Angus

What do you find most challenging about your role?

I came across the role advertised on LinkedIn. I’d known about Tiimely since its early days and had been following the company’s growth over the years, so when the opportunity came up it felt like a really natural next step.

Cloud security is massively challenging. The pace and availability of advanced tooling for exploit generation and discovery has meant new attack vectors are appearing faster every day.

On the other hand, the same tools have meant assessing assessing the validity of potential threats is more difficult than ever before. Staying ahead is a constant arms race.

Career highlights?

In a previous role, I worked on an infrastructure migration to containerised applications and implemented CI pipelines across their dev projects.

Part of this work involved handing over the delivery processes to empower devs to release their own code without stress. Just before I left, I delivered the tooling so that they could complete the final migration.

I got a message later from the tech lead letting me know that it went off without a hitch and they were very grateful for the support and handover. This made the whole process so rewarding and worthwhile.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into a similar role?

Don't be afraid to speak up and voice your opinion to senior team members. Transparent communication matters!

What’s something you wish someone told you before you entered the workforce?

If you work as a software engineer, you'll never touch what you learned at Uni again.

Have you had a mentor? What was the impact of that relationship?

I've had two mentors. My friend who got me my first job as a junior frontend developer, this was a major fork path in my career progression. I would not be where I am now without him.

My second mentor is my a senior infrastructure engineer, I have worked with him in two different organisations. Working with him made me direct my career towards cloud and devops. He also taught me not to install extra packages without a really good reason!

How would you explain your role in 10 words or less?

Getting the infrastructure out of the developers' way.

How did you get started in your field?

I had finished my degree and was set to do a PHD in mathematics.

Just before I was going to start, I got an invite from a good mate of mine to apply for a job at Integrated Marine Observing System, where he was platform architect.

I followed a strong gut feeling to apply and ended up as a frontend developer.

How do you like your coffee?

Long black, extra shot, half water or double espresso.

Would you describe yourself as a more technical or a more creative person?

Definitely creative and enjoy working with people.

What type of project excites you most at Tiimely?

An infrastructure or devops project that makes other people's lives easier.