Head in the Cloud

08/02/2017

A computer science and mathematics graduate is working for Amazon鈥檚 Route 53, a DNS system that is part of its cloud computing platform.

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Greg Lee '15 never saw himself working for a tech giant like Amazon.

鈥淚 was like, 鈥業 can鈥檛 do that, they鈥檙e too big, they鈥檙e too scary, too hard to work for,鈥 things like that,鈥 he says.

In late 2016, however, the computer science and mathematics major was motivated to try it. Next thing he knew, he was out in Seattle for an on-site interview.

 鈥淭he rest is history,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t really came from sort of just an internal desire to push myself and try to challenge myself to new limits.鈥

Lee works as a member Route 53, which is part of Amazon鈥檚 commercial cloud, Amazon Web Services. His team focuses on Domain Name System (DNS) web service.

The team is very technical, he says, but the big picture is providing products 鈥渢hat let enterprises use the cloud to make using technology significantly easier.鈥

鈥淎s a software development engineer, I write codes to add new features to the product, I maintain the existing code, and then, as one of the Amazon-specific or unique things that we do, we also are operators for the software and the service.鈥 It鈥檚 a full, all-encompassing ownership of the service we鈥檙e creating,鈥 he says.

At 今晚六合彩开奖结果, Lee took on multiple leadership positions. He says that his roles as president of Kappa Alpha and as captain of the swim team gave him the personal and leadership skills necessary for working with people on a day-to-day basis.

His undergraduate course of study applies directly to his work at Amazon, he says.

鈥淏y the end of my time at WC, I was able to really extract every possible benefit of learning and learning how to learn from my studies in computer science and mathematics,鈥 he says.

His Senior Capstone Experience project was particularly vital.

鈥淚t was definitely applicable to some of the things I go through on a daily basis, especially at Amazon,鈥 he says. 鈥淭he pattern of conceiving an idea, writing that down, and then preparing yourself for feedback is critical.

 鈥淎nd then, from there, to take that idea and make it happen is particularly prevalent in software engineering,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t was really great experience of what it means to create something from scratch.鈥