Opsera’s success in helping organizations transform their DevOps processes through continuous orchestration is driven by our people. This team of bright and talented individuals truly makes a difference for our customers. We're highlighting our employees to share more about what they do at Opsera, why they love working here and what they enjoy about their roles and responsibilities.
Today we are featuring Derek Ross. Derek joined Opsera in October 2021 as a Lead Solutions Engineer where he works with prospective, new and existing customers to adapt their software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) practices to modern DevOps delivery. In the last 10+ years he has worked at Verizon, GE, and T-Mobile as a Scrum Master, DevOps Engineer, and Technical Product Owner. He has been a solutions engineer at Browserstack and Saucelabs. He also served in the US Army Special Forces (aka "Green Berets"). Derek has used his unique experiences to help teams and companies through their digital transformation journey to modern DevOps practices.
We asked him several questions about his role at Opsera, why he joined the team, his thoughts on company culture and more. Here’s what he said:
What is your current role at Opsera? What do some of your day-to-day activities look like?
Currently, I am a Lead Solutions Engineer. I build technical demos and content. I also get to evangelize DevOps best practices and Opsera through conferences, webinars, blogs and videos. As a software delivery subject matter expert (SME) I help design holistic delivery solutions including pipeline creation, dashboard design, DevOps-process design and tool configuration. Since I am a power user of the product I get to provide product feedback and contribute to the overall vision.
What were you doing before joining Opsera?
Before Opsera, I was Lead Solutions Engineer in the test automation space helping customers create and implement Selenium into their front end projects. I worked in manufacturing and telecom as a product owner and DevOps Engineer.
I also served in the US Army Special Forces. Working as a Green Beret gave me experience deploying, working with foreign militaries and agencies in their own languages, and helping create solutions for various unique and complex problems. I bring the skillsets I learned and provide both leadership and engineering unique perspectives to solve their scaling challenges.
I naturally gravitated to the solutions engineer path because it supports my lifestyle and desire to be remote. I get flexibility in where I live and the opportunity to work on complex influential problem sets. I started in this career field after obtaining my Management of Information Systems degree and interning as a Linux systems administrator at GE Aviation.
What made you want to join the team?
As a DevOps engineer and Technical Product Owner for DevOps tools, I have observed first-hand the problems that teams face when creating pipelines. When I first saw a demo of Opsera's insights module, I knew the product team had an understanding of the problem set and a vision to solve it. Opsera also gave me the opportunity to build a product and a team from the ground up.
What is something you enjoy doing most in your current role?
The challenge of building out and implementing various DevOps solutions keeps me interested and engaged. I enjoy building technical best practices and examples through demos and content.
What is the biggest problem Opsera is helping customers solve?
Creating a single pane of glass that tells a product orchestrates and tells the delivery story from ideation to customer use.
Why would a solutions engineer love to work at Opsera?
As a solutions engineer at Opsera, you are empowered to use your experience to solve complex customer problems. Use cases span the vast majority of customer software delivery cases and there are opportunities for engineers who come from all kinds of backgrounds. As a rapidly growing startup, there are many opportunities to advance, promote and grow professionally.
How would you describe the company culture? Are there any activities, outings, celebrations or other unique experiences offered?
Even when working remotely, you can meet with anybody - I have weekly contact with the head of Product and the entire C-Suite. There are monthly in person events with a variety of activities, including happy hours or something fun to do as a team.
Any hobbies you enjoy outside of work?
I like to ice climb, rock climb, off-road, camp and ski. I live in Salt Lake City for this reason and love that my job enables me to work in Silicon Valley but play in Utah!
As a Lead Solutions Engineer at Opsera, Derek’s work activity and responsibilities make a significant impact on Opsera’s ability to innovate and provide excellent technology to our customers - with plenty of opportunities to grow. Interested in joining the Opsera team? Check out our current job openings
