Starting a new job is always a bit nerve-wracking, especially when your last "first day" was over six years ago. This week, I embarked on my first day at Stacklok, and while the usual doubts creep in (“Will I like it here?” or “Am I good enough?”) after my first full week, I can confidently say this has been one of the best career decisions I’ve made. Coming from a massive consultancy with nearly 60 years of history, the shift to a startup is a big change, not just in size but also in culture. In companies of all sizes, it’s common to find people who may not fully align with the mission and are just there because they fancied a job change. At Stacklok, however, everyone is united in purpose, all heading in the same direction. It’s clear from the core of the company that the team isn’t just on board with the mission—they’re passionate about the technology behind it.
Early Impressions
I first discovered Stacklok early last year. At that time, I wasn’t looking for a job change just for the sake of it—if I were to make a move, it had to be with the right company where everything aligned. I wanted to join a place that not only put engineers at the heart of its mission but also strived to make a meaningful impact. Naturally, I checked out some of their projects and stumbled upon Minder, a policy-based solution for securing open-source projects. I really liked the problem it was solving, and to keep my Golang skills somewhat fresh, I contributed a bit. To my pleasant surprise, a Stacklok LinkedIn post recognized my contributions. Between that recognition and my interactions with some of the engineers here (shout out to Ozz and Rado), I was already forming a positive impression of the company. Around the same time, I was introduced to Stacklok Insight, but it wasn’t until I saw a LinkedIn post by Aridane Connil on the approach to assessing risk that it truly hit me...
Stacklok is led by some incredibly smart engineers in the security space, building multiple impactful projects. From everything I could see, I found myself naturally gravitating toward the company.
By the summer, I found myself checking the Stacklok careers page every day, eagerly waiting for the right opportunity to open up. As many know, it’s a tough job market, but eventually, my luck turned. A position was posted, and shortly after, I received an email from Stacklok expressing interest in my application. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I received an offer for a Site Reliability Engineer role, which I gladly accepted. It was shaping up to be a very good Christmas and New Year! 🎉
Enter CodeGate
Right after I accepted the offer from Stacklok, the release of CodeGate was announced. To be honest, I didn’t quite have the "AI bug" that had taken over much of the industry at the time. I was still deeply focused on software engineering and software security, feeling like there was still so much I hadn’t explored yet (and in many ways, I still do). There were plenty of problems that needed solving in those areas. But the fact that Stacklok had launched a new project in the AI space was a clear indicator of how the company has their finger on the pulse and stays ahead of the curve—resulting in understanding what the industry needs and having the engineers capable of delivering it.
Week One
My first day at Stacklok was a mix of getting settled in, figuring out my new commute to the London office and reviewing my onboarding documents. Since I hadn’t done any technical work throughout December, I was eager to dive into something right away. However, since it was only my first week as an SRE, I knew I couldn’t just jump straight into contributing to CodeGate, Minder, or Stacklok Insight (though one of the things I love about Stacklok is that they encourage contributions if you’re interested). Instead, I wanted to start by getting a better understanding of Stacklok’s infrastructure and products at a deeper level. After all, I’m currently the only Site Reliability Engineer here, so it made sense to begin there.
Now, at the end of my first week, I not only have a better grasp of Stacklok's infrastructure but also a clear sense of where some pain points lie and how I can help my colleagues work more efficiently. After merging a couple of PRs, I successfully upgraded some of our EKS clusters in preparation for native features we’re excited to leverage in the upcoming Kubernetes 1.30 release (like ValidatingAdmissionPolicies) that helps our engineers reduce the amount of third-party tools that do the same job. I’m well on my way to getting fully immersed!
I hope this brief blog post gave you a glimpse into what it's like working at Stacklok from a beginner's perspective. It was a journey to get here, but I feel like the , along with a bit of my journey getting here. Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll reflect on my first month!
