Meet the Team: Santiago Vázquez Enríquez, Senior DevOps Specialist
We’re back with a fan favorite: VIA’s Meet the Team blog series! Through a Q&A-style interview, you will hear from our very own VIAneers about everything from a typical day at VIA to their favorite books, emojis, and activities outside the office. Now, let’s meet ‘em!
What does a typical day at VIA look like for you?
It usually starts with coffee and reviewing pull requests. After that, we have the usual agile ceremonies with the team and from there it all depends on the project I’m working on during each sprint. It could be more coding or design sessions, debugging, troubleshooting, and/or taking care of our deployments. To sum up, I am problem solving all day!
How has VIA’s adoption of flexible work locations impacted your work-life harmony?
I love remote work!
I’m close to our Montreal office and sometimes I choose to work from there. Days start easier with that level of flexibility, less rushing after dropping my son at school and more homemade meals for lunch. Speaking of lunch, sometimes that time of day could include jogging for an hour or a workout session, if time permits.
What’s something you have worked on at VIA that you are most proud of?
I’m proud to have been part of the team that achieved DoD’s Platform One accreditation. This was a big project that involved hardening our containerized application’s security, implementing DevSecOps pipelines, and configuring our Kubernetes clusters to run one of DoD’s hardened platforms on top of them. It was hard work, but felt good to be compliant with such a high level of cybersecurity!
What’s your favorite VIA memory?
When I joined VIA, remote work and lockdowns were already in place. Because of this, it was about a year before I met my teammates in person at the first Montreal office event. It was great to have offline chats and hang out! Since then, my favorite moments are from in-person events. A few weeks ago, we had an AWESOME in-person event, where we spent a couple of days learning and having fun together!
What’s something everyone may not, but should know about working at VIA?
From day one, you get to work on cutting-edge technology. The software that we build is complex to the point that it might feel like rocket science. It would be intimidating if it wasn’t for being surrounded by awesome teammates. Every one of them will help you succeed and it feels great to know that the leadership team has our backs with consistent feedback and support.
How does VIA’s Tech Stack compare to past experiences?
We are serious about maintaining our Infrastructure as Code, and automation is at the heart of our operations. To achieve this, we rely on orchestration systems such as Kubernetes to deploy and manage our applications. We are constantly building on top of the Kubernetes ecosystem to implement vendor agnostic tools such as the Istio service mesh to enable encrypted communications. As the ecosystem evolves, we bring in more features and tools that translate into more automation and a better developer experience.
Why is our VIAneer Experience Program (VXP) important to you?
I see the VXP as my best ally to avoid burnout. It’s a system that focuses on wellness and growth. It is also an open line of communication to address our goals and needs and align them with those of VIA.
Just for fun this time, what are your top favorite podcasts / books?
I like reading biographies and I loved “Just Kids” by Patti Smith. When it comes to fiction, I prefer Spanish and one of the latest horror novels I’ve read is “Nuestra parte de noche” (Our share of night) by Mariana Enriquez. I’m subscribed to a lot of podcasts (I bite off more than I can chew…) but one of my favorites is “Philosophize This!” There’s a lot of work behind each episode and it demands full attention from the listener, but it’s worth the effort!
What are 1-3 of your favorite emojis?
☕️ – 🤣 – 🙌
Interested in joining a team like Santiago describes? Check out our Careers page or contact us to learn more!
