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Filip Haltmayer: Why I Joined Zilliz as Software Engineer

Filip Haltmayer: Why I Joined Zilliz as Software Engineer

Jul 10, 20233 min read

My name is Filip Haltmayer, and I work as a software engineer at Zilliz in Redwood City, California. I am thrilled to share my story about why I joined Zilliz and how I feel about working for a company that leads the way in AI and vector search technology.

Looking back, I've always been passionate about software engineering, and my university education, post-graduation machine learning (ML) projects, and interest in ML and distributed systems made joining Zilliz the perfect career move for me. I'm also proud to be part of the Milvus project and a fantastic team that constantly pushes the boundaries of vector searching.

Passionate about software engineering

Throughout my life, software engineering has been my passion. While at university, I had the chance to poke my head into many different fields and found that I most enjoyed distributed systems and machine learning. I was always eager to learn more, going beyond the required coursework to take extra classes and immersing myself further in these subjects. The more I learned, the more I realized the significance of machine learning and distributed systems and how they will shape the future, making me even more determined to pursue a career in these fields.

Diving headfirst into building ML projects after graduation

Upon graduating, the Covid pandemic hit the world, causing most companies to freeze their hiring in preparation for the uncertain financial market. Instead of waiting, I decided to work on personal projects in my areas of interest. I delved into machine learning and concentrated on computer vision models, implementing various GANs, Autoencoders, and Classification models. Additionally, I tackled algorithms like Paxos and Raft to enhance my skills in distributed systems and deployed examples in the cloud. My fascination for the intersection of distributed systems and machine learning ultimately led me to apply to Zilliz.

Impressed by the interview with Zilliz

During my interview with Zilliz, I was eager to see if their company values and vision aligned with mine. I was pleased to find that the technical portion of the interview was directly relevant to the job, focusing on implementing a new use case for Milvus. Unlike many interviews involving irrelevant tests and projects, Zilliz's approach ensured that the team I worked with would be highly qualified for their roles. The team I spoke with also was composed of intelligent and relatable individuals who shared a passion for pushing the boundaries of vector search. Therefore, I believed that Zilliz was a place where I could learn, grow, and make a significant impact in this rapidly evolving field.

I accepted the offer!

Deciding whether to join a startup ultimately narrows to one question: Do you believe the work being done has a future and will contribute to the field's growth?

The question was easy to answer for me as I saw how the field was growing early on. Big companies were hoarding vast amounts of data, hoping that the technology would exist to make sense of it all in the future. Neural networks were the first step in this process, allowing computers to make sense of unstructured data. Vector search is the second step, enabling us to gain insights from the hoards of data stored finally. With this idea in mind, I quickly accepted the offer.

Two years later: my expectations vs. reality

With more than two years under my belt at Zilliz, it would be important to talk about how my expectations aligned with reality. I am happy to say that I haven't been disappointed. Even though many people have come and gone, I still enjoy every day I spend at Zilliz. Every day brings a new project or challenge that requires me to learn new tools, gain new knowledge, or solve new problems. So far, my predictions of the field have been correct, and Zilliz has been rising to be one of the key players in AI and vector searching. I am happy and proud to be here helping it along the way.

Welcome to join us!

We're actively hiring, with various positions available worldwide, including software engineers, solution architects, developer advocates, product managers, sales representatives, and account executives. Check out our career page for more information and to apply.

Filip Haltmayer
Filip Haltmayer is a Software Engineer at Zilliz working in both software and community development. His contributions mainly revolve around the Milvus and Towhee projects, helping develop both applications and helping grow their respective user bases through client interaction, integrations, and technical talks.