and systems. Given this context, what happens when a company wants to launch a new digital product at speed? The back-end systems (CRMs, E-commerce, ERP, etc.) hold the data they need to bring to the customer. Some systems are SaaS, some are legacy, and perhaps others are custom applications created by the company that disrupted the market with innovative solutions back in the days, the perfect recipe for integration hell. The product manager needs to coordinate and negotiate multiple change requests with the system’s owners whilst trying to convince them to add their needs in the backlog to meet the deadline. And things get even worse, as the new product relies on the computational power of the source systems, and if those systems cannot handle the additional traffic, both the product and the core services will be affected. Third-party integration “Everybody wants the change, (almost) nobody wants to change.” In this ever-growing digital world, partnering with third parties (whether they are clients or service providers) is crucial, but everyone who has tried to do so knows how challenging this is: non-standard interfaces, CSV files over FTP with fancy update rules, security issues… The list of unwanted things can grow indefinitely. SaaS everywhere The Software-as-a-Service model is extremely popular and getting the service you want without worrying about the underlying infrastructure gives freedom and speed of adoption, but what happens when a big company relies on multiple SaaS products to run their business? Sooner or later, they experience loss of control and higher costs in keeping a consistent view of the big picture. They need to deal with SaaS internal representations of their own data, multiple views of the same domain concept, unplanned expenses to export, and interpret and integrate the data from different sources with different formats. Putting it all together All the issues above fall into a well-known category of information technology. They are integration problems, and over the years, a lot of vendors promised a definitive solution. Now, you can consider low-code/no-code platforms with hundreds of ready-made connectors and modern graphical interfaces. Problem solved, right? Well, not really. Low-code integration platforms simplify implementation. They are really good at it, but doing so oversimplifies the real challenge: creating and maintaining a consistent set of APIs shaped around the business value over time, and preventing the interfaces from leaking internal complexities to the rest of the company, something that has to be defined and maintained through architectural choices and proper skills (completely hidden behind the selling points of such platforms). There are two different ways to solve integration problems: Centralized using adapters. In this case, the logic is pushed to the central orchestration component, with integration managed through a set of adapters. This is the rather old school SOA approach, the one that the majority of market integration platforms are built on. Decentralized, pushing the logic to the edges, giving autonomous teams the freedom to define both the boundaries and the APIs that a domain must expose to deliver business value. This is a more modern approach that has arisen recently alongside the rise of microservices and, in the analytical world, with the concept of data mesh. The former gives speed at the starting point and the illusion of reducing the number of choices and skills to manage the problems, but in the long run, inevitably, this begins to accumulate technical debt. Due to the lack of necessary degrees of freedom, you lose the ability to evolve the integration points over time, the same thing that caused the transition from SOA to microservices architectures. The latter needs the relevant skills, vision, and ability to execute but gives immediate results and allows you to flexibly manage the evolution of the enterprise architecture over time. Old problems, new solutions At Sourcesense in the last 20 years, we have partnered on hundreds of projects to bring agility, speed, and new open-source technology to our customers. Many times through the years, we were faced with the integration challenges above, and yes, we tried to solve them with the technology available at the time, so we have built some integration solutions on SOA (when they were the best of breed) and interacted with many of the integration platforms on the market. Then, we struggled with the issues and limitations of the integration landscape and have listened to our customers’ needs and where expectations have fallen short. The rise of agile methodologies, cloud computing, new techniques, technologies, and architectural styles has given an unprecedented boost to software evolution and the ability to support business needs, so we embraced the new wave and now have growing experience in solving problems with these tools. Along the way, we’ve seen a recurring pattern when we encountered integration problems, the effectiveness of data hubs as components of the enterprise architectures to solve these challenges, so we built one of our own: Joyce. Data hubs This is a relatively new term and refers to software platforms that collect data from different sources with the main purpose of distribution and sharing. Since this definition is broad and vague, let’s add some other key elements that matter and help define the contours of our implementation. Collecting data from different sources can bring