My Time at XYPRO and How it got me Where I am Today

My Time at XYPRO and How it got me Where I am Today

My name is Brady and I am a proud former intern of XYPRO Technology. Currently, I am a Graduate Student at UCSC studying Machine Learning and Data Mining in hopes to apply this knowledge towards making cybersecurity more effective and adaptive.  Little did I realize how I would be ultimately led to this point as a result of my experience at XYPRO.
Prior to my time at XYPRO, I was just beginning to take a huge dive into the world of computer science, starting a Master’s program at Cal State Northridge and somewhat clueless about the direction I wanted to take.  At the time, I was self-taught in the basics of Java and had a few pet projects, the most complex of them an implementation of minesweeper themed on picking up dog poop in one’s backyard.  I did not have a formal computer science education as I had just recently decided to do a complete 180˚ turn from my previous aspirations as a researcher in the field of nanomedicine.
So here I was one day, at a career fair at CSUN, mostly throwing my resume every which direction.  However, XYPRO caught my attention in particular as not only did they specialize in cyber security, which was an area I was pretty interested in at the time, but they also were looking for interns that could program in Java.  I was pretty thrilled to hear that they were working on a project involving the use of Spring, a framework which I had been pretty eager to learn about for my own sake.  I spent a bit of time at their booth talking to the former interns and representatives from the company and happily left them my resume.
Fast forward past the part of the interview process and whatnot and I get my call from the Development Manager congratulating me and telling me that I got accepted as an intern for the XYGATE SecurityOne project (codename: Tesla).  At this point I’m totally ecstatic that I’m about to get my first real experience of working in the industry as a software developer.  

My first day in I’m greeted by a few nerf shots from the current development team, immediately giving me the sense that I’ll be working in a pretty fun and friendly environment.  At the time, SecurityOne was in its infancy.  It was nothing more than a basic CRUD application that served as a backbone for upcoming features.  Aside from getting our hands dirty with the latest web technologies, what made the project particularly interesting was that we were the guinea pigs of a company experiment to implement SCRUM in an environment that was traditionally waterfall.  This proved to be a very useful learning experience and provided our team with a lot of freedom to control our strategies to execute our goals.
As time went by, my role in the project evolved from simply writing unit/integration tests and adding new API calls to being deeply involved in one of the core features of the product, Security Intelligence.  It was working on this feature that provided me the greatest inspiration for where I’m at now, by opening the doors to so many new and interesting problems worth solving.  
That inspiration was not my only takeaway from my two years at XYPRO.  I gained an immense knowledge of various big-time Java technologies such as Spring, Hibernate, Apache Camel, and Esper.  I gained a strong understanding of the SCRUM process, and got to learn firsthand it’s strengths and weaknesses.  Most importantly, I got to be part of turning a bare-bones research & development project into a product we’ve already started shipping to customers for beta-testing.
All of these things plus working with a wonderful team and having tremendous creative freedom were what made the internship at XYPRO worthwhile and one-of-a-kind.  This experience truly sealed the deal in regards to my love for computer science.

About the Author:  Brady Goldman joined XYPRO as an intern in 2014.  Brady impressed us so much that we made him permanent part-time while he finished school.  Much to our delight and dismay, Brady decided to pursue his post-graduate studies in Machine Learning and Data Mining at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he hopes to apply that education to further his career in cybersecurity.  It is important to note that Brady came to us with an open and curious mind but even more importantly, an excellent work ethic and spirit of team success.  Needless to say, we would have loved to have Brady stay on full time and were sad to see him go but we’re not surprised at his desire to continue his pursuit of knowledge and celebrated with him when he was accepted to UCSC!