Meet the Team: Zach Vidibor

The Bitnami team is a diverse group of talented people distributed all over the world. Get to know them better through this series of blog posts.

Zach is the Head of Enterprise Sales and is part of our remote team based in London, UK.

A Brief Bio

Although I was born and raised in Silicon Valley (Mountain View to be exact), my journey into technology was never one I planned. In my younger years I thought I would either be a professional mountain climber, a Navy SEAL, or a mechanical engineer...but somehow by the time I got to college I ended up studying political science and working at a radio station. And, not surprisingly, by the time I was finishing college, all I knew was I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I ended up getting a sales job for a company called Ricoh, selling printers and copiers. Anyone who’s had a job like this before will know, it’s a very difficult ‘first sales job’ to have, and didn’t leave me thinking this was my future either. But, I had the good fortune of running into a very old family friend at a party and striking up a conversation about what I should do next. She was an early employee at LinkedIn and suggested I meet with some people over there who were building out their first inside sales org. Needless to say, I met some amazing people and this is where everything changed as they say. I’ve been in technology sales ever since. What I found out was that sales was something radically different than I had thought, and was something that I could find great satisfaction in. I’ve always been extremely passionate and interested in how things work, and I discovered sales was a path to getting behind the scenes and discovering how countless different businesses function. On top of that, I could bring in technology to help people fix, improve, and transform their businesses. That is what I ultimately fell in love with about technology and my career in sales.

Why did you join Bitnami and what excites you about working here?

Bitnami is exciting for me for so many reasons. First, I’ve always loved stories about companies that ‘punched above their weight’ so to speak. The companies that everyone’s heard of, but don’t realize how big of an impact they’ve had until you’re on the inside. As I began to peel back the layers I saw that while Bitnami was not a very large company it had incredible reach, partnerships, and influence. On top of that, all of the people that I met across the board were just downright impressive individuals. I know it’s cliche to say it’s the people, but it really was the case for me. I found a group of people that I wanted to learn from and build with. From a business standpoint I was fascinated by all of the unique skills and capabilities the company has, and the different areas this gives us an opportunity to be relevant in. From a technology standpoint, there were many things I found very interesting, but our work in Kubernetes was the most exciting to me. The company I was at prior to Bitnami relied heavily on Kubernetes - I saw up close the leverage and velocity it enabled for the business and knew I had to be involved with it in some capacity going forward.

What are you working on?

Right now I’m working on helping Bitnami bring all of our unique technology and expertise to the enterprise. Specifically I’m focused on our direct sales efforts, building alliances with partners, and our overall go-to-market strategy.

Enjoying the, "best meal of his life" while traveling with his wife!

What do you like to do for fun?

More than anything else, my wife and I love to travel and explore. We like to do that not only in far away places, but also find all those hidden gems right in our backyard. No matter where we are, I love to eat and cook... a lot. My most cherished possessions are probably my cast iron pan and Japanese knives if that gives you any idea. I also love to mountain bike and snowboard whenever I get the chance.

Interested in working with Bitnami and Zach? Apply for one of our open positions!

Meet the Team: Liesse Jones

The Bitnami team is a diverse group of talented people distributed all over the world. Get to know them better through this series of blog posts.

Based in our San Francisco office, Liesse is our Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the CEO and COO of Bitnami.

A Brief Bio

After attending design school in Toronto, I moved back to the US and started managing businesses in the beauty and fashion sector. I discovered that I loved working with people and helping them reach their personal and professional goals. When I decided to transition to the tech industry it was really important to me to find a place where I could continue to do this and also be encouraged to reach my fullest professional potential. I have definitely found this at Bitnami.

Why you joined Bitnami and what excites you about working here? 

At Bitnami, our company values are the guiding light for everything that we do. Make It So, Team Up, Empower Users, Value Simplicity, and Stay Curious. As part of the Operations team, I’m encouraged to take ownership of projects, come up with straightforward solutions, and help the entire company succeed. I love that questions are celebrated here and that we are all excited to learn new things each day.

What are you working on?

Just a small glimpse of our new office

We just recently moved to a beautiful new office in the Jackson Square neighborhood of San Francisco. For the past few months, I had been working non-stop on this office move project and I am excited to finally share the new space with our team.

There’s a lot of glass and natural light in the new office and I’m really excited to see how that energizes all of the current and new employees that we are bringing to the team. Creating a
productive and peaceful work environment is something that I feel really strongly about.

Now that the office move is over, I will have the opportunity to work closely with the marketing team to help them with projects like social media and our monthly newsletter. I look forward to #teamingup and growing my skill set while still keeping the SF office afloat with my Office Manager duties.

What do you like to do for fun?

After work you’ll usually find me at a yoga class or searching for the best tacos in San Francisco. I love spending time outside on a sunny weekend and exploring museums on grey days.

Interested in working with Bitnami and Liesse? Apply for one of our open positions!

Meet the team: Felipe

The Bitnami team is a diverse group of talented people distributed all over the world. Get to know them better through this series of blog posts.

Based in Madrid, Felipe works remotely as a Kubernetes Engineers on our Kubernetes squad.

