DevCentral's Featured Member for July - Sebastián Sierra Domínguez

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member Sebastián Sierra Domínguez is our Featured Member for July! He's been on a tear lately with helping other members so let's catch up with Sebastián!

DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important.

Sebastián: Good morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening to everyone, my name is Sebastián Sierra Domínguez I am a system engineer in love with F5 technologies. I live in Spain but I´m originally from Colombia, I packed my baggage more than 3 years ago and decide to leave my life in Colombia and start a new life in Spain one of the most remarkable decisions in my life.

I started with F5 solutions since 2015 and from this day I never stopped learning new things and expanding my knowledge. In my free time, I like going to work out, cycling, jogging, playing basketball, roller skating, and other things that represent a good lifestyle, because we keep many times seated for a lot of hours working.

DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community.  What keeps you involved?

Sebastián: Well, DevCentral for me was always one of the best free communities with difference from other vendors, and I decided to keep involved because when you help other people, at the same time you are reinforcing your knowledge and creating new "a win to win", in many times I have to turn on an F5 device to test a feature and found a solution to help the community. and absolutely because this community around the years provided me always support and I think that this type of platform must keep working always and with the help of everyone we can make it's possible.

DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have.

Sebastián: For the last 8 years, I have been working dedicated to F5 deployments with all the different modules in F5, BIG-IP LTM, ASM, GTM-LC, APM, AFM,BIG-IQ, and Advanced Protocols, but life was not beautiful always,  I had a lot of works as technical support, SW and FW administrator, Linux operator, probably the best base to be a humble person who always listens to fist the customer and try to meet all their requirements.

DevCentral: You are a Security Specialist at Logicalis Spain. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the pandemic impacted your work?

Sebastián: At Logicalis I help our clients to develop and deploy F5 products to meet technology necessities, government requirements, security improvement, and many other use cases.

I start my day with a good coffee from Colombia, I read my emails and prepare all the necessary meetings with my customers for the different projects that I have to meet, I deploy many labs, test a lot of configurations and probably this is one of the reasons that makes me participate constantly in the DevCentral community, I'm always looking to extend and improve the deployments with my customer to give the best customer service, one of my personal focus in each project.

Covid-19 changed my life absolutely, before pandemic I always woke up early and prepare for going to the office, and now everything is different, work remotely is an amazing benefit, but trying to keep a good lifestyle when you are all day in the home is fundamental, balance your work and time for your self is not always easy but is important keep always in mind because personal time and family time is one of the most important things in life.

DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

Sebastián: I'm 401-CSE security and 402-CSE cloud around 4 years ago and I always re-certify my exams, it is important for my company for many customer processes, and of course, it is important for me because it helps you to differentiate from other candidates in interviews for example, and this was the key point that helps me to move to Spain with a work permit, so yes, it helps me to improve my life and my career opportunities and I only can to thank the incredible work from the Dr. KJ (Ken) Salchow and their amazing certification team.

DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation.

Sebastián: Well, I think that is difficult to determine what is the biggest customer challenge that the community helps me to solve. because I continue using the public F5 resources such as AskF5 and Devcentral to improve and solve many issues that I found in my customers day to day. and of course, I have to mention the technical support that provides F5, probably one of the best of all vendors, I always call F5 support when I have a critical issue, and in 80% of the cases I solving the issue with their help.

DevCentral: Lastly, if you weren’t doing what you’re doing – what would be your dream career? Or better yet, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

Sebastián: Becoming a system engineer was my second plan in life, I always liked machine function and mechanical engineering was my first plan but unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to study this career.

And today I think that my knowledge allows me to use all the F5 modules to develop solutions that help to improve the security and functionality of my customer's applications, and in other perspectives, this is like building a machine taking pieces of software that makes a specific function.

---Thanks Sebastián! The DC Community really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Sebastián on social media:

• Sebastián on LinkedIn
• Logicalis on Twitter
• Logicalis on LinkedIn