SEEK Bytes

AI-generated voices, fake bosses on Zoom, SIM-swapped phones and a casino shut down from a single service-desk call – this is what modern cybercrime really looks like. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott Millar, Will and security influencer Kelsey Lundgren return for Part 2 to dig into the latest social-engineering threats, AI-powered scams and why shame keeps attacks hidden.

This episode's special guest: Kelsy Luengen (SEEK Security Influencer)

Kelsey unpacks why hackers hack, how shame and under-reporting keep crime in the dark, and the terrifying rise of AI-driven social engineering – from MGM’s casino shutdown to employment and romance scams, deepfake Zoom CEOs, voice-cloned “your child’s in trouble” calls, and malicious “ChatGPT” apps that are really just malware with great branding.

She also shares how SEEK builds a no-blame security culture, why she’d rather you over-report “weird” emails, and how to talk about scams with colleagues, customers and your own family without making anyone feel stupid.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How modern scams really work – and why smart people still fall for them – including the psychology of shame, under-reported romance and job scams, and how a single phone call socially engineered a casino into chaos.

• How AI is super-charging attackers – from flawless phishing copy and personalised recon to deepfake voices and faces, malicious “AI” downloads and even tricking chatbots into generating attack templates under the guise of “training”.

• Practical ways to protect yourself, your team and your family – why app-based 2FA beats SMS, what SIM swapping is, how to sanity-check QR codes and “AI tools”, using family codewords, and how leaders can build a culture where people report near-misses instead of hiding them.

If you’re in software, data, support, security, product or IT leadership, this Part 2 episode will sharpen how you think about human-layer risk, AI-driven threats and the culture you need so people actually report problems before they become incidents.

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Think your biggest security risks are zero-days and fancy exploits? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott, Will and criminologist-turned-security-influencer Kelsy Luengen unpack why humans – not tech – are still the easiest way into your systems, and how SEEK is using crime theory, data and even Dungeons & Dragons-style games to fight back.

This episode's special guest: Kelsy Luengen (SEEK Security Influencer)

Kelsey explains the full phishing family – email, SMS, QR “quishing”, phone scams, spear-phishing and whaling – and walks through how she turns SEEK engineers into “hackers” using Dungeons & Dragons-style games, escape rooms and level-five difficulty phishing simulations to make training fun, not finger-waggy.

She also shares why a report-phishing button alone doesn’t change behaviour, what actually moves the needle, and how engineers can partner with security early so features don’t become social-engineering goldmines later on.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How modern phishing really works (and why tech people still fall for it) – from fear-based emails and boss-impersonation to targeted attacks built from LinkedIn posts, podcasts and public data.

• Why “awareness” isn’t enough – the limits of simple nudges and buttons, and how SEEK uses behaviour-changing experiences, metrics and relationships to build a lasting security culture.

• What engineers can do today to level up security – thinking “crime prevention” in your designs, knowing when to call in security, and how a strong partnership lets you ship faster and safer.

If you’re in software engineering, data, product, support, SRE, security or IT leadership, this episode will change how you think about security culture – and give you ideas for making secure behaviour stick in your team without boring slide decks and tick-box training.

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An airline cockpit access system vulnerable to a single quote in a login box. White-hat hackers quietly holding an entire flight database. And tech interviews that feel more like interrogations than conversations. In this SEEK Bytes episode, the crew dig deeper into real-world security failures and then we pivot into raw, honest engineering interview horror stories and practical tips for staying human and effective under pressure.

In this episode, we explore:

• How a real airline security system got hacked via SQL injection – and why exposing raw SQL errors, skipping extra checks and trusting third parties blindly can be so dangerous.

• The basics of SQL injection and how to defend against it – in plain language, with examples of string concatenation gone wrong, parameterised queries done right, and the top attack types every engineer should know.

• What good (and bad) tech interviews look like in practice – red flags to run from, how to manage “exam panic”, and why being human, curious and clear about your gaps can still set you apart.

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How do you run dozens of React apps, keep dependencies sane, preview any branch on any environment – and still move fast without breaking prod? In Part 2 of our frontend deep dive, Elliott Millar, Will and Jared Hope (Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices at SEEK) go beyond components to explore platforms, tooling and practices that power SEEK’s web experience at scale.

This episode's special guest: Jared Hope (SEEK Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices)

In this episode (Part 2), we explore:

• How SEEK turns frontend into an “experience platform” – from modeling the web platform, static site generation and UI versioning, to giving teams self-serve routing and deployments on top of Cloudflare and serverless.

• The tools that supercharge DX and design collaboration – including SEEK’s internal deploy tooling, environment-per-branch previews, and Playroom, which lets engineers and designers prototype in real components and share ideas with a single URL.

