E99 - Jose Moreno at Microsoft

On our 99^th episode, Charlie Draper was joined by Jose Moreno, the Principal Engineer at Microsoft. Jose has had a long career within the space, with over 20 years of experience in the space, he has focused on IT infrastructure, especially in networking, server technologies and virtualisation, including public cloud IaaS with Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes. They discuss all the exciting technologies he’s working on at the moment, along with how these are going to impact Network Engineers in the future.

Since Jose started his career in Networking back in 2000, his focus was mainly on learning. He got his CCA certification which was his card into Cisco. He got a job in Pre-Sales at Cisco where he started touching up on Network technology and got himself familiarised with VMware and OpenStack etc.

The role of the Network Engineer has changed significantly since he started back in 2000. In the past, they used to have many specialists, but it has become a lot broader today. With technology growing at the rate that it is, traditional Network Engineers can’t stay in one lane, they will need to expand their knowledge in order to keep up.

The reason he moved into Networking was down to serendipity. When he finished his studies in Telecommunications, he was looking for job offers so when something came up, he decided to try it out and moved down the Networking route out of curiosity.

Principal Engineer at Microsoft…

As the Principal Engineer at Microsoft, his main role is helping customers get their applications into the cloud. He started at Microsoft back in 2016 as a Cloud Solutions Architect, helping partners to run projects based on Microsoft Azure. He then moved into his current position as an Azure Principal Engineer in 2018, where he focuses now on removing technical blockers in Azure projects.

Some of the biggest challenges he’s faced throughout his career have been both technical and non-technical. One of those was a routing problem where they were on the verge of going over and were close to paying a penalty. The other time was with a customer he had to deal with who wasn’t happy as they had issues with the switches they had, and it ended up getting intense. Jose explained it was a business issue, not a technical issue so they had to use great communication skills in order for the customer to be understanding and ultimately end up feeling like they received great service. This taught him how to communicate which helped in his Pre-Sales role!

To those wanting to relocate as Jose did, have no fear! It’s going to work out one way or another. If it’s something you want to do, don’t let a second language scare you.

For those who want to get started in the Networking career, find something you like and become an expert. Focus on one thing then you can expand into other niches. For someone not already in the Networking space, try it out and then you can decide which route is best for you. Focus, learn, if you don’t like it then leave and focus on something else.

Jose discusses some great answers through our quick-fire round, tune in now to hear it!