Welcome to “A Day in the Life,” a series spotlighting Foundation Medicine employees across all departments and locations. This frequent series will put you in the shoes of one of our employees for a day in his/her life. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Day in the Life of Jayesh, Cloud Engineer

Jayesh joined Foundation Medicine as a co-op during his time as a graduate student at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to the summer internship program, Foundation Medicine also hosts co-op students who work full time for an academic term in a role that is directly related to their program of study.  Following this experience, he made the decision to return to Foundation Medicine as a full-time cloud engineer after his graduation in May 2020. Because of Jayesh’s passion for his work and commitment to our mission, he is a wonderful example of what it looks like to embody our values. 

  
Why did you decide to join Foundation Medicine and what is your current role? 

I first joined Foundation Medicine as a cloud engineer co-op. I believe that the opportunity to dive into the professional side of cloud computing and Developmental Operations without having prior experience was priceless. The co-op provided me with a learning experience where I grew professionally, rather than being in school where the focus can often be on grades. The most prominent takeaways from my time as a co-op were learning and engaging with different application teams across the organization and understanding the importance of automation. In school, a majority of the projects are done individually, and you rarely get the opportunity to work with different people. Foundation Medicine was the total opposite. You are constantly pushed to engage in cross-team discussions and collaborate to help design highly reliable and calculable solutions using cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services. 
I always wanted to be a part of a company that uses modern technology to have a meaningful impact on the world. Cancer care is arguably one of the most significant scientific developments we have seen in recent decades. During my co-op, I realized that Foundation Medicine would be at the forefront of providing comprehensive genomic profiling to advanced cancer patients and helping the community to become a better place to live. This made my co-op feel even more meaningful. The company culture was equally as important as the technology. And, indeed, I believe that Foundation Medicine’s culture is a core reason for its success. The people here work as a single unit toward the goal of improving cancer care and can have a direct impact on the patient journey. 
The opportunity to work with people of all backgrounds and skill sets to transform cancer care was what thrilled me the most. During the last few weeks of my co-op, I told my manager about my interest in continuing to work at Foundation Medicine, and they worked with me directly to explore opportunities for me to come back as a full-time employee. I was awaiting an official confirmation and was thrilled when I was offered the full-time position. I feel lucky to be a part of such a wonderful organization that is constantly evolving to improve the community in which we live. 
  
Do you have any personal connections to Foundation Medicine's mission?  

My exposure to cancer therapies and treatment started very recently when my aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I have witnessed her journey and come to understand how difficult it becomes for the patient and patient’s family while fighting this disease. Thankfully, her cancer growth was stalled using chemo therapies. It was at that time that I realized that there are many opportunities for cancer care to be improved and for more treatment options to be available around the globe. I am very grateful to have received the opportunity to be part of an organization with a mission to help improve cancer care.  
  
Give us a brief overview of what a regular day as a Foundation Medicine cloud engineer entails. 

As a cloud engineer, I work on maintaining and improving the automation pipeline to facilitate seamless integrations and deployments on the cloud platform. In this role, I constantly collaborate with product owners and other internal stakeholders to design and architect highly scalable and reliable solutions using infrastructure orchestration and management tools. I support various application teams to analyze and debug issues on the cloud platform in order to enable maximum availability of services to the physicians who are relying on our tests to help guide treatment decisions for their patients. 
  
What is the cloud engineering team like at Foundation Medicine?  

The cloud engineering team is responsible for maintaining and managing the cloud infrastructure and the continuous integration and delivery pipeline. The team is tasked with researching new software technologies and implementing these to provide, maintain and monitor the software suite at Foundation Medicine and to achieve company goals more effectively and efficiently. The team collaborates with almost every department within the organization and assists each team with using cloud computing resources to facilitate seamless deployments using the automation pipeline. 
  
What is a current or future project that you are excited about? 

I am currently working on a project to streamline the process of tagging all resources deployed over the Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Resource tagging enables stakeholders to strategize business plans and enhance cost analysis for the cloud platform. This project involves automating the process to implement guard rails on the deployment life cycle to ensure proper tagging for every resource on the cloud platform. It also involves creating automation scripts to identify existing resources on the Amazon Web Services infrastructure and collaborating with respective teams to enable proper tagging.