A Brief Bio

I was born and raised in Madrid. At the age of 8, I saw a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in a small shop near my house and I fell in love with it. I used it mostly to play games and connected to an old black and white TV. After playing with the system more, I started to get curious to about how it worked.

At that time there weren’t many computer magazines, but the few that did exist talked about games and how to hack games (do you remember poke and randomize usr?). Eventually, I was lucky enough to have my parents buy me an Amstrad CPC 6128, which is when I started to learn how to program. I even wrote a small stocks application for my father’s business, although he never got to use it because he preferred to run his business the old way. And then, one Christmas, after the 3 Kings Night, I received my first PC with 640KB of memory and a 20MB hard-disk drive and one 5 ¼” floppy drive. 

Fast-forward into the future, my life revolved around computers. I attended university in 1992 to study Computer Science, but quit soon afterwards and started to work for a financial company in 1997. Later on, I switched careers and moved into consulting and training to join Google in Zürich in 2006, then Telefónica in 2013 and now Bitnami in 2018.

I still remembers those days when there was no Internet, games were bought or traded with friends, and magazines mostly focused on low-level assembly or video games. Then, the modems (US Robotics) came. First 9,200 bauds, then 14,400, then 28,800 and finally 56k, using a POTS which I shared with my parents. There were so many times when my dial-up connection broke because my father tried to speak on the phone while I was using the modem. Then, circa 1992, I got my first 256 kbps ADSL connection, which changed everything. Not just because of the speed, but because of the price. The days of using CompuServer or the BBS were behind us. Then came Linux. I switched from Windows to Linux when the only Linux distro was the SLS. Then, Slackware, then RedHat, then I bought a Mac and I have been using macOS since then.

Why you joined Bitnami and what excites you about working here? 

I switched because I want to work on bleeding-edge technology like Kubernetes, be part of a great community of engineers, and contribute to open-source. During the interview process, the team showed me of how cool Bitnami was and I was convinced that this was the place I needed to be. :-)

What are you working on?

I am one of the core engineers working on Bitnami Kubernetes Production Runtime, which adds additional functionality to an existing Kubernetes cluster. For instance, logging and alerting, ingress routing, automatic DNS name publishing for Kubernetes services, transparent TLS termination for HTTP/S traffic using Letsencrypt, etc.

This framework leverages existing open source components, maintained and packaged by Bitnami, with security and ease of use in mind, plus accompanying command-line tools and documentation to deploy and use.

If you'd like to be notified when it is released, sign-up here. 

Enjoying the outdoors with his family

 What do you like to do for fun?

I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, traveling to new (and not so new) places, and going hiking to the mountains.

Interested in working with Bitnami and Felipe? Apply for one of our open positions!

Meet the team: Randy Chang

The Bitnami team is a diverse group of talented people distributed all over the world. Get to know them better through this series of blog posts.

Based in our San Francisco office, Randy works on our Accounting team as our Controller.

A Brief Bio

I was born in Los Angeles but moved around a lot as a kid.  I was blessed with the opportunity to experience multiple cultures in my developmental years, living in Paraguay, Taiwan, and Singapore.  This has taught me that the world is larger that what we know it as and everything comes with perspective.

All the movement growing up shook my focus, and I was constantly bored in my studies and academics. My mother, being a tiger parent always wanted a doctor, lawyer and an accountant in the family. My sister became a surgeon, my brother an attorney, and I was left with slim pickings.

I studied business administration/accounting at San Francisco State, juggling full-time work and school for 6 years.  In those years, I funded my college education through online poker, worked at a regional tax firm (through a partner who I met at the tables) and developed a regional market for a consumer goods company.

Enjoying the sites in Sydney

Being in San Francisco, growth companies were the hype and I had to see what it was about.  I joined as an accountant and quickly fell in love with fast-paced high-growth startups.  In a short amount of time, I went through a series of acquisitions and promotions and landed as the Finance Director for a pre-IPO Marketing technology company.

In 2014, I flew to Taiwan for my 10-year high school reunion where I met my now wife.  In the span of 36 months, I’ve uprooted 3 times, living in Sydney, London and Toronto, got married, travelled the world, while managing the finance and operations of a midsize company.




Why you joined Bitnami and what excites you about working here? 

I joined Bitnami because I felt like I could add a lot of value to an organization that I’m used to working in.  I think Bitnami is at a very interesting point in its maturity and has major potential.

What excites me the most is the opportunity to work with people from different cultures and backgrounds. To me, one of my greatest joys is collaborating with various teams on cross-functional projects.

What are you working on?

As the controller, I work closely with Philip and Susana to ensure the finances are in order.  Aside from managing cash, spend, and financial reporting, I work with internal and external stakeholders to ensure information is reported in a timely and orderly fashion.

This translates to is making sure the company has visibility into all aspects of the business, which means I will partner with all teams to gather, parse, analyze and deliver the information that is requested.

What do you like to do for fun?

These days I like to go to the gym and spend time with my wife and my parents. I can enjoy a good hike, camping, golf, water sports, or scuba diving. And I can talk about anything, but can really enjoy a conversation about commerce, people, or travel.

Interested in working with Bitnami and Randy? Apply for one of our open positions!