Blox Life: An Interview With Sanjay Singh

Welcome to Blox Life! This interview series shines a spotlight on Armorblox team members - chronicling their daily work, highlighting their achievements, and sharing their advice for people who wish to pursue similar careers. In this interview, we’re delighted to speak with Sanjay Singh. Sanjay is a backend engineer based out of Armorblox’s India office and is instrumental in building critical Armorblox product features to protect our customers. Take it away, Sanjay!

Q. Can you tell us something about yourself?

My name is Sanjay. I have been at Armorblox for almost 2 years. My role here is primarily of a backend engineer, and I love every second of it.

I was inclined towards computers from my school days. Although the reason back then was computer games and nothing academic, that kind of solidified my interest in computer science. In computer games, I was always intrigued by the characters of the game and their interaction with the player. Thinking back now, I feel the logic working under the hood was something that caught my interest and drove me more towards computer science as well.

I did my bachelor's from PICT in Pune University in India, and then completed my masters from USC in computer science. I think I was fortunate to have good professors and peers that made my CS journey easier.

Q. What is your current role at Armorblox? What does a typical day (or a typical week, if you can’t fit everything in one day!) look like for you?

I am currently working as a backend engineer at Armorblox. My typical day or week is always action-packed. It ranges from working on a critical feature from a customer request to writing a brand new framework for upcoming features. I find myself juggling between production work and new upcoming features most of the time.

If I stick to the definition, a typical day generally consists of glancing over the production environment for any abnormalities, looking over any critical customer issues, and then working on the ticket stack based on the priority of the tasks. Many times, days and even nights go by in delivering a business-critical feature, but when things come through, it’s always totally worth it.

Q. Why did you decide to join Armorblox?

For me, the main reasons behind joining Armorblox were the team, their passion, and an amazing product. During early conversations with the team, I was not so sure about jumping into the security space because most of my previous gigs were related to systems and backend. But listening to the problem that the team was solving here - and DJ's amazing storytelling skills - left me with no option but to come on board.

I feel I’ve grown and learned a lot on the personal front at Armorblox. All my previous work experience was with big enterprises; after joining Armorblox, I started feeling that 2-3 months worth of work here was equivalent to a year's worth of work in those companies. I’m glad to be part of this amazing team and company.

Q. What is an accomplishment at Armorblox you’re proud of?

I am proud of many things at Armorblox. In the early days, I got a chance to work on the first version of various core features of the product which later on became full-fledged product features. This gives me immense pleasure and makes me feel proud to see the transformation. Also, Armorblox's email security offering for Microsoft Exchange is something that I worked on from the start; seeing it come through and making a positive impact on our customers’ lives makes me really proud.

Q. What’s one thing you wished you knew when you started your career in this role (at Armorblox or in general)?

I think by the time I joined Armorblox, I pretty much knew what I wanted. One thing I sometimes wish I had done was joining Armorblox earlier than I did. After coming out of the educational institutions, we as job seekers mostly get pulled towards big company names and their associated glamour. Personally speaking, I also strived to get into one of those big name companies. I feel I could have avoided that, instead focusing more on startups and learning more about the current problems that need solving.

Q. Do you have any advice for people who aim to pursue a career similar to yours?

I feel anyone who is aspiring to be in the tech space needs to find which part of the whole stack they really like. Is it backend, frontend, storage, or infrastructure? Many times, people are confused and end up in the wrong area of work. Finding this out is critical because it forms the basis of your roadmap and you can also have fun while working this way - eventually!

Q. Anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t asked you already?

One last thing I want to talk about is the amount of trust and responsibility that I feel in this team. People here are always so self-driven that in order to get some motivation, I just need to look across the room. I am not sure how this kind of culture is built or if there’s any defined method behind it, but seeing this organic growth was really an amazing experience.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know Sanjay a little bit better! For email security news and trends, unique email attack detections, and more Blox Life, subscribe to Armorblox email updates below.