Strangely, my last blog post was from when I joined OutSystems. It is strange because I have never had so much to write about since I joined this company. It’s been eight years, and I have learned so much.

I started as a Cloud Software Engineer. This position felt like the perfect fit for me — someone that had always loved programming but whose career had been spent way more around servers and networks. As a Cloud Software Engineer, I could use both. I worked as an OutSystems developer creating the orchestration software behind provisioning the cloud offering, the servers, networks and all the required infrastructure and software to run OutSystems in the cloud. I worked with Linux and Windows, the OutSystems platform, C#, Java, PowerShell, Bash, Ruby, Python, Chef and several cloud vendors and technologies.

It didn’t take much time until I realised I could also work on something that had been an interest of mine: security. While still a software engineer, when OutSystems was a small company without a security team, I introduced threat modelling to OutSystems. Later, I became a security system owner acting as an R&D security advocate and bridging the gap to a new Security Office team. I created the first version of a security development life cycle and worked closely with the development and security teams to make it happen. All this while still working as a cloud software engineer but leveraging all my skills and interests.

I eventually joined the Product Architecture team focusing on security, and more recently, I joined the Security Office team as a Security Architect.

Looking back, I have worked in many different teams and with so many other departments across the company. I went from Senior Cloud Software engineer to Principal Security Architect and so much in between. It all seemed so easy, though. I need to thank OutSystems and the people team for all the opportunities. But especially to all my managers that listened to me, cared about me and offered me the chance to learn, evolve and choose my path.