Career Profile: TippingPoint's Rohit Dhamankar

Name: Rohit Dhamankar
Title: Sr. Manager of Security Research, TippingPoint

Age: 32
Education: M.S (Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas, Austin) , M.Sc (Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India)

Please describe your role
I manage a team of a dozen or so security researchers that are responsible for producing weekly updates to the Digital Vaccine (DV) service. The DV service protects TippingPoint customers from the latest and greatest security threats, 0-days, malware etc. I am also engaged in the next generation architecture for the TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention Systems. I work very closely with the Zero Day Initiative team and report to the Director of Security Research at TippingPoint. Outside of TippingPoint, I work on some SANS Institute projects.

Tenure in IT industry:
Six years

First ever tech job:
I started in the security industry as an intern at Cisco Systems, Austin in the Security Technology Assessment Team.

Did you plan to be in IT security? If not, what was your initial career dream?
I had not planned to be in the IT security industry. I came to the United States in 1997 to pursue a Ph.D. in Physics. I even completed a year and half worth of my coursework. My initial career dream was to become a scientist/professor.

What's been your best job? Why?
I have always enjoyed hands-on technical work. The initial start-up phase of TippingPoint was extremely exciting as we were working on a trend setting product in the security space and built the first Intrusion Prevention System. At that time the job duties were very amorphous too as in a start-up one can typically end up working in parallel on a number of different tasks. I loved that.

What's your favorite IT resource site? Why?

I like www.slashdot.org, www.techweb.com and www.darkreading.com

What is the best career advice you've ever received?
Doing whatever you do as best as you can is always a key to success. The devil is in the details and paying attention to the details will definitely help in any job.

What is the one career decision you would change if you could?
I spent a lot of years at school. I wish I was out working in the real world earlier.If you had the choice to jump into any other job what would it be?
I would love to be a musician.

Other recent articles from TechCareers
How To Avoid IT Career Burnout
Hiring Wave Bodes Well For Job Seekers
The Disconnect Between Job Seekers And Hiring Managers