Seven Questions With...

Location: San Francisco, CA

Role at SentiLink: Director of Infrastructure and InfoSec

Previous role: InfoSec Manager, Affirm

Trevor Hodges joined SentiLink nearly two years ago, bringing a broad range of engineering and cybersecurity expertise to the organization. Today, he leads the team that keeps our systems secure, partner information protected to bank-level standards, and everything operating efficiently and in line with demanding SLAs.

We are truly fortunate to have his extensive experience ensuring we can deliver best-in-class identity and trust solutions. In fact, while quite a few SentiLinkers are alums of Affirm , Trevor is the only team member to hit the previous-employer-trifecta of Affirm, NASA...and an aquarium!

What's your typical day like at SentiLink?

While each day does follow some common themes, overall what I love about my work is that each presents new challenges, many of which are unique and very interesting.

That said, some common threads throughout my day-to-day include:

• Improving operational visibility. How can we best identify anomalous conditions across all of our systems and technical infrastructure? Answering this question is incredibly challenging and important. Situational awareness is critical to both infrastructure and security.
• Systems architecture design and development. We’re continuously striving to identify systems and architectures that enable our technical teams to have the biggest impact. New products come out daily and old services are constantly being updated and improved on. We’re constantly working to leverage these capabilities in ways that bring joy to our Engineers by improving systems and processes.
• Building the best team we can! One thing I love about SentiLink is that the great organization feels like one large team. We’re all working together to have the biggest impact we can within our industry.

Personally speaking, I believe the split would be about 30/30/40 between the three, with slightly more time going into team development.

The two things I enjoy most about my day-to-day would be:

1. Solving complex problems, and
2. Having a large impact

How did you get started in your field of expertise?

As a kid I was naturally drawn to computers and technology. I began using my first hex and resource editors in middle school in the early 90s, leveraging them to make minor tweaks and hacks to games. This was before I even knew the internet existed, and before I had any real resources to deeply understand what I was doing.

Receiving my first 14400 baud modem as a kid was a pivotal moment in my life. Without any real mentors I began learning how to develop software on my own. This was before beginning high school. In college I studied Computer Engineering, which gave me deep exposure across fields of electrical engineering, computer architecture, and microprocessor design.

Throughout my studies I had a pervasive and consistent interest in InfoSec. This interest started with application security (spanning from buffer overflows to web application security) but quickly evolved as the industry grew. As a kid I appreciated the culture of hacking, reading zines like Phrack and 2600. As technology increasingly permeated every day life, this became a great industry to be involved in. Really, I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time.

The combination of my own natural draw towards cutting edge technology and the ever growing need for large data processing naturally led to developing systems and software within cloud environments. And before I knew it this became my major area of expertise.

What's the most interesting thing you've worked on at SentiLink?

This is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Choosing one is impossible. So I’m going to give a vague, all-encompassing answer instead.

The culmination of all of the work we do is for sure the most interesting: we develop many small pieces that, when combined, are capable of massively reducing fraud rates. Understanding those many small pieces in detail and then, as a whole, watching the impact in real-time is really, really cool.

Of SentiLink's Corporate Values (Follow Through, Deep Understanding, Whatever it Takes, Do Something Smart), which would you say is the one that guides you most in the day-to-day of your job, and why?

For sure it’s “Deep Understanding.” I’m naturally drawn to understanding how things work. I’m a tinkerer and a hacker. I’m always trying to understand the internal workings of systems.

What advice would you give to someone applying for a role at SentiLink?

Demonstrate genuine interest in the work. Find a way to communicate that, with this genuine interest, you’d like to work hard to solve interesting problems. We’re always seeking collaborative, hard working employees who want to make a big impact. We’re not trying to hire employees who simply want to put in an 8 hour day and call it quits. Many problems in our industry aren’t yet solved. We’re seeking people who take ownership in solving difficult problems. Sometimes this can be a lot of work. But it’s also a lot of fun!

What's the very first thing you ever purchased on Amazon?

I had to go back and check for this one. What a blast from the past! It was a textbook called “Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers,” back in Jan. 2003. This was back when Amazon was mainly known as a bookstore. The next purchase, 8 months later, was also a textbook. Back in the day using Amazon for buying used books was a hack to save some much needed cash in college.

What's your hidden talent, something that can't be found on your LinkedIn profile?

I love snowboarding. I used to go up dozens of times each season and, while I no longer make it up nearly that frequently, I’m still pretty decent. The only issue is that nowadays I get hurt much more easily and my injuries don’t heal.