Imagine updating a trusted monorepo tool… and the next time you open your terminal it asks for your password, then tries to shut your machine down. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will, Seamus and SEEK Staff Engineer Trevor Kilvington unpack the NX supply chain attacks – how they unfolded, why they were so scary, and what every IT team can learn from them.

This episode's special guest: Trevor Kilvington (SEEK Staff Engineer)

In this episode, we explore:

• How a popular open-source tool ended up shipping malicious code to developers’ laptops and CI pipelines – and how SEEK engineers helped spot it first

• Why attackers leaned on AI prompts and worm-like behaviour to hunt for secrets and quietly spread through NPM packages

• The uncomfortable question of whether keeping everything “always up to date” is still the safest choice – and what this means for CI/CD ownership and developer responsibilities

Whether you’re in software engineering, DevOps, SRE, security, platform or IT leadership, this episode will change how you think about package updates, build pipelines and the tools you trust every day.

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In this episode you’ll learn:

This episode of SEEK Bytes – a podcast for engineers by engineers – steps away from code to celebrate one of SEEK’s most loved traditions: Hackathon. Will is joined by Kat, Andy and Glenn to lift the lid on how a twice-yearly, three-day event brings together people from every corner of SEEK to dream up bold ideas – many of which end up on real roadmaps and in front of real customers.

This episode's special guests: Glenn Wilson (Snr Business Analyst / former Community Engagement Lead), Kat Vassallo (Tecnology Community Engagement & Innovation Manager), Andy Maxey (EVP & Community Impact Lead)

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How SEEK hackathons actually work – three days off BAU, 40+ teams hacking across APAC, big themes (from space operas to dinosaurs), t-shirts as badges of honour and a Shark Tank-style final where the ELT judges every idea.

• Why hack is core to SEEK’s culture and EVP – how grassroots volunteers, wild costumes, candy bars and chaos create a safe space for experimentation, help people work with teams they’d never normally meet, and generate ideas that influence products, processes and even board-level conversations.

• How any company can start their own hackathon – practical tips on beginning with a half-day or single-department event, proving value before going company-wide, getting leadership buy-in, and using hackathons to build skills, networks and long-term innovation habits.

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An OpenAI-backed coding agent. 12 elite competitive programmers flown to Tokyo. A 10-hour marathon solving an NP-hard puzzle in front of a live stream. And a very sleep-deprived human still manages to beat the AI at its own game. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott Millar, Will, Seamus and Arnav break down the World Tour Finals heuristic contest where a human edged out a custom AI built just for competitive coding.

In this episode, we explore:

• How the competition was set up so both humans and a custom OpenAI agent had to race the same brutally hard optimisation problem under tight time limits

• The surprisingly simple strategy a sleep-deprived engineer used to out-score a specialised AI model

• What we can learn from how the AI iterated, refactored and “thought” about code during the contest

• Why the story might change when you put the human’s winning code back into the AI – and what that says about humans + AI working together

Whether you’re in software engineering, data, SRE, platforms, security or any IT role wondering how far AI coding tools can really go – and where humans still have the edge – this episode is a fast-paced, deeply nerdy look at the future of competitive problem solving and day-to-day development with AI in the loop.

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This is a special SEEK Bytes drop – outside the regular Season 3 line-up – because the recent Axios NPM hack is too important to ignore. In this episode of SEEK Bytes the crew sit down with Eldar Marcussen from SEEK’s offensive security team to unpack what actually happened, why supply-chain attacks are so scary, and what you should do today to reduce your risk.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• What a supply-chain attack really is – how a single malicious dependency in a trusted package like Axios can silently run on thousands of machines, and why closed-source software isn’t magically safer.

• What to do if you think you’ve been hit – practical first moves for companies and individuals: rotating keys, rebuilding or containerising machines, reviewing logs, and knowing when to call in your security team.