three major benefits: Computational decoupling from the sources. Pulling (or pushing) the data out of the originating systems means that client applications and services interact with the hub and not directly with the sources, preventing them from being slowed down by additional traffic. Catalog and discoverability. If data is collected correctly, this leads to the creation of a catalog, allowing people inside the organization to search, discover, and use the data inside the hub. Security. The main purpose of the hubs is distribution and sharing. This leads immediately to focus on access control and security hardening. A single access point simplifies the overall security around the data because it significantly reduces the number of systems the clients have to interact with to gather the data they need. Joyce, how it works The cornerstone concept of Joyce is the schema. It allows you to shape the ingested data and how this data will be made available to client services. Using the same declarative approach made popular by Kubernetes, the schemas describe the expected result and the platform performs the actions to make it happen. Schemas are standard JSON schema files stored and classified in a catalog. Their definition falls into three categories: Input – how to gather and shape the source data. We leverage the Kafka Connect framework to provide ready-made connectors for a wide variety of sources. The ingested data can be filtered, formatted, and enriched with transformation handlers (domain-specific extensions of JSON schema). Model – allows you to create new aggregates from the data stored in the platform. This feature gives the freedom to model the data the way needed by client services. Export – bulk data export capability. Exported data can be any query run against the existing data with an optional temporal filter. Input and model data is made available to all the client services with the proper authorization grants through auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs. It is also possible to subscribe to a dedicated topic if an event-driven approach is more suitable for the use-case. MongoDB: the key for a flexible model and performance at scale We heavily rely on MongoDB. Thanks to its flexibility, we can easily map any data structure the user defines to collect the data. Half of the schema definition is basically the definition of a MongoDB schema. (We also auto-generate one schema per collection to guarantee data integrity.) Joyce runs in a Kubernetes cluster and all its services are inherently stateless to exploit the full potential of horizontal scaling. The architecture is based on the CQRS pattern. This means that writes and reads are completely decoupled and can scale independently to meet the unique needs of the production environment. MongoDB is also the backing database of the API layer so we can keep the promise of low latency, high throughput, and continuous availability along all the components of the stack. The platform is available as a fully managed PaaS on the three major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) but if needed, it can be installed on an existing infrastructure (in cloud and on prem). Final considerations There are many challenges leaders must face for a successful digital transformation. They need to guide their organizations along a process that involves changes on many levels. The exponential growth of technological solutions in the last few years adds more complexity and confusion. The evolution of organizational models and methodologies point in the direction of shared responsibility, people empowerment, and autonomous teams with a light and effective central governance. The same evolution also permeates the novel approaches to enterprise architectures like the data mesh. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet, just the right choices for the given context. Despite all the marketing and hype around this or that one solution to all of your digital transformation needs, a long term successful shift needs guidance, competence and empowerment. We’ve built Joyce with the aim of reducing the burden of repetitive tasks and boilerplate code to get the results faster and catch the low hanging fruits without trying to replace the necessary architectural thinking to properly define the current state and the evolution of the enterprise architectures of our customers. If you’re struggling with the problems enlisted at the beginning of this article you should give Joyce a try. Learn more about Joyce

December 21, 2021
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MongoDB Named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems

