Brandon Mohabir said the hands-on experience he received at Mason helped prepare him for his job as a cloud support associate with Amazon. Photo provided.
More than 500 George Mason University alumni work for Amazon at various locations around the country and the world, many for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary that offers cloud computing services and has a major hub in Northern Virginia.
Brandon Mohabir, BS information technology ’15, is a cloud support associate and one of several Mason alumni we will feature in the coming weeks who work for the tech giant.
Those include Jason Paul Pate, a systems analyst, BS information technology ’20; Taylor Cacciotti, a data center technician, information technology '19; Cameron Isaac, an executive design recruiter, BS conflict analysis and resolution ’11; Prinkle Lopes, a cloud support associate, MS information systems ’18; and Rao Ahmad Rahil, a cloud support associate, MS telecommunications ’18; and Rajitha Devabhaktuni, a cloud security engineer, MS computer engineering ’16.
What Mohabir enjoyed most about Mason went beyond the education he received, even though, as he says, “It covered pretty much everything I wanted in terms of skills and practices.”
The added bonuses were opportunities to get hands-on experience working in Mason’s ITS Support Center and the help he received finding a job through networking and assistance in putting together a résumé.
“It was not just having the degree, but the physical experience in the field,” Mohabir says. “Those two things combined, I believe, helped me become a strong candidate, once I graduated, [with] a strong chance of landing a position at a highly regarded company.”
As he has just been promoted, Mohabir said his new role with Amazon in Herndon, Virginia, is still being defined. In his previous role as a network technician, Mohabir did hardware deployment and configuration. He and his colleagues fixed things when they broke but also managed multimillion-dollar projects from conception to installation, making sure systems were operational before handing them over to the team in charge of maintaining them.
It is challenging work that Mohabir, who also minored in business, says he was comfortable undertaking because of the preparation he received at Mason. That included the dos and don'ts of interviewing, which, he said, helped secure his new job.
“The teachers were very helpful and provided me with good information to go in and take the certification exams I was aiming for and provided me with a good fundamental baseline of knowledge to make me confident enough to enter the job space I was looking for,” he says.