What led you to dev-ops engineering?
“I gained a statistic background in college, learned to program, then went into computer science. I’ve always enjoyed plants and plant biology, so I ended up at CIBO. Since joining the team, I’ve transitioned into the infostructure team. Most of the work is problem-solving, which is fun to do.”
What is your favorite thing about being a scientist?
“In Dev-ops, it’s the ability to keep a graph in my head that connects everything within our infrastructure. My end users in this role are the internal folks at CIBO to support and build the infostructure to go fast enough for their work.”
“As a software engineer, my favorite thing is to create a useful application. You get to design it from the top down from designing, architecting, then building it out and dealing with the problems along the way.”
What is one thing that would surprise people about your field of work?
“You aren’t typing or coding as often as you think. You’re usually whiteboarding, brainstorming, or thinking about the problem you’re trying to solve.”
What kinds of things do you think we should be doing to encourage more people to pursue a career in software engineering?
“We should be more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming to everyone but also making it a safe space. People interested should not only participate but encouraged and welcomed to join. You can bring someone into the room, but if you don’t welcome that, then they won’t get the feeling of being a participant.”
What brought you to CIBO?
“The idea that the work would not be completely product or computer software engineering-led. It’s a significant collaboration between product and software. I was also happy to work with data scientists and scientists, as I’ve found those experiences helpful in the past.”
What are your primary responsibilities at CIBO?
“Managing the infostructure with Alec Kloss. We make sure its stable for everyone and improve it in ways that help people jobs get done better and fast along with fixing anything that goes wrong.”
What do you find the most rewarding about your work here?
“I like infostructure because you get to figure out how to make disparate systems work together that may not have been meant to be together. Ordering matters, it’s all in your head, and it’s hard to make a graph of it, but it runs every part of the company.”
About César Lizárraga
César Lizárraga is a Software Engineer at CIBO, a science-driven software startup. Prior to CIBO, he worked for the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Benson Hill Biosystems. He holds a Bachelors in Probability and Statistics from Washington University in St. Louis.