I’m pleased to announce that MongoDB has been named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (DBMSs) for the third consecutive year. In our view, this recognition cements MongoDB’s status as the only pure-play database provider in the cloud database management system category, underscoring MongoDB’s innovation, execution, and customer-centric approach. According to Gartner, “The cloud DBMS market remains as vibrant as ever and is transforming in important ways, especially in the use of gen AI and how DBMSs interact with other data management components. This Magic Quadrant will help data and analytics leaders make the right cloud DBMS choices in this essential market.” We believe this continued recognition by Gartner is a testament to MongoDB’s commitment to serving developers, as well as the investments we’ve made in our unified platform and integrated services. Driving innovation for enterprises MongoDB's mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. 2024 was a year of innovation and accolades at MongoDB, and I’m proud to share some of its highlights: In October, we released MongoDB 8.0 , the best performing version of MongoDB yet. MongoDB 8.0 is over 30% faster than the previous version of the database, it’s more secure than ever, horizontal scaling is faster and easier (at a lower cost), and MongoDB 8.0 gives teams greater control for optimizing database performance. We also launched—and grew—the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) . With MAAP, MongoDB offers customers a full AI stack and an integrated set of professional services to help them keep pace with innovation, identify the best AI use cases, and to help them future-proof AI investments. MongoDB became a founding member of the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium . Established by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Consortium supports the development and deployment of safe and trustworthy AI. MongoDB released hundreds of features and enhancements to accelerate innovation, manage costs, and simplify building applications at scale. MongoDB was recognized as the most loved vector database in Retool’s State of AI report —for the second consecutive year. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud database management systems “Gartner defines the cloud database management systems (DBMSs) market as solutions designed to store, manipulate, and persist data, primarily delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). These systems must support transactional, analytical, and hybrid workloads while enabling enterprises to innovate across multi-cloud, hybrid, and intercloud ecosystems.” 1 It’s our opinion that this recognition by Gartner is a testament to MongoDB’s strong ability to execute and support customers today, as well as MongoDB’s comprehensive product vision that positions our platform to support tomorrow's operational workloads. What is the Magic Quadrant, and what is a Leader? “A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.  By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Magic Quadrant helps you quickly ascertain how well technology providers are executing their stated visions and how well they are performing against Gartner’s market view.” 2 According to Gartner, “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.” Overall, Magic Quadrants can help you “get quickly educated about a market’s competing technology providers and their ability to deliver on what end-users require now and in the future.” Powering innovation at scale with MongoDB Atlas Enterprises choose MongoDB Atlas because it gives them the freedom and agility they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. MongoDB Atlas’s multi-cloud architecture—including availability across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—ensures customers can design for unmatched scale and resilience. By automating functions like scaling and performance optimization , and giving them the ability to leverage industry-first capabilities like MongoDB Queryable Encryption (which allows customers to encrypt, store, and perform queries directly on data), with MongoDB Atlas customers can spend less time managing infrastructure and more time delivering experiences. MongoDB Atlas’s integrated capabilities to support multi-modal data types and use cases—like full-text and vector search , stream processing , and data federation —accelerate innovation, helping enterprises quickly respond to market changes, power AI-driven insights, and deliver meaningful digital experiences to their end users—all without the burden of operational complexity. Modernizing and building for the future In our opinion, the Gartner Magic Quadrant provides organizations with a clear and accessible evaluation framework to identify solutions that fit their needs, today and tomorrow. The placement of MongoDB in the Leader quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems—for the third year in a row!—validates the efforts MongoDB has made to help developers and organizations take advantage of their most valuable resource, their data. I talk to MongoDB customers frequently, and many say the same thing: in today’s digital-first economy, AI-powered applications and scalable data infrastructure aren’t just advantages, they’re absolute necessities. They say that the time to act is now, and they’re looking for solutions that will help them innovate, streamline, and seize the AI-driven future. And when it comes to modernizing their operations, they consistently point to MongoDB as their go-to partner. Begin your cloud journey with MongoDB Atlas today. Contact our sales team or register for a free account to begin building! And to learn how MongoDB can help accelerate your AI journey, visit the MongoDB AI Applications Program page. Footnotes Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems,  Henry Cook, Ramke Ramakrishnan, et al., 18 December 2024 GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 1 Gartner Peer Insights, Cloud Database Management Systems, December 2024 https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/cloud-database-management-systems 2 Gartner Research Methodologies, Gartner Magic Quadrant, 20 December 2024 https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

December 23, 2024