• How SEEK keeps frontend modern at scale – using Upkeep and Renovate to tame dependency sprawl, exploring SSR and React server components without losing SSG DX, and leaning on devtools, hot reload and consoles for fast, pragmatic debugging.

If you’re a frontend or full-stack engineer, SRE, architect, platform/DevOps engineer or IT leader who enjoyed Part 1 – or you’re just curious how high-traffic sites keep their web layer fast, safe and flexible – this Part 2 is packed with real-world patterns, trade-offs and career insights you can take back to your own org.

If you’re a frontend or full-stack engineer, SRE, architect, platform/DevOps engineer or IT leader who enjoyed Part 1 – or you’re just curious how high-traffic sites keep their web layer fast, safe and flexible – this Part 2 is packed with real-world patterns, trade-offs and career insights you can take back to your own org.

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Frontend is “just HTML and CSS”, right? Not at SEEK. In this episode of SEEK Bytes – a podcast by engineers for engineers – we sit down with Jarrod Hope, Engineering Manager for Frontend Practices, to explore how SEEK builds UIs at scale with React, Braid, SKU, Vanilla Extract and Playroom, and why good frontends are genuinely hard, high-impact engineering problems.

This episode's special guest: Jared Hope (SEEK Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices)

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How SEEK’s frontend platform works under the hood – from micro frontends and the SKU meta-framework to Metropolis, which lets teams share React components and roll out design-system updates across 80+ apps without chaos.

• Why SEEK invests in open source tools like Braid, Playroom and Vanilla Extract – how “building in the open” raises quality, shapes the broader frontend community, and gives engineers type-safe CSS, shared UI language with designers, and zero-config prototyping.

• Why SEEK doubled-down on React (and what’s next) – the original shift from Razor to server-rendered React, what it would take to move frameworks, and how tools like Vite, Suspense and better CSS module systems are shaping the future of the “experience platform”.

Whether you’re a frontend engineer, full-stack dev, engineering manager, architect or curious IT generalist, this episode is a behind-the-scenes tour of how a large tech org thinks about UI, frameworks, tooling and open source – and how those decisions ripple through the wider web community.

Whether you’re a frontend engineer, full-stack dev, engineering manager, architect or curious IT generalist, this episode is a behind-the-scenes tour of how a large tech org thinks about UI, frameworks, tooling and open source – and how those decisions ripple through the wider web community.

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Org restructures. New tools. Platform migrations. That “we’re changing how everything works” email. If you work in IT, change is your default setting – but it doesn’t always feel that way. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott Millar, Will and special guest Sarah Duffy (Enterprise Change Lead at SEEK) unpack how to thrive in continuous change, not just survive it.

This episode's special guest: Sarah Duffy (SEEK Enterprise Change Lead)

In this episode, we explore:

• What your brain is doing during change (and how to make it “brain-friendly”) – including the SCARF model (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness), why change can trigger fight-or-flight, and how clear comms, certainty about the plan and fair processes dramatically reduce stress.

• How SEEK runs large-scale change without “doing it by email” – from the Unification rollout across six countries to leader shark-tank sessions, change-champion networks and co-creation via focus groups, end-user testing and continuous listening to resistance as a source of insight.

• Practical tools to personally thrive in change – including the IKEA effect and co-creation, the ACCESS framework (acknowledge, calm, challenge, exercise, social, sleep), sleep-hygiene tips, and simple techniques like box breathing and SCARF self-assessments you can use at your desk during stressful transitions.

If you’re in software engineering, data, product, support, people leadership or any IT role facing restructures, tool changes or big programs, this episode gives you science-backed frameworks and everyday habits to handle change with more confidence – and help your teams do the same.

If you’re in software engineering, data, product, support, people leadership or any IT role facing restructures, tool changes or big programs, this episode gives you science-backed frameworks and everyday habits to handle change with more confidence – and help your teams do the same.

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Got half-finished apps, tools and games sitting in your GitHub? You’re not alone. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Seamus, Elliott and Will kick off Season 2 by diving deep into side projects in tech – why we start them, why they stall, and how to actually ship things alongside a full-time IT job.

In this episode, we explore:

• Where great side-project ideas really come from – using annoying real-world problems, interview prep and portfolio goals to spark projects that matter (and look great on GitHub).

• How to fight decision-fatigue and stay motivated – why “projects about nothing” fizzle, how tiny, shippable increments beat grand architectures, and practical tactics like shrinking scope, embracing “good enough” and expecting motivation slumps from day one.

