Welcome to our Featured Member Series. This month we shine the spotlight on one of our newest MVPs @tysmith .
DevCentral: To start, please introduce yourself and tell our community a little bit about you. What you do and why is it important?
Tyler: I’m Tyler Smith, I work at Sheetz (a regional convenience and fuel chain of 800+ stores) as the Product Security Manager. My role is to ensure that applications across our footprint are assessed for software security - focusing mostly on homegrown apps. We manage security integrations into the CI/CD process, conduct offensive testing operations, perform threat modeling, and assist with vulnerability remediation and mitigations.
DevCentral: As a Product Security Manager at Sheetz, what is your typical workday like?
Tyler: My work days are split among a multitude of roles. I curate our backlog and help keep relative priorities straight of what Sheetz needs next from a practical security perspective. I mentor the team to help them grow in technical proficiency. And I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to most effectively enable customer experiences despite, like all large companies, hiding a mountain of technical debt behind the scenes.
DevCentral: Can you give us a glimpse into your technical expertise?
Tyler: I’ve worked as a software engineer, security engineer, data engineer, pen tester, and now manager. As a result, my expertise is more in line with application development. SDLC security is my bread and butter. That said, I’ve done a lot of work standing up our defensive security stack, including (essentially) greenfielding WAF on BigIP for our critical apps, rolling Shape bot defense, and then onboarding _most_ features across Distributed Cloud HTTP load balancers.
DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, how have they helped in your career?
Tyler: Nope! Fortunately I have engineer partners who I can lean on for implementation on BigIP, where I have intentionally kept my hands as clean as possible - security is more of an add-on in that environment. Distributed Cloud, on the other hand, it’s largely been experimental learning and feedback loops to F5. I’m looking to get more formal training now that the platform has matured over the past years. I’m eager for official certification paths for XC, should they ever manifest.
DevCentral: What drew you into the DevCentral Community and what keeps you engaged?
Tyler: My community participation was largely driven by the F5 academy program - specifically the Pittsburgh user’s group (shoutout to Maurice for cultivating such an effective learning environment). It was my intro to F5 outside of our internal use cases. Since we were so early to XC, I was invited to share my experience and the solution we developed leveraging the platform. I got to share a modified version of the talk at AppWorld ‘25 which was an awesome experience as well. What keeps me engaged is really how F5 works to solicit feedback from the community and leverage our collective inputs for what needs to happen Next. I’ve participated in tons of academy trainings, f5 insiders, executive customer advisory board, and now the MVP program. A consistent theme is that when asked, the community is motivated to provide active feedback and do problem solving. In short? It’s fun to solve problems with likeminded folks using a variety of ADSP tools.
DevCentral: Can you share with the community a time a mishap occurred and how community help you resolve? (Does not have to be the DevCentral Community)
Tyler: I didn’t play sports growing up, but as an adult I’ve picked up roller and ice hockey. There’s been plentiful learning opportunities for me - skating, shooting, awareness on the ice, confidence with the puck, the list goes on and on. The key to getting better is practice - but also feedback. The community of folks with a stronger background giving tips and advice is a huge accelerator to improvement.
I think the same can be observed with the DevCentral Community, too. When I’m at F5 events I feel like I’m brand new to the space - most people have been writing iRules since before I had a career. When I’ve had questions, though, the community is welcoming and willing to help.
DevCentral: What does community mean to you?
Tyler: Any collective of individuals with shared goals. A group of people living in a neighborhood all want to feel safe. My pickup hockey league wants everyone to play safely, have fun, and get better every week. Cybersecurity practitioners all want the collective ‘good guys’ to be so good at security that adversaries are priced out of the market. The F5 community wants to see the products we leverage to get better and to be used effectively to create a better internet.
The type of goal is different, sure, but in the end that’s what makes a community.
DevCentral: If you could have a piece of technology from a movie, TV show, or book, what would you choose and why?
Tyler: I have never really thought about this question before. It’s probably cheating to say Iron Man’s suit, since there’s so much tech built in… so I’ll settle for the arc reactor. It’d be amazing to have a source of clean near-infinite power to get things done. Think about how (positively) disruptive that would be to the world! A Back to the Future DeLorean is also on the short list, but time travel rules are too finicky to really deal with.
DevCentral: If you could give advice to someone starting their journey in the tech world, what would it be?
Tyler: Don’t rely on generative AI, please. Like any tool that has preceded, it has great opportunity to be an output multiplier, but you absolutely *must* understand the fundamentals and - more importantly - how to ask good questions of the output. Be skeptical and keep an engineering mindset. When you can’t explain something, do a “five ‘why’s” exercise. That’s a great way to facilitate better learning (and to not get caught in a rabbit hole).
DevCentral: What’s a skill you’ve always wanted to learn but never had the chance to?
Tyler: I love the emotional impact of music, so I always tell myself I’m going to finally find some time to learn piano. That time hasn’t quite come yet, just the flutters of YouTube lessons and a few clunky Christmas tunes.
DevCentral: If you weren’t in your current profession what would be your dream job?
Tyler: Mechanic, hands down. It scratches a lot of the same itches of problem-solving, but in a much more tangible way. Fortunately, I can dabble with DIY-level maintenance for the family.
DevCentral: With summer on the horizon what is your favorite summer activity or hobby?
Tyler: Lots to choose from here! If I had to pick one thing, it would have to be outdoor roller hockey. It’s great exercise and it’s just the right amount of competition. We all know we’re just there to have fun, but nobody wants to lose. The opportunity to spend a few hours out in the sun is great, too. Being at a desk for 8 hours a day is just as bad for the soul as it is for your body.
DevCentral: Lastly, what inspires you?
Tyler: I’m inspired by learning - both by myself and in others. There’s a joy in solving a problem that is hard to replicate otherwise. But there’s a second order to that when you can see you helped someone else with theirs. Mentoring, running hackathons, giving talks, even answering forum questions - it’s all exposure to helping people learn. I love being able to be part of that. It’s part of the human experience.
- Connect with Tyler on LinkedIn
Thank you, Tyler, for your contributions to our community and allowing us to have you as our Featured Member for May!