NAB and MLC (Present)
MLC: Software Engineer (2021 – Present)
MLC provided hands-on experience with DevOps development and maintenance. My role heavily relied on creating a dynamic platform for the development teams to improve their experience with deploying and testing their code. A key achievement for the business that my team and I completed was moving our development environments over to the Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), which reduced a significant amount of time for patching and updating these environments to be stable. During this occasion, I became familiar with AWS and Kubernetes, and the processes involved such as:
- Understanding how to use an EC2 instance and how to monitor it
- Understanding the Kubernetes architecture and how to deploy services onto a pod
- How to operate the AWS console and navigate to different AWS services to respond to various issues that may arise
Due to the learning curve for these new technologies, I found this experience stressful, however, it gave me the confidence to research new methods and tools that will further improve the platform for the development team. As a result, I am currently using my DevOps knowledge to upgrade a specific platform component (due to privacy reasons, I am not allowed to stipulate this).
In addition to my DevOps role, I was also responsible for developing a security toolkit that included mitigation strategies and language-specific solutions for the top 10 security vulnerabilities recorded on the OWSAP 2021 list. This was one of my most outstanding achievements in the business. The toolkit allows different development teams to implement solutions without having to Google for the answer. Consequently, this saves them a lot of time. In addition, they have a credible source of information to teach them about the vulnerabilities.
Key Learnings:
- Understanding AWS concepts and how to use different AWS services such as EKS
- Understanding how to use Kubernetes that allowed me to understand the foundations for the business and the software architecture
- Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the top 10 OWASP security vulnerabilities
Key Achievements:
- Developing an internal toolkit for all developers in the business to use
- Migrating the development environments to a faster and more secure container service
NAB: DevOps Engineer intern (2020-2021)
During my time with NAB, I was fortunate to expand my technical skills as a full stack developer and contribute my knowledge to MLC (a subsidiary company of NAB at the time). My initial tasks were to develop web components from the UI designs using ReactJS. After developing these, I would then push my code into a testing environment where I was able to run a range of tests to ensure my work did not break anything before passing it off to a senior tester who would run a series of regression tests.
Six months into my position, I was tasked with running the front-end development for a new digital signature feature on the website. During this time, our development team had moved to an online working environment due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant that my meetings were conducted via zoom. As a result, my communication and presentation skills approach had to change. Fortunately, I was able to master and successfully have numerous meetings with the product owners and deliver a product that met their vision.
Towards the end of the year, I was fortunate to move more into the application security area, where I was able to identify various security vulnerabilities inside some of MLC’s applications and document my findings so the development team could create a fix for them. This process often involved using an application, Checkmarx, to identify and confirm the validity of the vulnerabilities. Additionally, I used online resources such as Secure Code Warrior to complete a range of exercises that would allow me to improve my code reviewing skills. This also taught me how various security vulnerabilities are injected into code.
Key learnings:
- Develop and test code using ReactJS and Jest (testing library)
- Developed an understanding of CI/CD development using applications such as Jenkins and Team city
- Improving how to identify various security vulnerabilities in code reviews
Key Achievements:
- Taking the lead on the front-end development of a small project for the business
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