This is my first blog post. I’m going to write about my career story — from my studying engineering at university to my current role as a founding engineer at a startup today.
This is my confession in a way: I’m going to justify why I changed my career path at each stage, explain what I’m doing today, and share where I’m taking the lessons learned from my former colleagues and mentors.
Also, this is a guidepost for younger professionals who are thinking about their career path.
Initially, I planned to work as a production or quality engineer in manufacturing because I saw great potential in applying automotive quality engineering principles to medical products—insights I gained during my internship at Valeo in France.
However, PwC offered me a job opportunity to work as a technology consultant when I joined their cybersecurity hackathon in Tokyo in 2017. I saw it as a great opportunity to learn about multiple types of manufacturing and business models, so I took it. They expected me to work as a cybersecurity consultant, but I joined the technology advisory team, which supported a broader range of technology and business topics, because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into a specific domain yet.
Since then, I have been working as an engineer-minded consultant (or engineer working as a consultant?) for 3-4 years at PwC and Gartner.
In these years, I have been working with a lot of different types of projects but always for leading Japan manufacturing companies: Cloud governance design, global digital business development, factory security enhancement, etc.
One day, a chance meeting at a social event in Tokyo led to a connection with an engineer at Google. He encouraged me to apply, and I was offered a unique role as a Technical Solutions Manager. Today, he is building Gemini in NYC. While my heart remained with the manufacturing sector, I couldn’t deny my passion for coding and hacking. The role of Technical Solutions Manager aligned perfectly with my identity as a technology consultant and hacker in the best sense. Also, I saw this as a strategic opportunity to immerse myself in the technical culture and organizational methodology of a global tech giant. I joined with a clear goal of absorbing these insights to apply them to my future endeavors. I didn’t plan to stay long. But team members and my boss I worked with are still good friends and mentors, and I still keep in touch with them today.
After leaving Google, I was planning to support my ex-colleague’s project, SecureKernel. However, I also got an interesting offer from Norstella at the same time, which aimed to solve the drug loss problem in Japan. I decided to join Norstella during the week to tackle the social issue, while supporting SecureKernel on weekends.
As time went by, the cybersecurity landscape in Japan has been changing rapidly. The government has been promoting the use of AI and cloud computing, and the need for cybersecurity has been increasing. I felt that I could contribute to the cybersecurity landscape in Japan by building a B2B SaaS product to enhance organizational cybersecurity.
In addition to these experiences, I also support startups in Tokyo as a freelance technology consultant since April 2024. There are so many talented people and high-potential projects in this megalopolis, and I’m enjoying boosting them up with my expertise.
By the way, the ex-colleague I mentioned above was in the office of the hackathon I joined at PwC in 2017. I believe my career is built on a foundation of long-lasting relationships that transcend companies and roles.
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