A Day in the Life of a 2bcloud Architect
9.30 am: First thing’s first – Coffee!! Once this has been checked off my list, the start of the working day is always the company daily. Here we talk about all of the tasks in the pipeline at the moment, and it gives us a chance to see cross-teams what’s happening at 2bcloud.
9.45 am: Straight after the company daily is the team daily. So, for me, that’s the engineering team, where all of us get together and drill down into each of our tasks, speaking to one another about any issues that we might have, supporting each other by answering questions and checking in on any open challenges. We’re remote-first, but we make sure that we’re in the office one day a week as a team, to keep that face-to-face communication.
10.00 am: Every day is different- this is one of the amazing things at 2bcloud! That’s really important to me. In a product company, you usually work on one product at a time, but at 2bcloud I get to work on 2-4 different clients/products in a single day. while other times I’m in a full-day workshop or even a multi-day workshop with one customer. Today I started with a cost-optimization session where I was suggesting and implementing changes in a customer environment to make it both operational and cost-efficient. In the end, they saved 30% on their monthly cloud spend, so that was awesome. On another day it might be a more technical implementation session, such as environment creation. In this kind of session we would use a shared screen or with the client’s consent – remote access, and implement new architecture on the cloud. This is a very exciting, extremely hands-on session and can take between 4-8 hours, where the customer can really see their environment come to life for the first time.
1 pm: Lunchtime! If it’s a day where we’re in the office, we try to have lunch together with the rest of the team- once we all agree on a place to eat, which can be a difficult task on its own! If we’re not seeing one another in-person, there’s still a lot of communication that goes on between us, via the engineering Slack channel (invite only – sorry guys, if you’re not an engineer – keep out!) the all company Slack channel, on our WhatsApp group, and by a LOT of phone calls!
2 pm: After lunch, I start a new session with another client. Today it was a security consulting session where I could give advice and support on how to stay secure on the cloud. This kind of session is led by the client, so today they wanted to talk about permissions and authentications, but it could also be how to encrypt data using a key vault, or how to put a web application firewall into place. I love how my job is not only consulting, but also implementation, giving advice, problem-solving, and tons more! Throughout the day, I often communicate with customers via email, phone, or through our direct Slack channels with each client.
3.36 pm: “Chatzil b’pita “- Occasionally, we might get interrupted from whatever other work we’re in the middle of by a crisis! At 2bcloud we call this a chatzil b’pita (eggplant in pita bread– don’t ask me how we came up with this name)– it’s our version of an ‘end of the world problem’ slang for a huge catastrophe. A recent example was a Retail client with a transactable website, where everything suddenly went down, and they were unable to take orders. Whatever it is, we stop everything, and it’s all-hands-on-deck to get the client’s issue handled. In this particular case it took just minutes to get them back online – 2bcloud to the rescue!
4 pm: I always make time for tasks that are related to professional development or learning, whether that’s supporting the marketing teams with brand or sales-related things such as webinars, or taking time out for learning for a particular certification. I’m always working on the next professional exam, whether that’s an in-depth cloud solution architect certification, or becoming a certified Kubernetes developer, or something else. 2bcloud is all about learning and growing, and that’s a really valuable part of working here.
5 pm: As we have a lot of clients around the world, sometimes I’ve taken a break by now, splitting my day in half. If I have a session at 8 pm or 9 pm for example, I might stop around 3.30 pm or 4 pm and then come back later. It’s great to be able to be so flexible!
On a Thursday, we have a company weekly happy hour between 5 pm-6 pm. Usually, it has a lot of alcohol involved, whether we are in the office or not. This is where any big announcements are made, and we hear about changes that are happening to the company.
Sometimes our engineering team will go out for the evening and meet up for a barbeque or a few drinks. We really have a strong team, and that only happens by having a laugh together and making sure we communicate, in and out the office!
Come work with us! Want to learn more about open positions at 2bcloud? Check out the careers page, here.