Meet the Herd: Charlie Spillett

Hi Charlie! Tell us a bit about yourself.  

I am a computer science graduate from Perth, Australia although I carry British nationality as I was born and raised here. I moved back to the UK at the start of 2022 with my partner on the hunt for job opportunities and to experience living in London. Together we have settled in well and have been thoroughly enjoying what the city has to offer and with Europe on the doorstep we have ticked more than a few places off our travel bucket list.  

I am a sport and music lover and have been in the IT industry for 4 years now starting with an internship whilst completing my university studies back in Perth. The internship soon turned into a fulltime position, and I found myself working in a service desk role at a managed service provider. 

What is your role at BlakYaks? 

I work in a cloud engineering/service role as part of a software reliability engineering team called ‘SpecOps’. The team is a mix of junior and senior engineers that develop cloud environments and provide ongoing maintenance for them. This involves building infrastructure using a large range of resources such as networking, automation and almost any other cloud resource available within the Microsoft Azure platform. All work carried out follows an Infrastructure as Code methodology, with Terraform being the primary development tool. I have made use of many other technologies throughout my time here such as Bash, PowerShell, YAML and Azure CLI. 

How did you find the onboarding process when you joined BlakYaks? 

Joining BlakYaks was incredibly simple with the first contact, interview and job offer all taking place within a couple of hours. I started right away and was made to feel welcome by the team as one of the first graduates BlakYaks had taken on. The learning curve has been steep however the training pathway has brought me up to speed within the cloud engineering world and after nearly 12 months I feel very comfortable in my position.  

What does a typical day look like for you and what are you currently working on?  

My day is typically split between interacting with service requests that come through from our partners and working on continual improvement solutions for the existing cloud infrastructure. For example, right now I am implementing a process for backup & recovery of resources for a large-scale construction company as well as upgrading the DNS structure in their network. Like everyone in the SpecOps team, I also provide out-of-hours support for certain systems and resolve high-level incidents we get notified about.  

How has the company/team changed since you joined? 

BlakYaks has grown to twice the size since I have joined so there are heaps of new people in nearly every department. We have taken on quite a few different clients as well so it’s always interesting to hear how other teams are getting on with new challenges.

The project that I’m currently working on has been built from scratch since my arrival, so it’s been enjoyable working on a completely clean slate. Two other graduates are part of the team now which is great to grow with others at my experience level.  

What do you like most about BlakYaks? 

The company culture at BlakYaks has been fantastic from the day I joined. Lots of fun work functions to enjoy and a great positive atmosphere in and around the office. Having the office in the heart of London is a very cool experience and provides a unique commute each time.

My favourite part of the job has to be the hybrid work model that we utilise, it provides flexibility and allows me to dedicate more time to further studies and enjoy my life outside of work.  

What do you find the most challenging at BlakYaks? 

Moving country and starting a new job was definitely a fresh challenge that I hadn’t experienced yet although it has proven to be very rewarding so far. My background in IT is not really aligned with software development or the cloud engineering space so changing pathways for this role was initially very difficult.

Other challenges include learning the methods of software development like DevOps and getting to know the crazy number of technologies and tools to use each day. It has been testing at times and even now I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface.  

What are the highlights (so far) of your time at BlakYaks? 

It’s always a brilliant feeling passing a certification, I have four under my belt so far and I’m working away to my fifth. They are always a serious challenge to complete, with all the extensive readings and online modules so passing always feels like a great accomplishment. The work get-togethers are always a brilliant time as well, having a private rooftop on top of the office and a pub next door is never a bad thing. 

What are your goals and aspirations for the next 6 months? 

First goal is to finish the Kubernetes certification I am studying for, hopefully I can get that done and dusted in the next month. There are a few more levels to climb in the Kubernetes space so I expect to continue straight onto them in the next few months.

Other than that, I’m looking to grow into my role further and get proficient with all the new technologies I have learnt over the last year. In my spare time, I want to travel more and tick off as many places as possible. 

What advice would you give to recent new joiners? 

The advice I would give is to tackle the gaps in your knowledge head-on and dedicate any free time you can spare to extra studies. Work life becomes a lot more enjoyable once you get stuck into a new challenge. Also, everyone here is super approachable and very knowledgeable so don’t be a stranger when looking for assistance or advice. 

Thanks Charlie!