Our Meet the Hiring Manager series allows you to get to know the people who grow teams at VMware Bulgaria. You will learn about our hiring managers’ career paths and what they look for in candidates during the interview experience.
Meet Ventsislav, whose mission is to build an engineering team for the Security Business Unit, also known as VMware Carbon Black. In October 2019, VMware acquired Carbon Black, which has created an innovative cloud-native security platform, with a smart, lightweight agent, and an AI/ML-based Data Lake in the Cloud.
Tell us about your career journey to date?
Technology enthusiast, software engineer by heart. Graduated Informatics in Sofia University with specialty Computer Graphics. Worked on a computer game, multimedia apps, real-time systems, telemetry for racing cars, virtualization, infrastructure automation, containers and cloud management.
This is my second tenure in VMware. In 2007 I became part of VMware through acquisition, and the following 12 years I worked with this fantastic team to develop the site as an innovation hub for VMware and a world-class engineering organization. I rejoined in May this year with a mission to establish an engineering team for the Security Business Unit (SBU), also known and VMware Carbon Black.
How is VMware different to any other tech company you have worked for?
VMware is unique in several aspects. Firstly, it’s a remarkably innovative company. VMware completely revolutionized the IT industry with the innovation of VMs, essentially enabling the cloud. And today it continues to innovate in a broad space of technologies, including clouds, modern apps, security.
Secondly – VMware is a force for good. The company values focus not only on the business side, but also on the team and the community as a whole. Giving back is a norm here.
And finally – it’s people, who are passionate, smart, ambitious and supportive. They work really hard, but play as hard.
What has been the biggest lesson you have learned as you moved upwards in your career?
In software industry, is about working with people, not with computers. But there are a few more lessons. Strive to understand the bigger picture. Ask ‘why?’. And then do what’s right.
Also, some questions don’t have obvious answers – the environment is just very complex. Don’t get blocked by this and don’t give up. Seek advice, keep trying and don’t be scared to fail.
And finally – listen more. Its unbelievable how much one can learn by hearing out others.
Your team is hiring. Can you tell us more about your organization’s charter?
We are just started building an engineering team of VMware Carbon Black (Security Business Unit) in Sofia. As part of this Business Unit, our charter will be to deliver endpoint, server workload and modern applications security.
It’s a core part of the ‘Intrinsic Security’ vision of VMware.
The SBU team in Sofia will be part of a global organization with teams in US, Israel and India. We will be working with modern technologies, on our data platform and security products which are delivered both on-prem, and as a service in the cloud.
If someone reading this was coming to interview with you tomorrow for a role in your org, what interview tips would you give them?
Firstly – do not hesitate to apply to one of our openings! We are looking for software engineers with different experience: backend and front end, system-level Windows, Linux and MacOS programming, performance and end-to-end testing, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation. Background in security is very welcomed, but not a requirement. Before the interview – be curious and check out what we do.
During the interview – be yourself!
When you join – be ambitious, be curious, push hard!
