An engineer who joined Google after switching from software developer to cybersecurity professional has described his career transition.

Business Insider reported on Oct. 1 that Prerit Pathak (프레리트 파탁), a Google security engineer, began his career as a software engineer at Dell Technologies in India, then went through graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University and a Google internship before joining Google in New York as a full-time employee in 2023.

Pathak said he developed an interest in security as a child by jailbreaking devices, but chose his first job in software development. He later looked for website vulnerabilities alongside his main job and notified site operators. He said he received thanks and recognition from major universities and institutions for vulnerability disclosures and decided to pursue security as a full-time path. He also founded a local chapter of the nonprofit security group OWASP while at Dell.

To build expertise, he moved to the United States in 2021 to study information security at Carnegie Mellon University. He completed a Google security engineering internship the following year, but returned to school because there was no suitable full-time opening on the team at the time. He joined Google in 2023, two months after receiving a master's degree. Pathak said his internship experience, along with two patent applications and vulnerability research results, helped the career switch.

Pathak currently designs and runs threat simulations in corporate environments that replicate real attackers' behavior. Asked which task takes the most time, he said it is analyzing test results and organizing them into a single narrative for reporting.

Pathak advised that when developers move into security, it is important to shift thinking from "how to build a system" to "how it can be abused." He also stressed that interview preparation and communication skills are important along with networking, and that it helps to confirm the context of a question and make a habit of explaining the thought process.