• How to raise the bar for attackers – simple habits like pinning and ageing dependencies, using tools like Docker and alternative package managers, relying on built-in protection like Windows Defender, and staying alert to sketchy extensions and “too good to be true” downloads.

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SEEK Bytes is back for Season 3 on 22 April, and we’re turning things up a notch with a major focus on AI of course. This season dives into the real world of working in tech today – from AI reshaping how we build and secure systems, to the culture, careers and decisions that make or break modern engineering teams.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer, just starting out in IT, or simply curious about how technology is changing work, Season 3 brings you sharp, honest conversations straight from the engineers, designers and security experts living it every day.

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Thinking about moving from hands-on coding to people leadership – or just wanting more control over your engineering career? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, we sit down with Gladys Lim, an Engineering Manager based in Kuala Lumpar who leads squads in SEEK’s monetisation & insights domain, building products that keep hirers coming back

This episode's special guest: Gladys Lim (SEEK Engineering Manager - based in Kuala Lumpur)

Gladys shares her journey from barcode integrations and games dev to full-stack engineer and, eventually, EM – including what surprised her about loving people leadership, how she navigated a jarring feedback-loop shift, and why management is a different career path, not just a promotion. She gets real about imposter syndrome, being a woman in tech across APAC, hiring for diverse teams, and using empathy, vulnerability and structure to make mentoring actually work.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• What it really means to shift from IC to EM – from instant code feedback to months-long people outcomes, delegating without micromanaging, and redefining success as enabling the team, not being the strongest coder.

• How to navigate imposter syndrome and bias – using facts to reframe negative self-talk, turning comparison into learning, and creating inclusive rituals so quieter and under-represented voices are actually heard.

• How to take charge of your career and mentorship – clarifying your motivations, choosing between IC and leadership paths, saying “no” when the fit or timing is wrong, and designing mentoring relationships that serve your specific growth goals.

If you’re a software engineer, data/IT professional, team lead or aspiring manager wondering whether people leadership is for you – or how to better support the EMs you work with – this episode is packed with honest stories, practical tactics and career advice you can apply today.

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Heard of “clean architecture” but not sure what it looks like in real code? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Seamus, Will and Adam Kreidels (Head of Engineering, Monetisation & Insights at SEEK) are back for Part 2 of their deep dive – unpacking entities, use cases, gateways, the dependency rule and the famous “onion” diagram in a way any IT pro can apply.

This episode's special guest: Adam Kreitals (SEEK Head of Engineering, Monetisation & Insights)

In this episode, we explore:

• Why “start with the database” slows you down – and how leading with business rules and use cases speeds up delivery.

• How entities, use cases and gateways work together – using price, order and discount examples from SEEK to show clean seams between domain and tech.

• How clean architecture reduces the cost of change – what good separation of concerns looks like in code, and how to spot when frameworks and APIs are leaking into your core domain.

If you’re a software engineer, tech lead, architect, SRE, platform engineer or IT manager who wants code that survives framework swaps, org changes and new requirements – and you liked Part 1 – this Part 2 episode gives you the concrete concepts, terminology and mental models to put clean architecture into practice.

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Ever wondered what a technical product manager actually does – and why every modern tech org seems to want one? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will is joined by Leon Belobrov and Alex Stewart-James to unpack how SEEK builds platform products that power everything from candidate apps to internal tooling – and what it means to be a PM for APIs instead of UIs.

This episode's special guests: Leon Belobrov (SEEK Principal Product Manager, Platform) and Alex Stewart-James (SEEK Snr Technical Product Manager)

They break down what makes TPMs a bit of a “unicorn role” – blending deep product thinking with enough technical context to serve engineers as their primary customers – and why internal platforms, APIs and deployment pipelines are becoming just as important as customer-facing apps.

You’ll hear how SEEK uses jobs-to-be-done research with engineers, metrics like time-to-10th PR, and platform reliability/security KPIs to prioritise what gets built – and what gets cut.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• The real difference between a “regular” PM and a TPM – including why serving engineers, focusing on APIs and reusable capabilities, and obsessing over platform reliability changes how you think about product.

