English
September 09, 2025
How Mark Builds Smarter, More Sustainable Systems with Data
From intern to Data Platform Manager, Mark Thorson's team has helped power $1M+ in fuel savings, accelerate digital transformation and advance sustainability through smarter data use.
Mark Thorson began as an intern at Trane Technologies. Today, he’s a Data Platform Manager, leading a global team of experts to build smarter systems for customers. He and his team have powered over $1 million in fuel savings, streamlined product delivery and helped make the company’s data ecosystem faster, safer and more sustainable.
Building a career in data at Trane Technologies
In just over a decade, Mark Thorson went from college intern to leading a team of 15 people across North America and Asia Pacific. Their job? To develop systems that transform raw data into real-time feedback so customers can make better decisions about their equipment. “My team manages the data platform. That means, when all that data comes in, we manage where it’s stored, how it’s processed, and how we turn it into insights for our customers in the form of dashboards, predictive alerts or notifications showing whether their equipment is performing well or not.”
Mark attributes a lot of his team’s success to its structure, dynamism and vision, “We all work together to deliver our objectives. We have the same vision of where we need to go. It’s also a mix of various roles that give us a well-rounded team… from early talents to people that have been working for over 20 years.”
Mark along with members of Trane Technologies’ Digital Team
This well-rounded aspect isn’t unique to Mark’s team. In fact, he says it’s something that’s deliberately built into the company through investments in talent, like the Accelerated Development Program (ADP), an internal rotational experience designed to foster future leaders. Mark credits much of his success in the company to the program’s holistic structure. “In the ADP, they encourage you to jump around and try new roles… It helps build a really strong foundation.”
A culture of experimentation and growth
Mark believes this broad, supportive educational structure is what gives Trane Technologies teams the confidence to learn, experiment and grow. “They give you the freedom to experiment, encourage new ideas, and take calculated risks which keeps the team engaged and the work interesting. Also, if you’ve got a good idea and you're willing to pitch, that's encouraged.”
The culture of support and experimentation gave Mark the runway to contribute to one of the team’s greatest accomplishments: modernizing Trane Technologies’ analytics environment by transitioning it to Google Cloud. Mark led the DevOps workstream, working alongside colleagues responsible for the Platform and Data Engineering tracks. Together, their efforts used AI and DevOps best practices to dramatically increase deployment speed.
“After our large data migration, we 10x’d our deployment speed,” says Mark. “Now we’re doing about 200 deployments a month. A lot of it’s automated. Security scans automatically happen, and we use AI to help identify security vulnerabilities and it will automatically suggest a fix. It makes life significantly easier.”
Big data with even bigger impact
But for Mark, the true measure of success isn’t just in building smarter systems; it’s in the real-world impact those systems deliver. “When people think of Trane Technologies, they might picture HVAC equipment - not necessarily a data company,” he says. “But the reality is we’re pulling in billions of data points from our connected devices. In Thermo King alone, we’re collecting information from a quarter of a million assets every five minutes.”
That scale of data unlocks insights with massive potential. For one customer, Dot Transportation Inc., a simple change identified through the Thermo King Digital Analytics team’s dashboards translated into more than $1 million in annual fuel savings. That product, now a core feature of Thermo King’s TracKing Pro telematics, continues to deliver measurable impact for customers across the fleet industry. “That’s the kind of result that makes it exciting,” Mark explains.
It’s not just about numbers, it’s about tangible, measurable impact for our customers. And for the planet
Mark Thorson
Data Platform Manager, Trane Technologies
Sustainability for people and the planet
Making a positive impact on the planet is something that lies at the core of Trane Technologies’ purpose to boldly challenge what’s possible for a sustainable world. But, for Mark, sustainability runs deeper than environmental outcomes.
Trane Technologies is sustainable on multiple fronts. Environmental, of course, but it’s also about the sustainability of our teams. We want to make sure there’s a good work-life balance and that we’re building teams for the long term.
Mark Thorson
Data Platform Manager, Trane Technologies
This tangible impact on teams, customers and the environment is what keeps Mark passionate about his work and excited for the future of digital solutions at Trane Technologies. “The digital side at Trane Technologies is such a great opportunity. As data professionals, we get to experiment with cutting-edge technologies, from AI to advanced analytics, and apply them in ways that will power smarter, more sustainable systems tomorrow.”
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