Blake Hearn (he/him) joined Anchore in February 2020 as a DevSecOps Engineer on the Customer Success team, marking the start of both Blake’s professional career and entry into DevSecOps. In this Humans of Anchore profile, we sat down with Blake to talk about learning new skill sets, a culture of kindness, and lessons from leadership.
From his start at Anchore, Blake has been immersed in a team of kind and supportive people offering him the mentorship, resources, and encouragement needed to be successful.
“The whole team really helped me learn at a fast rate. They created training materials and testing environments for me to learn, checked in with me frequently, and even recommended some certifications which played a huge role in building a foundational knowledge of DevSecOps. A year and a half ago I didn’t know anything about Docker, Jenkins or Kubernetes and now I’m using them every day.”
Blake’s support system reaches far beyond his direct team, extending all the way to the executives and co-founders of the company.
“I’ve had a really great experience with my managers and the leadership team. Being able to reach out to the CEO or CTO is amazing. Dan Nurmi (CTO/Co-Founder) has open office hours each week where I can bring my technical questions and feel comfortable doing so. Everyone at Anchore is really collaborative. I can ask anyone a question and they are more than willing to help.”
In his role, Blake spends most of his day working on the Platform One team at the Department of Defense (DoD) partnering with engineers from companies across the industry to help deliver software solutions faster and more securely across the DoD.
“It's been a really good opportunity for me to learn from both my Anchore team and my Platform One team. My role requires a lot of custom Helm templating and testing updates on various Kubernetes clusters. We are putting our minds together to come up with solutions and do groundbreaking work.”
Looking ahead, Blake is eager to continue his learning journey. “I’m excited to continue learning from others and get into new skill sets. Recently, I’ve learned a little bit about the operational side of Machine Learning (ML) and how ML could be used in cybersecurity. Next, I would like to get into penetration testing to help improve the security posture of products and services. I think that would provide a huge benefit to our customers - especially with the supply chain attacks we’ve seen recently in the news.”
In summarizing his time at Anchore, Blake is grateful for the support system he has found: “I didn’t think companies like Anchore existed - where the company’s culture is so kind, everyone is really smart, works well together, and you have direct access to leadership. No other company I’ve seen compares to Anchore.”
Interested in turning your dreams into reality? Check out our careers page for our open roles anchore.com/careers.