• Balancing passion, learning and paid side work – real stories of late-night coding, paid gigs on game sites, internal tools like Conductor that became critical at SEEK, and why sometimes your day job’s learning and L&D time are all the “side project” you need.

Whether you’re a software engineer, tester, data person, SRE, sysadmin or IT manager thinking about a side hustle, a portfolio piece, or just a fun game on the side, this episode will help you pick better projects, manage your energy and actually finish more than you start.

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Your tests are green, coverage is high, dependencies are “secure”… so why does production still feel like a house of cards? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Raph, Will and Elliott dig into trust in tech – from subtle JavaScript bugs and leaky abstractions to CDN attacks and noisy security reports – and why a healthy dose of skepticism is one of the most powerful tools an IT pro can have.

In this episode, we explore:

• How trust can be broken at every layer – from third-party CDNs like polyfill.js injecting malicious scripts, to chatbots pulling in compromised resources, to noisy vulnerability reports that burn out open source maintainers.

• Why abstractions are powerful… and treacherous – what “leaky abstractions” really mean in practice, how unknown-unknowns derail estimates, and why learning just one layer deeper (query plans, caches, orchestration platforms) can save you from nasty surprises in production.

• How to adopt a healthy “trust, but verify” mindset – treating tests and coverage as signals not guarantees, double-checking rollouts, reading docs and source instead of relying on hearsay, and staying just skeptical enough to catch the next Heartbleed-class bug before it bites you.

Whether you’re in software engineering, QA, security, SRE, data, platform, or IT leadership, this episode will sharpen your instincts about what (and who) to trust in your stack – and how to balance healthy paranoia with getting real work shipped.

Whether you’re in software engineering, QA, security, SRE, data, platform, or IT leadership, this episode will sharpen your instincts about what (and who) to trust in your stack – and how to balance healthy paranoia with getting real work shipped.

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Resources:

• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dev-rejects-cve-severity-makes-his-github-repo-read-only/

• https://lab.wallarm.com/polyfill-io-supply-chain-attack-malicious-javascript-injection-puts-over-100k-websites-at-risk/

• https://carbon-steel.github.io/jekyll/update/2024/06/19/abstractions.html

REST is everywhere in tech – but “we have a REST API” doesn’t mean it’s easy to use, safe or scalable. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will, Seamus and Elliott break down the real-world best practices that turn yet-another-endpoint into an API your consumers (and SREs) actually love – from URL design and validation to rate limiting, async jobs and monitoring.

In this episode, we explore:

• What REST really means in practice – why it’s an architectural style not just CRUD, the role of statelessness, resource-oriented design, and how REST compares to SOAP, GraphQL and gRPC in real SEEK systems.

• How to design APIs that are predictable and easy to use – covering plural resource names, clean URIs, versioning strategies, status codes that actually mean something, filtering/sorting/pagination, strong yet flexible validation, and OpenAPI-driven docs and SDKs.

• The “grown-up” side of APIs: performance, safety and observability – why good monitoring and logs are non-negotiable, how to think about SLAs and error budgets, using rate limiting to protect your business and your users, and avoiding both under- and over-logging.

Whether you’re a software engineer, SRE, architect, platform/DevOps engineer or IT manager, this episode gives you a concrete checklist (and plenty of war stories) for building REST APIs that are easier to consume, safer to operate and much kinder to your users’ networks and your own infrastructure.

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AI gets all the hype – but behind every “smart” feature is a blisteringly fast, brutally efficient platform making it work in production. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Seamus, Will and Elliott sit down with Ren Shao, a Staff Engineer in SEEK’s Artificial Intelligence Platform Services (AIPS) team, to unpack how SEEK’s AI-driven search really works under the hood – from models and rankings to GeoHash, big-O and CPU caches.

This episode's special guest: Ren Shao (SEEK Staff Engineer)

In this episode, we explore:

• How SEEK’s AI search actually works under the hood – from turning “17-year-old jobs” into normalized queries, to ranking 200K+ jobs in real time, to using historical clicks and impressions to learn what candidates really mean.

• Why this is more “systems engineering” than sci-fi AI – big-O thinking, GeoHash-powered radius search, clever use of CPU caches and HashMaps, and the “latency numbers every programmer should know” that turn textbook algorithms into production-grade platforms.

• How to break into AI platform roles without a PhD – the difference between data engineers, data scientists and “small systems” engineers at AIPS; why curiosity about internals matters more than memorising neural nets; and how open-source code, sites like Codewars and tools like Hugging Face can be your on-ramp.

If you’re in software engineering, data, SRE, platform, architecture or IT leadership and want to see what real-world AI platforms actually look like – not just the buzzwords – this episode is a masterclass in building fast, safe and scalable systems that power millions of job searches every day.

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