In Conversation With Nayo Akinyele

We sat down with Nayo, a Platform Engineer to have a chat about her career, her time at Cazoo and what drives her to keep improving.

How did you get into Tech in the first place and what then drove you towards Platform based roles?

I worked as a QA analyst and found my role very repetitive. I didn’t understand the applications I was testing because I didn’t build them or communicate with the developers.

Luckily, I found a Junior DevOps role in a Cloud Platform team. Everyday was different. However, it was a very steep learning curve!

Why did you leave your last role and what made you want to work at Cazoo?

I was working for a large organisation and realised that I prefer working for small/medium-sized companies. There’s less process and it’s easier to get work done. I also wanted to work with more Platform Engineers in a Serverless First company.

I loved that Cazoo was solving a problem that I had faced recently when buying a car.

Did anything stand out when you first joined Cazoo?

How friendly and helpful everyone was. I asked so many questions when I joined and everyone takes the time out to help you understand and answer those questions.

I also noticed that everyone at Cazoo cares about the end user.

Are there any big differences between Platform at Cazoo and your previous work?

So at Cazoo, Platform engineers aren’t embedded within a product team. I’m in the Developer Experience team and we provide third-party and internal tooling for Software Engineers to consume.

What has the transition been like coming from a more siloed environment to ours?

It’s been good but also challenging. There are more opinions in the mix, which in turn improves the quality of work. It’s a very collaborative environment. We do pair programming for nearly everything. Everyone’s willing to share their knowledge and there’s no such thing as a silly question.

What do you think one of the main differences between Software Engineers and Platform Engineers?

The Software Engineers are our end users. Whereas the Software Engineers user usually doesn’t work in Cazoo Tech.

What would you say are some of the common challenges software engineers have for you?

There are a lot of questions about best practices for AWS, Infrastructure as Code and Observability. We also get questions about our centralised logging solution. The Platform team are looking to replace it in the near future to improve the reliability and experience for Software Engineers.

And so how do you find the time to help Software Engineers whilst proactively finding ways to improve their experience and work?

The Developer Experience team created a role called Showrunner. That means that one person each week is dedicated to answering questions and supporting Software Engineers, while the rest of the team spends time improving internal tooling.

What’s the thing you’ve worked on that has had the most impact?

At Cazoo, we’re continuously looking to improve our architecture and standards when building cloud infrastructure. We often create RFCs (request for change) to propose a solution to a problem and get approval from all teams.

Recently, I created an RFC for a tagging strategy for AWS resources. When implemented by all teams, tagging will be consistent across Tech and the Platform team will easily be able to identify AWS resources.

We’re hoping to achieve consistency across Cazoo Tech. We also want to avoid everyone solving the same problem.

Are there any specific tools you’re setting these standards for?

The strategy is that we’ll be using Terraform modules, Serverless plugins and shared libraries to create standards within Cazoo Tech. We’ll bake approved standards into those modules so teams don’t have to worry about them. We also encourage Software Engineers to contribute to the shared modules by using PR’s or creating issues. For example, we’ll be creating Terraform modules for AWS resources for teams to consume. The AWS resources will be tagged and have encryption at rest by default.

Obviously, Women in Tech is a big thing and I know at Cazoo we are always looking for new ways to help us become a truly inclusive workplace as possible but how would you rate Cazoo on inclusivity based on your own experience?

I found that Cazoo is a very inclusive place to work. When I joined, I was introduced to the ERG (Employee Resource Group) Slack channels. There’s currently one for people of colour and one for gender equality. I don’t get too involved in those groups, but it’s refreshing and reassuring to know that they’re there.

Overall, I think the statistics are improving. There are currently four women in the platform team with more joining later this year.

There’s a lot of opportunity for people of colour and women in the tech industry right now and you can find discounts to coding bootcamps, events and conferences.

It’s quite easy to find events and conferences through meetup.com and googling.

Do you think the industry has changed much throughout your career? What advice would you give to yourself when you were breaking into this industry?

I’m not sure. Each job I’ve had is very different. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the industry is becoming more open-minded and allowing team autonomy. My advice would be, you do not need to speak up all the time, even if you get told you should. Listen more and ask questions instead. If you don’t feel confident asking questions, find other ways that are less intimidating and form connections with colleagues to build that trust. Also, it’s ok to say no to something and not be the loudest in the room.

And what does the future look like for you?

I want to improve my software development skills — that’s my focus right now. I recently attended Tech Academy at Cazoo, which has helped me learn skills like TDD. Also, I’m hoping to share my Cloud Engineering knowledge a lot more and help software engineers as much as I can.

What would be your advice to someone thinking about joining Cazoo?

Go for it! In the interview, I would say it’s ok to not know everything. I think it’s the nature of the job, but I think it’s important to be honest about not knowing something. Instead, talk about the approach you would take to learn something new or the approach you would take to solving a problem.