Meet Our Engineers: Kevin Chen
Want to know what it’s like to be an engineer at a fast-growing start-up? Check out this Q&A with a member of Bitsight’s engineering team to learn about his role as Engineering Manager, his experience, and more.
Name: Kevin Chen
Job Title: Engineering Manager
Location: Cambridge, MA
What do you do at Bitsight? I have two jobs here at Bitsight. As an engineer, I work on Bitsight's user interface. As a manager, I help manage the growth of our engineers.
How long have you worked at Bitsight? 1 year
What is your background? How did you get into engineering? I received my degree in computer science from UMASS Amherst. From there, I landed a job in consulting where I implemented user interfaces for clients. That led to a career in user interface development. As a way to supplement my development skills, I received my MS in Human Factors in Information Design at Bentley University.
What challenges you the most at Bitsight? The Bitsight Security Rating itself is a fairly simple concept. However, the explanation of how we got to the rating and the presentation of the various risk vectors in both an easy to understand way (for high level consumption), and a detailed and rigorous way (for forensic analysis), is a very challenging UI task.
What is the most important thing you learned at Bitsight? The most important thing I've learned at Bitsight is just how critical and far reaching the world of cybersecurity really is. I often tell people that cybersecurity may be the most important tech field right now. The ubiquity of networked connected devices from cell phones to computers to thermostats, makes security something everyone needs to be aware of.
What advice do you have for someone first getting into this field? Like many other industries, finding a great mentor is something that could set you up for a long, successful career.
What are some other companies you admire from an engineering perspective and why? I think any company that is doing something completely new (like Bitsight), deserves a fair amount of respect. These are companies that don't have a paradigm to follow and succeed or fail on their own ingenuity.
If you weren’t an engineer, what would you want to be? I would be designing things.
What was the last movie you watched? Logan
What is the last place you traveled and what did you do there? I just came back from Taiwan, where I visited family and ate a lot.