What I Do

I work as a Software Engineer in a Multi-national financial payments technology corporation. I support operations and infrastructure in the company by working with different stakeholders to bring infrastructure automation to the front end (i.e., web user interfaces).

I also assist senior team members and managers in leading software engineering initiatives, such as software security compliance processes for our existing and upcoming software applications.

More recently, I've also been reviewing code, mentoring and organizing tasks for graduate and trainee Software Engineers, and putting our work processes into formal documentation for easy onboarding and process standardization.

What It's Like

It has been a pleasure working with my team. Although there is some bureaucracy in the large organization, the directors and leads do their best to clear roadblocks.

The biggest challenge in our team stems from venturing into new technologies and projects. Nevertheless, with such challenges come opportunities to learn and lead in these projects. For example, I had the chance to learn and implement both SAML and OAuth Single-Sign-On on our existing and new applications, enhancing the security of our applications. This experience has allowed me to understand how modern enterprises secure their applications and given me the knowledge to advise my team and other teams on how to implement/troubleshoot this feature.

3 Takeaways

Firstly, communication is central to everything. Clear communication helps cross-functional teams work together to deliver on projects. Asking the right questions allows us to quickly learn from and gather feedback from our peers and senior members of the team. Simplifying our thought processes enables us to impart knowledge to new team members better.

With the fast pace at which technology changes, I must continuously upgrade myself. Within the company and my team, I look for opportunities to learn skills relevant to my role and domain knowledge (in this case, infrastructure automation) required to understand everything end-to-end fully. Besides expanding my Computer Science and Software Engineering knowledge with the OMSCS program, I'm also pursuing side projects that I am interested in, and this blog is one of them. In doing so, I can learn new trending technologies like NextJS and automated cloud deployment pipelines.

Finally, it is too easy to think about the past and what I could have or should have done or worry about what is to come in the future. I constantly remind myself that it is healthier and more productive to appreciate everything and everyone that has come my way.