Podcast: Break Things on Purpose | Carmen Saenz, Senior DevOps Engineer at Apex Clearing

In an episode of the "Break Things on Purpose" podcast, Ana Medina speaks with Carmen Saenz, a Senior DevOps Engineer at Apex Clearing, about her experiences transitioning from on-premises systems to cloud environments and her journey in chaos engineering. Carmen recounts a critical incident from her early career involving configuration management errors at a high-frequency trading firm and how chaos engineering practices were later implemented to prevent similar issues. She discusses the challenges of adapting to cloud-native systems, including the abstraction of networking and the importance of understanding fundamental concepts that can be overlooked in cloud environments. Carmen also shares insights into her passion for teaching and her pursuit of a Ph.D. at DePaul University, where she aims to integrate her industry knowledge with academia and bring more representation to the field. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of continuous learning, asking questions, and leveraging community resources to navigate the evolving landscape of technology.