Kristina Zhelyazkova is a young software engineer at vRealize Automation Cloud at VMware.She graduated Sofia High School of Mathematics with full excellence and got a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in 2020. Krisi started as an Intern at VMware a year before her graduation. Her intern project was successfully released in production and enabled the Product Management and the Engineering team to track how much, by whom and how is the Cloud Assembly IaaS API used in time. Having such data enabled the team to make informed decisions and proactively contact customers.
Later Krisi joined an IPAM SDK project for which she implemented several core features and prepared an easy to follow step-by-step video programming guide. In her spare time, she is also blogging for VMware and covers technical topics such as Secure Properties Handling at vRA and Cloud Assembly IaaS API.
What were the biggest benefits of the VMware internship program for you?
I didn’t have any professional experience before my VMware internship. The program allowed me to start working on a project that has real-world value. Until then I had only worked on university assignments, while my internship project evolved into a product and was officially enabled in our production environment.
I was in my 3rd year at the university when I applied and balancing studying and working was important to me. The VMware Internship program is designed in a way that allows doing both. I graduated with an excellent grade on my final exam, while being offered a full time job position at VMware. And the best part is that I continue working on the same product in the same team!
Tell us more about the work you do at the Cloud Management BU team at VMware?
I am working on this big, complex product called vRealize Automation. It serves as an abstraction layer between our clients and all the different clouds and integrations with other products they’re using to manage their software products. The product makes it easy for the customers to manage their multi-cloud environments and automate their release processes.
I have worked on the development of interesting features like allowing integration with external IPAM systems, a public API to allow automation of the provisioning processes, telemetry for API usage and encryption of sensitive data. But writing code is not the only thing I do at VMware. My job includes testing, researching, discussions with colleagues, talking with customers, investigating issues and writing technical blogs, too!
What’s one favorite thing about your job?
Мy team. This is my first job ever and I felt scared if I was gonna make it, how things would turn out and so on. My team though made me feel welcomed and I’m very thankful to all of them. They helped me when I was totally blocked and took their time to explain things thoroughly. True collaboration is our team’s best feature. People say the reasons to leave are their boss or their colleagues – I stay for the same reasons.
What’s one favorite thing about working at VMware?
When my friends ask me the same question, I like to joke that it’s the brownies. Joke aside – they’re delicious! No, really – the benefits at VMware are great. The people are not at all what one would imagine when you say “a software developer”. We are communicative and believe it or not actually our job requires it. We like to do fun things together outside of work like spend a day at a swimming pool or play paintball. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do such things in these troubled times but hopefully soon we’ll go back to normal and restore our team gatherings. Our team motto is “work hard, party even harder”!
