Many of us reflect upon the achievement of a milestone, a birthday, a promotion, a wedding, an anniversary and so forth. This
is an exercise I’ve found useful, and it’s something I do regularly. It helps me put the milestone in perspective and appreciate my efforts and those of others who have helped to make the achievement possible.
In May 2021, I celebrated six months at Aiculus. Typically, six months for corporate companies is the probation period, and although this is not the case at Aiculus, it feels like I’ve finally found my place and rhythm in the business. As I look back at the last six months as the Aiculus Machine Learning (ML) Engineer, three things stand out for me.
The Aiculus dream One of the things that drew me to Aiculus was the story of the company, and the appeal of contributing to this great story-in-the-making. As a company, Aiculus sits on the fringes; so many things about what we do are not conventional, and I love that. I love that every day, I have to bring my A-game and help push the frontier.
The dream of Aiculus is to create a platform that allows others to realise their personal and career goals. Aiculus aims to be a platform where anyone who aligns with our values can add their thumbprint to our technology and, ultimately, how it impacts our customers.
Messing with high tech Technology is finding its way into every aspect of our lives. At the heart of that technology is autonomous capability, which is delivered in the form of Artificial Intelligence. Aiculus boldly sits in this space as a specialist firm in the domain. This alone resonates so much with me; I feel like I get up every day, and I mess with the cutting edge of technology to provide tangible and quantifiable value for our customers.
Our cybersecurity product uses Machine Learning to detect cyber-threats and cyber-attacks in Application Programming Interface (API) traffic. Building a technology product that monitors an organisation’s API requests in real-time is complex; this challenges and excites me — I feel as cool as a rocket scientist even. I love that my job gives me the opportunity to nerd out as deep as I need to.
As I juggle the technological complexity of our product, I must constantly think about value for our customer, what it looks like and whether what we have technologically delivers that value optimally. This variety in my work stimulates me.
Learning from my team We are a small team at Aiculus, and although we have significant overlap in our roles, everyone has a distinct role and specialisation. While I love my cloud deployments, data engineering and algorithm design, I also love that I get to chip into the development of every other aspect of our company —from designing product decks, sales and marketing strategy, to financial projections, and from formulating our diversity, equity and inclusion roadmap to onboarding new interns. From proposing partnership opportunities with collaborators in Singapore, to coordinating new product features with our tech partners in Vietnam, to doing product demos with organisations in Nigeria, India, and Canada, I get to learn so much.
As I look back at the last six months with Aiculus, I feel privileged to have had this role; I have gained so much both personally and professionally. It doesn’t mean there are no challenges. I face these daily. As the Aiculus ML and Data Engineer, every day is a fight for the success of Aiculus. My team tell me I have grown, which is both pleasing and slightly concerning. I’m not exactly sure what has grown about me, but I take that as a positive.
All I know is that in the last six months, I have been provided with every opportunity to do what I love, to be a part of a company whose mission totally resonates with me. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, and I look forward to more growth with Aiculus.
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