Five Questions With: Chris Drumgoole

Chris Drumgoole is chief technology officer of GE Digital. / COURTESY GE DIGITAL
Chris Drumgoole is chief technology officer of GE Digital. / COURTESY GE DIGITAL

Chris Drumgoole, chief technology officer of GE Digital, a tech division of General Electric, discussed why Providence was chosen for a GE Digital location with Providence Business News and the kind of work that will be taking place in Rhode Island’s capital city. He also explained why GE is expanding into the tech arena.
PBN: Can you describe for me the kind of work that will be taking place in the GE Digital office?
DRUMGOOLE:
In Providence, our focus is on the development of end-user applications to enhance our employee experience and driving innovation in our usage of high-performance computing. We will employ a range of professionals from experienced engineers and data scientists to young professionals with backgrounds in data, design and IT. We plan to hire software engineers, design and UX professionals along with engineers and scientists fluent in high-performance computing and large data sets.

PBN: How new of a venture for GE is GE Digital? How many other GE Digital offices are there? Why is the company interested in this sector?
DRUMGOOLE:
GE Digital was founded in September 2015 and spans across 14 sites in the U.S., with employees across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Industrial productivity globally was at 4 percent for more than 20 years meaning industrial firms could count on 4 percent productivity growth year after year.
Since 2011, that productivity has declined globally to 1 percent. To combat this, many companies are turning to technology. Digitization and a focus on outcomes, facilitated by analytics, is a solution.

We are reinventing all of our GE businesses through digital transformation. By pairing digital technology with its domain expertise across industries like aviation, energy, health care and transportation, GE is transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. We’re digitizing our 500,000-plus assets, integrating our unique technical and business domain knowledge to create digital twins of every machine we make from jet engines to locomotives. Much like Amazon went from selling books to expanding to an array of digital products and services (e.g. Kindle) through the digital profiles they formed of consumers, GE will do the same with the digital profiles of its machines. GE’s Predix-based software and solutions are set to deliver more than $6 billion in incremental revenue this year and GE expects to become a $15 billion software business by 2020.

PBN: What was it about Providence that made the company want to open an office here?
DRUMGOOLE:
Our selection criteria included a number of factors, including talent availability, proximity to major travel hubs, availability of mass transportation within the city, partnerships with local universities and quality of technical education locally. We needed a place that had a strong tech talent pipeline, top-tier university partnership opportunities and great quality of life. With its location along the Northeast corridor, Providence gives us access to many of the assets we need for success, including relationships with Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design and their programs around data analytics and user experience design.

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PBN: How long will you be in the temporary space on Dorrance Street?
DRUMGOOLE:
We plan to be in our temporary location until early 2017 and are currently in lease negotiations for our permanent site.

PBN: We’ve been told the office will employ 100 to start – can you describe the types of jobs that will be available? Also, do you have plans to expand the number of jobs?
DRUMGOOLE:
We¹ll be looking to hire professionals with skills [in] software design, software engineering for applications and high-performance computing. Hiring is underway and we will be holding an interview day in August – more details to come. As we build our presence in Providence, we will continue to evaluate our staffing needs.

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