When Tomas Vrabel considered joining SolarWinds five years ago, it was with hopeful expectations he’d get to work with talented people, build complex products, and deepen his knowledge in the industry. As a software architect on the SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) team in Brno, he’s making an impact across the company’s entire product line.
“The team in Brno is one of the reasons I joined SolarWinds,” he says. “The people are supportive, and we’re working on device and technology integrations, machine learning, security, performance and scalability optimizations, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline improvements… there’s huge learning and growth potential.”
Established in 2008, the SolarWinds Brno site is the first European research and development office. Since its inception, the site has built a vast network of experienced software engineers responsible for researching and developing products to observe and monitor IT environments and applications in the cloud or on-premises.
Tomas joined the Brno team—comprised of over 300 engineers—because he enjoys finding elegant solutions to challenging problems. At SolarWinds, where product philosophies centralize around ease of use, security, and value, Tomas found a natural fit. “After deciding to join SolarWinds, I can say that the job is exactly what I hoped for,” he says.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tomas to learn more about his career path and his role as part of the SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) team.
Tell me about your background and career path. How’d you get into engineering or development?
I think coding became my passion when I was 10 years old and I wrote my first "Hello World" program in Turbo Pascal. A couple years later, I decided I wanted to become a computer engineer, so I enrolled in and finished the computer science program at Charles University in Prague.
After school, I started working at Siemens as a solution architect. I helped customers—large enterprise companies—deploy and integrate security products into their environment. Managing access for thousands of employees, I had to integrate solutions across a slew of enterprise applications. The role helped shape my engineering perspective, giving me an understanding of a customer’s business, needs, and feature requirements.
After several successful projects, I wanted to expand upon this foundation and have a broader impact across a company’s product line. That's when I received a message from a SolarWinds recruiter.
Tell me about your role now. Why’d you pick SolarWinds?
I joined SolarWinds five years ago, and I'm currently working as a software architect for the SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) platform. I work with product managers on the technical design of future features and with product owners on delivery plans and estimations. Mostly, though, I work with our engineering team—ensuring we’re aligned across departments and the product architecture has the flexibility to support future business needs.
My journey at SolarWinds started with a simple message from a recruiter. I wasn’t actively looking for a change, but the message got my interest. I was already familiar with SolarWinds, and references were positive. While doing interview preparation, I became increasingly curious and interested in what SolarWinds does and its product portfolio. During interviews, I found SolarWinds to be an incredibly good match for my future career plans—the job would allow me to build interesting and complex products and work with a team of experienced and smart people, and I knew I was going to learn a lot in the process.
What do you love about engineering? And how do you apply that in your day-to-day life?
I like finding elegant solutions to challenging problems, and I like to learn. The design and implementation aspects of computer engineering allow me to do both. I enjoy learning about the latest ideas and technologies, and I get a chance to apply those concepts in creative ways—like translating software design into source code.
I like that computer engineering requires teamwork. While coding is usually done individually, at the enterprise level, we need teamwork to succeed. Working together on challenges, discussing ideas, and celebrating team successes—these are the things that make this job so impactful.
What features or products are you working on? What’s their importance in today’s landscape?
Right now, I’m working with engineering on unifying the
Orion® Platform products into our new SolarWinds Observability SaaS (formerly known as SolarWinds Observability). We’re simplifying the licensing and installation experience for our customers, and, when completed, it will be easier for our customers to pick the right product suite to install or upgrade. Additionally, we’re working on moving our source code into a single repository, which will allow engineering teams to be more flexible when building features and more responsive when it comes to refactoring and developing updates.
Our SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) product has a lot of complexity, as it mixes old mature technologies with current technologies like Angular, Golang, or Kubernetes. This all follows a secure development life cycle with a critical focus on security in each phase.
In today’s landscape, security is huge.
Tell me about the SolarWinds culture in Brno. What is it like working at the Brno office?
The team in Brno is one of the reasons I joined SolarWinds. I'm on one of 40 teams at the site, and the people are all supportive and exceptionally talented. We’re working on device and technology integrations, machine learning, security, performance and scalability optimizations, and CI/CD pipeline improvements.
The team has a great buddy program that allows new Solarians to gain a great deal of knowledge and experience extremely quickly. I appreciate the comfortable relationships among the team. Although the Brno team is big, the atmosphere in Brno is informal. We listen to and trust each other, and there’s huge learning and growth potential for engineers at all levels.
Learn More About SolarWinds
SolarWinds is continuing to grow across all sites, and across many positions (engineering, IT, marketing, and sales), this year. If you’re interested in working for an industry leader and joining a culture that focuses on learning and collaboration, check out our
full listing of job opportunities. Our university relations team also looks forward to returning to the Brno University of Technology for the 27th annual iKariéra job fair in April.
