Journey

Being hired at Amazon

When I received my offer letter back in 2022, it felt like a dream come true. As a remote worker based in Canada, the opportunity to join one of the largest companies in the world was a massive milestone. The prospect of working at the largest scale the industry has to offer, alongside some of the best minds I’ve ever met, was an opportunity I was eager to embrace.

Working at Amazon

Since then, I’ve had the chance to thrive within my roles in ways I never could’ve imagined. I am particularly proud of a few key accomplishments:

• Innovation: Created a prototype for voice-based AI communication and successfully formed a new team to move the project forward.
• Efficiency: Saved hundreds of developer hours yearly by optimizing app build times by over 10x.
• Mentorship: Coached and mentored multiple interns, new hires, and tenured Amazonians to help them thrive within their roles.
• Leadership: Synchronized complex migrations across dozens of different teams, ensuring seamless transitions for our infrastructure.

I’ve always pushed myself to “Raise the Bar,” gaining internal certifications such as Open Source Champion and Security Certifier. I also leaned into the security culture, placing third twice in the annual security competition. By reporting critical issues within both internal and external tools, I helped strengthen the security posture for our customers.

Beyond the code, I served as the employee representative for Quebec’s Francisation committee, joined the internal chess club, phonetool collector clubs, and stayed active in various hacker and tinkerer channels.

While I worked remotely, I had the chance to meet my team frequently during summits and events. Thanks to Amazon, I traveled to San Francisco, Cupertino, Vancouver, and Seattle. These trips were invaluable for debating best practices and building genuine connections with incredible people.

If you are ever given the chance to work within such a large organization, take it. While it comes with challenges regarding internal politics or speed of execution, the sheer breadth of knowledge you gain is incomparable.

Leaving Amazon

On Thursday morning, I woke up to a peculiar GitHub notification: I had been removed from the Amazonians organization. A look at my inbox confirmed the news. My role was impacted as part of the 16,000 employees laid off that day.

Perhaps it was overdue, I was one of the few fully remote employees left within my organization, but it still stung. I had been at my most efficient, recently delivering a handful of major improvements, and I was looking forward to seeing their long-term impact.

While I never imagined my time here would end so soon, I feel immense pride looking back at what I accomplished during these years. My only regret is no longer being able to support the team I grew so fond of.

What’s next

I’m now focused on making the best of the situation. Thanks to the notice period provided, I have the next few months to focus on my next chapter.

I plan to:

• Polish my Runescape market utilities.
• Start a new, ambitious side project.
• Contribute back to the Open Source projects I’ve been following.

But I remain open to anything life has to offer: If you are aware of any interesting opportunities in software engineering, AI, or security, please let me know!

When the OSRS Wiki announced a real-time pricing API, I saw an opportunity to build the tools I personally wanted as a player.

What began as a simple spreadsheet for tracking item margins has evolved into a comprehensive ecosystem, including a high-traffic web platform and a Discord bot used by thousands of communities. Scaling to 100,000+ users forced me to master high-concurrency systems on a budget, deep process optimization, and the nuances of community-led growth.

While I’ve hung up my own cape in-game, I remain dedicated to the product. My focus now is on pushing the boundaries of market visualization and providing the player base with professional-grade financial insights.

After GoDaddy acquired Sucuri, I was brought back to dive deep into the web security side of the business. My focus was on hardening the Web Application Firewall (WAF) and protecting millions of sites against emerging vulnerabilities.

Beyond research, I focused on engineering efficiency by building custom internal tooling to better find vulnreabilities and ensuring our customers were protected from attacks.

I joined BioRender as one of the earliest engineering hires back in 2018.

My “application” was a bit unconventional: I sent my resume along with a security report highlighting vulnerabilities I found, and promised to fix them once onboarded. True to my word, those were my first tickets.

Being part of a YC startup in its infancy meant wearing every hat possible. No two days were the same; I fluctuated between shipping core features, optimizing our CI/CD pipelines, and speaking directly with researchers to bridge the gap between complex science and intuitive UX.

One of my first roles after graduating was at CGI, which remains to this day my only traditional, non-remote office experience.

Working in an enterprise environment taught me the rigors of building high-stakes software for government agencies and large corporate clients. It was a formative period that helped me understand the importance of scalability, security, and structured development cycles before I eventually transitioned into new roles.

Sucuri was my entry point into the tech industry, and I joined during a period of explosive growth for the company.

I navigated the challenge of finishing my final years of study while simultaneously hunting for critical vulnerabilities. My work focused on identifying and mitigating high-impact vectors like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection (SQLi), and Remote Code Execution (RCE) across the web ecosystem.

This role also marked the beginning of my journey into technical thought leadership; I began writing my first technical articles and security advisories, translating complex vulnerability research into actionable insights for the broader security community.