New Hire Spotlight: Byron De Paz

Our haku team continues to grow! Meet our newest member Byron De Paz, who joins us in the role of QA Engineer. Born and raised in Little Havana, coming from FIU where he worked since 2012 as a student assistant and moved on to a full-time position, now eager to grow and learn new things at haku! Let’s get to know more about Byron. 

What is your role at haku?

I am a QA Engineer, my responsibilities are to ensure quality, functionality, and requirements are met for all delivered features, bugs, and other code changes. I am the gatekeeper of releases, I cannot let any code changes or features ship out to our customers without my stamp of approval.

How did you get into the tech industry? 

I believe it happened in my computer class in Middle School. Then it grew in High School (Miami Senior High) I came across an IT class a teacher was promoting during my freshman year. These courses taught me Network Design, and Visual Basic and I was able to get my A+ certification as well as State Championship trophy for Network Design for FBLA.

At this point, I was torn between IT and Mechanical Engineering, since robotics was something I was interested in. I did Mechanical Engineering for 2 years and then transitioned into Computer Science as I realized that what I was learning and doing in class as an M.E was not bringing me any sense of joy.

Fast forward a few years as getting an A.A. in Computer Science and now finishing a B.S. in IT: Software Engineering, I still have my roots in IT with my home lab where I play around with Virtualization and program small bots for dumb jokes.

What is your idea of a perfect day?  

Depends, I like spending time with family and friends. With Family, it would be spending time with them and talking about life in general. With friends it's a little more dangerous, if we connect virtually, we often choose between what we can build, what we can break, and who can we mess with.

If I meet up with friends in person we would choose between running at a park, biking, or hanging out at Dave & Busters.

Alone, I tend to go people watch at the beach or park while relaxing or catching up on school work or any small project I am working on in the lab.

What is one of your biggest fears? 

Funny (to me): I am afraid of balloons, don’t ask why. I am afraid of spiders, heights, and tight spaces. The tight spaces extend to elevators, planes, and buses.

Sentimental: Not being a great father. Although I am not planning on being one now, when I am ready, I hope to be the best one I can be.

What has been a memorable life experience for you? 

Coming in 2nd place in the Future Business Leaders of America State Championships for Network Design in High School. Miami Lakes Educational Center got 3rd place and for context, the teacher for their IT program was my teacher’s teacher.

What is a major accomplishment in your professional career? 

When my team was reduced to just my supervisor and myself, I was able to keep as much of the department functionality going while we recovered. This was due to all the knowledge I gained while working there, always wanting to learn more, thanks to that, when I was needed I was not afraid to step up to the plate.

What is something you will splurge on regardless of circumstances? 

Pens! I collect pens, I want to have the world's perfect pen, but I still haven’t found it. I have some from Japan, Germany, and from around the world.

Recommended pens that I use:

Pilot G-2 0.5mm (fine)

Pilot Varsity (fountain)

Platinum Preppy (fountain)

Zebra Surari 0.5mm (fine)

Pilot Juice 0.38mm (ultra fine)

Pilot Juice up 0.4mm (ultra fine)

Zebra Sarasa line (various) - one of my favorites

Pilot Hi-Tec-c 0.38mm (ultra fine)

If money and time were not an issue, what is something you would do tomorrow? 

I bring all my family together from wherever they are and take them to a resort or cabin to be able to finally see each other without the worry of time or money needed.

If the money and time are not an issue only for me. I would travel the world to visit each country and learn about them as much as possible, so that way I can finally win at a trivia game show.

What is a great piece of advice someone has given you or that you would share with someone? 

“One day at a time” is something the leader of my former team would say to us from time to time when a lot of issues would arise and we would feel overwhelmed. He would also follow that with “Unless someone is dying, it is not an emergency”

All of the recent spotlights we’ve done have had great nicknames or stories about how they got a nickname. Do you have one? 

I don’t really have nicknames. At one point I was known as “Buttons” but this was back when autocorrect was catching up on phones and due to my name not being well known, autocorrect would change my name to “Buttons”

Another nickname I have is “By”, it was given to me by a former colleague who I worked closely with. We acted like brother and sister due to our age being close and we got along very well. We were known as “By and Ry”, her name was Riley.

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Want to explore an exciting career at haku? We’re growing our team and always looking for talented and outgoing individuals to add to our incredible haku family. Check out our openings here.