The biggest lesson I have learned is that there is always a way and you have to find the best one – for you, for the team and for the organization. I have always tried to find balance in every situation, and I have never put anyone’s priorities first. It’s just a matter of teamwork, openness and collaboration.
Tell us about your career journey to date?
I have 17 years of experience in IT, starting as a customer support analyst for a while. My passion and exceptional focus on high quality, user experience and customer satisfaction led to a natural transition to the role of QA engineer. After 9 years of experience as a QA, in 2013 I started my managerial journey. I spent 5 years of managing quality assurance and my interaction with different teams helped me to develop and better understand development, the customers and the needs of the company.
Before VMware, I was a Senior Manager of a Software Engineering department with more than 60 people – Quality Assurance, .NET and Frond-end, SharePoint Dev and DevOps engineers and line managers for almost 3 years. As a part of the company’s management team, I played an active role in defining company policies and processes, such as career development, resource planning and more as the company grown from 25 to more than 300 people in just 5 years. I have broad experience in establishing new teams, as well as end-to-end delivery of projects and products using various methodologies such as Waterfall, Scrum, Agile and SAFe.
How is VMware different to any other tech company you have worked for?
I joined in February this year and the first impression I have is how much effort VMware puts into its culture and values. No matter where you are, what role you have and which team you are part of, when you participate in either training or meetings, you feel part of a team that is looking forward to achieving the same goals.
VMware primarily focuses on making you part of this large family, giving you visibility on how you can grow in the organization and how many different opportunities and communities exist to make you feel welcome.
The company’s focus on Diversity & Inclusion and the tremendous effort to empower Women in Technology & Leadership make VMware a great place to work.
VMware also does a great job of supporting us in the process of onboarding newcomers during the pandemic. As a manager, my priority is to get each member of the team to move smoothly to their new role in these challenging times. We give people the flexibility to work in a way that makes them feel comfortable and safe.
What has been the biggest lesson you have learned as you moved upwards in your career?
There is always a way, and you have to find the best one – for you, for the team and for the organization. I have always tried to find balance in every situation, and I have never put anyone’s priorities first. It’s just a matter of teamwork, openness and collaboration.
Be transparent – the more open you are, the better visibility in expectations you set.
Have goals and dreams – What I would like to achieve next? Where I want to be? This is the only way not to get stuck and to constantly learn and develop.
Hard work and honesty are always valued.
.. and it’s not just me, but my team, my community, my family.
Your team is hiring. Can you tell us more about your organization’s charter?
My goal is to establish a brand-new team for SRE Cloud Operations as part of the UCP VGS organization. The VGS Operations team provides centralized access control and common services to our public sector SaaS teams. We allow service owners to focus on core competencies and remove the burden of compliance and security.
We develop and maintain our infrastructure as code to support VGS product teams. Our main focus will be the automation of existing manual processes, as well as the process as development of new deployment methodologies to increase efficiency.
We strive to become a critical communications hub and compatible for all public sector VMware cloud applications that want to obtain FedRAMP or DISA certificates.
In terms of technical perspective, we are looking for SRE DevOps engineers with experience in AWS, Azure, Cloud, PowerShell and a strong focus in automation and optimization.
If someone reading this was coming to interview with you tomorrow for a role in your org, what interview tips would you give them?
Be open and honest about what you would like to achieve and how you see yourself as part of the team and organization. Sometimes it is difficult to cover all aspects of your day-to-day work during the interviews, considering just the current needs and goals of the team. Your career at VMware is a journey that depends mostly on your past experience and achievements and your desire to grow and develop.
Interviews should not be seen as exams, but as a conversation. Knowing you better will help us structure the team in the right way, and on the other hand will give you a chance to outline your future career development.
Check out the open roles in VGS Operations team:
Senior DevOps Engineer
Staff Site Reliability Engineer