• How SEEK discovers what engineers actually need – from interviewing 25+ engineers across the business to mapping their pain points into jobs-to-be-done and opportunity scores, instead of just building what the loudest voice wants.

• Practical advice if you want to move into TPM or work better with platforms – including dogfooding, avoiding over-engineering, and remembering that “you are not your customer” even when you’re an engineer building for engineers.

If you’re a software engineer, platform/DevOps engineer, BA, product manager or IT leader curious about platform teams, internal products and where technical PMs fit into modern tech orgs, this episode gives you a front-row view into how SEEK does it – and how you might shape a similar path.

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What happens when a 15-year-old hacker quietly discovers a single bug that touches over half of the Fortune 500, chains it into a Slack takeover, and walks away with $50K in bug bounties – only for the original vendor to refuse to pay? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, we break down Daniel’s Zendesk exploit, the ethics of disclosure, and what “white hat” really means in practice.

We unpack how a “basic” support inbox ([email protected]), misconfigured SSO and email spoofing turned into a way to join internal tickets, steal Slack access and read sensitive conversations – all via a third-party tool many enterprises barely think about. We also dig into how bug bounty programs work, why Zendesk’s scope call sparked controversy, and how SEEK runs security exercises to stay ahead of attackers.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How the exploit actually worked end-to-end – from Zendesk ticket IDs and CC’ing yourself onto “internal” threads, to chaining Apple/Google OAuth and Slack login for access to private workspaces.

• Why the bug bounty outcome was so controversial – how email-spoofing being “out of scope” left Daniel unpaid by Zendesk, and what this means for incentivising white-hat behaviour vs pushing hackers towards greyer choices.

• Practical security takeaways for engineers – the real risk of “weakest link” third-party tools, why internal channels are goldmines for social engineers, and how separation of concerns and well-designed bounties can protect both your systems and your customers.

Whether you’re in software engineering, security, cloud, support, architecture or IT leadership, this episode is a gripping case study in modern attack chains, bug bounty programs and why “it’s just email” or “it’s just a ticketing tool” is never the whole story.

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What if your next big career move in tech wasn’t into management or staff engineering – but into technical product management? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will continues the conversation with Leon Belobrov and Alex Stewart-James in Part 2 of our deep dive into technical PMs, platform teams and how engineers can shape the roadmap (and their careers).

This episode's special guests: Leon Belobrov (SEEK Principal Product Manager, Platform) and Alex Stewart-James (SEEK Snr Technical Product Manager)

They share how interviewing dozens of SEEK engineers surfaced honest feedback, surprisingly clear asks, and a long list of “we just built it ourselves” tools that should really be platform products – plus why removing features and legacy tools can be just as valuable as shipping new ones. You’ll also hear what it takes to move from senior engineer or BA into a TPM role, and why this space is still early enough to shape if you jump in now.

In this episode, we explore:

• How engineers can influence the technical roadmap – from being a “demanding customer” to joining product discussions, speaking the language of metrics, and tying tech work to business outcomes.

• When to invest in platform teams (and how to get buy-in) – spotting the point where every squad is solving the same non-differentiating problems, and making the case for centralising capabilities like security and infra.

• How to grow into a technical product manager – mapping your existing skills, building a portfolio of real communication and customer-empathy stories, and becoming a true platform evangelist who can win funding and adoption

If you’re a software engineer, SRE, BA, platform/DevOps engineer, product manager or IT leader curious about owning internal platforms, shaping developer experience or shifting into technical product roles, this Part 2 conversation is packed with practical advice, career angles and real-world stories you can apply right now.

If you’re a software engineer, SRE, BA, platform/DevOps engineer, product manager or IT leader curious about owning internal platforms, shaping developer experience or shifting into technical product roles, this Part 2 conversation is packed with practical advice, career angles and real-world stories you can apply right now.

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