Google Engineer's Leap of Faith: From Software to Cybersecurity

Prerit Pathak, a 28-year-old security engineer at Google in New York City, has shared his story of transitioning from software engineering to cybersecurity. He started his career as a software engineer at Dell Technologies in India before developing an interest in cybersecurity.

Pathak's fascination with cybersecurity began when he was a kid and would jailbreak his devices to enhance their capabilities. However, he didn't pursue it immediately and instead accepted a job offer for a software engineering position at Dell during his senior year of undergraduate studies.

Through his work as a software engineer, Pathak continued to develop his skills in cybersecurity by reporting vulnerabilities on public websites and receiving appreciation letters from top universities and organizations. He also set up a local chapter of the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, a nonprofit organization focused on application security.

Pathak eventually decided to pursue a career in cybersecurity full-time and moved to the US to attend graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University. After completing his internship at Google, he was offered a full-time position as a security engineer two months after earning his master's degree.

As a security engineer, Pathak creates and runs threat simulations to replicate adversary behavior in enterprise environments. He advises software engineers looking to transition to cybersecurity to use their technical skills to their advantage, focus on communication skills, and learn what working in cybersecurity actually looks like.