In the Defense industry, everyone is trying to move to the cloud. GDIT gives you a lot of opportunity to introduce yourself to different aspects of cloud, across different contracts and customers.
Brenda joined GDIT after completing her Computer Science degree at San Diego State University. As a DevOps Engineer, Brenda bridges the gap between developers and operations so processes are automated, getting software to its destination faster.
Bridging the software gap. My team owns it.
My team is re-engineering the way the Navy pushes software to its ships. My day-to-day is full of new software, new technologies, and face-to-face time with our client.
We’re developing a set of tools that includes security scanning and code analysis that are vetted by the Navy. These tools don’t require someone to bring an application to the ship. It’s all done through the cloud. This means software is getting developed, tested, and deployed much faster than it was in the past.
Being a part of this work at such an early stage in my career is just beyond words.
Becoming part of the team.
One of my first projects was to build a container using some of our tools. I started to learn on my own and after I exhausted all my resources, my lead jumped in and helped answer my questions. Whenever I’m stuck, we hop on a call to figure it out together. There hasn’t been a time I’ve gotten off a call where I haven’t been able to get past the obstacle I was facing. My team collaborates every day. Even though I’m the most junior on the team, they make me feel like I have a voice. They’re not just telling me what to do. I’m chiming in and they respect my point of view.
A rewarding go-live.
One of the most rewarding projects I’ve worked on was building a pipeline for a software product. We spent six months building it with a small team. We were developing Single Sign On for users, which they didn’t have before. As we were developing that part of the project, we ran into issues that delayed our timeline. Because we have a great relationship with our client, they trusted that we’d complete the work even with the delay. When the product went live, it was a huge relief. Our clients were happy and they won an award for it, so it really showed how much our hard work paid off.
Growing personally.
I’m an undercover introvert. My team has taught me how to come out of my shell. They moved me from our office to the client site so I now get to help our clients face-to-face. I have a colleague who I go to for advice when I’m having interactions with our clients. He’s my personal coach since he’s been with the client and the company for a long time. His help, plus the little push to be onsite, has helped me grow a lot this past year. I credit my lead and my team for how far I’ve come.