Cybersecurity Careers Week: Why Our Engineers Chose Abnormal

Cybersecurity Careers Awareness Week is a great opportunity to explore key careers in information security, particularly as there are an estimated 3.1 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs. This disparity means that cybercriminals are taking advantage of the situation, sending more targeted attacks and seeing greater success each year.

To combat at least a portion of these crimes, Abnormal uses behavioral AI to identify and block the most damaging email attacks—from business email compromise to supply chain fraud to account takeovers. But we can’t do it on our own, which is why we’ve hired some of the best and brightest engineering minds to help us succeed.

And while a career in cybersecurity may not have been top of mind for everyone on the engineering team, it’s safe to say that these people have been essential to our success in stopping the bad guys. To provide more insight into why our engineers chose Abnormal, you can read about their career paths, in their own words.

Anton Kovalyov, Engineering Manager - Email Security Products

I don't have a clear track of being in the cyber security industry. I’ve always been interested in cybersecurity, and generously paranoid, but I've spent most of my career working at non-security companies. It’s only been in the past few years that I decided to shift the focus of my career towards trust and safety. Since then, I've done some work on the Anti-Evil team at Reddit and the Trust Engineering team at Medium.

Most recently, when I was contemplating my next move, Abnormal reached out and it turned out to be a great fit. When I think about security, it's all about risk and harm reduction. In these terms, Abnormal has tremendous leverage because successfully stopping an attack not only protects the target organization but also their customers. There's a straight line from Abnormal successfully stopping a phishing attack to someone not having their identity stolen and subsequently losing their life savings. It’s a really interesting problem to solve with real-world implications, which is why I enjoy it so much.

Sharon Lin, Software Engineer - Detection

I connected with Abnormal early in my job search when I was deciding what to pursue after graduation. I knew that I wanted to work in a technically challenging space with a large impact, especially at the intersection between cybersecurity and machine learning, but I wasn't sure what kinds of problems I wanted to work on.

When I learned about the Abnormal threat detection product, I was immediately intrigued. I met Kevin Wang, the VP of Engineering, through a recruiter and was impressed with the company's focus on mentorship for early-career engineers. Although it was riskier as a new grad to be joining such an early-stage startup, I had a feeling that I would grow more at Abnormal than at a much larger organization.

And so far, my convictions have been correct—I've been given responsibilities ranging from launching new products to deploying models within our live engine, and I've grown so much as an engineer, certainly more than I would have anywhere else. Most of all, everyone I've worked with at this company has been amazing. Abnormal is full of brilliant, passionate, and kind individuals who continually remind me of the potential of technology and push me towards becoming a better engineer and person.

Praveen Bathala, Software Engineer - SOC/Front-End

I chose a career in cybersecurity because I wanted to put my engineering skills to good use and do something meaningful, something that helps people and companies that are faced with the challenge of cybercrime in the ever-growing world of the Internet. Because of this, I started my career at CrowdStrike and realized that the feeling I had when I helped someone not lose their life savings or stopped a cyber attack that could bankrupt a company was very fulfilling.

However, I knew most of the founding team at Abnormal, including one of my mentors from my first job over a decade ago. With the opportunity to join this incredible group of people and revolutionize the email security industry, it simply made sense to join this team and continue my contribution to fighting cybercrime. Abnormal is a great company with great cultural values that resonates in every aspect of our journey. The transparency and honesty of leadership is welcoming. Simply put, working for Abnormal is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that should not be missed.

Frank Wang, Software Engineer - Platform/Infrastructure

I wasn't looking for any particular industry when I was ready to move on from my last company but I knew I wanted three things: a place that had interesting problems to solve, a place that would challenge and push me to grow, and a place with people I feel excited to work with every day. Any meaningful positive impact on society would be icing on the cake.

Cybersecurity happens to sit at the intersection of all of those things, and Abnormal is truly a leader in what we’re doing. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work on hard problems with people that I enjoy working with, every day.

As you can see, we have an amazing group of people working to solve hard cybersecurity problems, and I promise we didn’t even pay them extra to say these nice things! If you’re an engineer looking for your next career challenge, Abnormal could be the right fit for you.

We’re constantly on the lookout for people who have a desire to make our algorithms better and our platform more useful for our users. If that sounds like you, we’d love to welcome you to the team!

Want to work with this team? See which positions are open today and apply online.