For today’s employee spotlight, we interviewed Ramith Padaki, a former Balbix intern and now a full-time Machine Learning Engineer with Balbix.
Typically, we’d do this sort of interview in the office, or perhaps during a coffee walk-and-talk, but since we’re all still sheltering in place, we decided to do this interview where it’s safe…in outer space! Enjoy getting to know Ramith.
Ramith, tell us about yourself, what you do, and how long you’ve been with Balbix
“I’m a Machine Learning Engineer at Balbix, and I’ve been here for about eight months or so, but an interesting fact is that I was an intern here last summer. I loved my internship and liked the company and people I got to work with, so I chose to work here full-time.
As a machine learning engineer, I improve our machine learning models, specifically, likelihood and threat models, to help them scale to our customers’ real-time needs.
How did you come into this field of work?
“I didn’t always want to be in the field of machine learning or computer science, or even cybersecurity. I used to want to be an economist or a statistician when I was studying a combination of economics and computer science. Still, I sort of got fixated on the statistics part of my economics studies, and one thing leads to another, and I ended up picking a lot more stats courses and going to grad school for a machine learning degree. For a while, I became a software engineer, and my internship last summer brought me into the cybersecurity space. I realized it was an excellent field with extremely challenging problems, and ultimately, I like the idea of making the cyber world a safer place.
What gets you excited about the work you do?
That has to be the impact that our work has. We are solving problems that customers want to see solved and the fact that a change that we make directly influences the way they look at their cybersecurity posture. I think that’s extremely powerful, and that’s what gets me out of bed every day.
What is your favorite part about working at Balbix?
Oh, that’s easy. It definitely has to be the team that I work with day to day! Our team and the people that we have here are phenomenal. The way we are able to share ideas, the way we are able to follow our shared vision towards bettering our product. I think this is one of the better teams I’ve worked with.
Do you have any tips for people looking to get into the same line of work and for interns looking to land a full-time job?
I think that being curious will help you a lot in this field. I think wanting to know how certain technologies work or why certain things are instrumented the way they are. I think that sort of rigor and tenacity will help you find a place in this industry for sure.
Regarding interns, I think that working at a fast-paced startup, such as ours, you would want to show and drive value for the company. If you manage to involve yourself in projects that drive value, it’s easy to get others’ attention and create an impact that will be remembered.
Interested in working with us?
Thanks so much for reading today’s Employee Spotlight. Balbix is hiring! If you’d like more information about career and internship opportunities at Balbix, check out our careers page.
