Ten years in one place, on purpose.

Ten years, one company. I started in QA, moved into software engineering, and I am now a senior engineer and DevOps lead. What kept me here was never the ladder itself. It was the people. I have always cared more about working alongside people who are willing to learn than people who already have all the answers.

As I moved up, I did not just get better at my own job. I built a real understanding of how the pieces of the company actually relate to each other, and I made a habit of talking to and working with people in every department to keep that picture current. Early on that meant bridging software and firmware, two groups that did not always speak the same language. Later it meant something bigger.

I do not think there was a single moment where I became a leader, because I do not think leadership has much to do with position. I lead wherever I am and whenever it is useful, and that does not mean pushing people around. It means taking in the perspectives of the talented people near me and using that to make better decisions than I could on my own.

That mission, promoting a broader understanding across the company instead of staying inside one team's walls, is a big part of why I ended up leading DevOps. It is a vision I share with my mentor, who encouraged me down this path in the first place, and it is the throughline behind most of what is on the Work page.

I take that same approach with the people I bring in and lead. As a recruiter, I have worked through seven or eight intern cohorts of four to six developers each, and about a quarter of them have stayed on full time, some now among our strongest engineers. That recruiting work is separate from my role as Talent Manager, where I currently have three direct reports, though many more have come through under me over the years. Alongside both, I lead a five-person programming team and the DevOps group.

Being easy to work with is not a soft add-on to any of this. It is a large part of how I operate. I know most of the people in this company by name, not just the ones on my own team. Visitors who already know me still remark on how many people seem to know me too. I also spend a fair amount of time translating technical ideas for people who are not engineers. Our newest recruiter, for instance, was told to come find me specifically, because that is something I am good at.

None of that happened by accident. I built a career around understanding how a company actually works, not just how my part of it does, and around making the people near me better, not just my own output. That is the leader I try to be, and the engineer I still am at the same time.