Describe your role at Sumo Logic?
I’ve been at Sumo Logic for over two years. Currently, I am a Senior Technical Account Manager (TAM), and was previously a Customer Success Engineer.
Our primary goal in the Customer Success group is to ensure customers get the best value from the Sumo Logic Continuous Intelligence Platform™. As a TAM, I work really closely with our premium support customers designing solutions, working together on use cases, helping with data tiering, consulting on architecture, and hosting training and enablement workshops. The TAM team is also a voice for the customer interacting with the product development teams.
Prior to coming to Sumo Logic, you were a customer. What made you want to come to Sumo?
I was a customer of Sumo Logic for four years as one of its largest customers in APAC. I was involved in the Customer Advisory Board and was really impressed both with the Sumo leaders that I met, the partnerships they had built, and how enthusiastic other customers were about the product.
I joined Sumo Logic because I loved the product and wanted to be part of the outstanding customer success team that helps others successfully leverage their investment in our platform. As a whole, the company has been welcoming, and since it’s a fast-growing company, you always feel like there is plenty of room to grow.
Coming to Sumo Logic from Xero was a great career move for me. Sumo is a welcoming and positive place to work. It also works well for me because it’s growing fast, so opportunities abound. It’s big enough to have process and structure but still small enough you can make a real difference.
What do you like most about your job?
There is always lots to learn, since we have strong observability and security use cases across a very wide range of technologies. I also believe we have a great leadership team at Sumo Logic, and I feel like our company values matter here. Even though the company has grown a lot and we are now a public company, I feel like everyone is working together to build a great platform and product for our customers.
In the APAC region, we have a great diverse team of people across geographies. Everyone pulls together and we have a great team vibe. That multi-cultural aspect and getting to meet people from other countries and cultures is something that I really like.
“I was a customer of Sumo Logic for four years as one of its largest customers in APAC… I was always really impressed both with the leaders that I met, the partnerships they had built, and how enthusiastic other customers were about the product.”
What parts of our mission and/or values do you connect with?
I’m a firm believer in cloud services. I love that our service is a true cloud-native, multi-tenant, easily, scalable solution with a fast time to value. I’ve been in IT a long time, and after spending many years designing and implementing ‘on prem’ tools, which often takes 1-2 years per project, it’s great working with a cloud platform where we have the product online in a few hours.
Being “in it with our customers” is a key Sumo value that really resonates with me. In customer success it’s all about aligning and working with the customer to achieve business objectives. With Sumo Logic, we are building real partnerships with our customers.
What have been your biggest/proudest accomplishments while at Sumo Logic?
I’ve received several awards for living company values, for which I feel very honored! Positive feedback is important to me, and I feel like I’m appreciated here, which keeps me motivated.
Name a role model or person who inspires you?
I spent five years at Xero and was always inspired by Rod Drury, the founder, and CEO. His passion for building a great product and the way he could take everyone on a journey together was amazing. His servant leadership approach was a real game-changer for me. I learned that you can be your authentic self and succeed on your own terms. Even being vulnerable and imperfect just made people love him more! So that gave me the confidence and courage to do the same.
How do you spend your time outside of Sumo?
I have two teenage daughters and two demanding cats, so family time consumes most of my time outside work. I also really enjoy playing guitar and keyboard as an amateur musician in a couple of local ‘dads’ cover bands. My wife and I spend a lot of time at the beach and do a fair bit of sea kayaking. Our new adventure for 2022 is using a caravan that we just bought.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Sumo?
Even though I’m based in New Zealand, I work daily with customers in APAC and the Sumo teams around the world. The majority of customers I work with have cloud footprints, modern apps on platforms like serverless or Kubernetes, and use a lot of modern SRE/software practices, so that’s a great place to be working right now for me. It’s an interesting mix of those at the ‘bleeding edge,’ or are leaders in the field, and helping those earlier on in their cloud or digital transformation journey.
How have you grown professionally during your time at Sumo?
I’ve learned a lot about security through working with Sumo’s Security Analytics, Cloud SIEM, and SOAR products. That’s been interesting, since my experience in the past was more in the old skool “IT operations” organizations, or more recently, Platform-as-a-Service or SRE teams. So, we would touch on security infrastructure or process but not get into the real stuff. At Sumo Logic, I get to see a lot more of the security practices and technology when I’m working with SOC teams utilizing Sumo’s security products.
One of my goals for working at Sumo is to ensure I work with a lot of different customers in a direct customer role. Customer success touches on quite a few areas, such as customer relationships, sales cycles, professional services, great demos, renewals and commercials, and much more, and I’ve been really pleased with my experience at the company.
What’s one thing that your co-workers don’t know about you?
When I was a toddler, my parents called me Mowgli the Frog, from the Jungle Book, because I was super skinny and my nappies kept falling off!
Want to join our team? Sumo Logic is hiring around the globe! Check out our current openings .
