---
title: "From Farmer to Security Engineer: How Dev Degree Helped Me Find My Dream Job"
description: "Cailyn Edwards recounts how she moved from leaving high school and running an organic farm to a career in infrastructure security through Shopify’s Dev Degree program. Before entering the program, she completed a horticulture co-diploma, finished high school and the required math courses, and pursued computer science while needing to pay her mortgage and maintain work-life balance. Dev Degree’s training path and rotating placements exposed her to computer science fundamentals, pair programming, Ruby on Rails on the orders team, infrastructure security, and network foundations, leading her to discover a strong interest in cyber security and cloud infrastructure. After graduating in September 2021, she joined Infrastructure Security full-time and later reports projects, internal security talks, a promotion to Senior Infrastructure Engineer, and Kubernetes contributions including a contributor award."
---

# From Farmer to Security Engineer: How Dev Degree Helped Me Find My Dream Job

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Jan 26, 2023

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Cailyn Edwards recounts how she moved from leaving high school and running an organic farm to a career in infrastructure security through Shopify’s Dev Degree program. Before entering the program, she completed a horticulture co-diploma, finished high school and the required math courses, and pursued computer science while needing to pay her mortgage and maintain work-life balance. Dev Degree’s training path and rotating placements exposed her to computer science fundamentals, pair programming, Ruby on Rails on the orders team, infrastructure security, and network foundations, leading her to discover a strong interest in cyber security and cloud infrastructure. After graduating in September 2021, she joined Infrastructure Security full-time and later reports projects, internal security talks, a promotion to Senior Infrastructure Engineer, and Kubernetes contributions including a contributor award.

## Context

Edwards describes needing a path into technology that allowed her to pay her mortgage and maintain work-life balance after leaving high school and pursuing varied work and education. She also describes feeling intimidated by the breadth of computer science and initially not knowing which specialization suited her.

## Approach / What changed

Dev Degree combined computer science training with industry placements and encouraged students to try different disciplines and teams. Edwards completed a training path, then placements on the orders team, Infrastructure Security, and Network Foundations before joining Infrastructure Security full-time. The program also provided Shopify context, industry support, and exposure to multiple technologies, languages, and tools.

## Takeaways

- Dev Degree’s placement structure helped Edwards move from Ruby on Rails back-end development to Infrastructure Security and Network Foundations, disciplines she had not initially planned to pursue.
- Edwards says varied experiences and frequent changes in interest helped her learn quickly and adapt to software’s ongoing evolution rather than limiting her career.
- After graduating, Edwards contributed to and led team projects, delivered three internal security talks, became a Senior Infrastructure Engineer, and received a Kubernetes contributor award.

**Tags:** [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Kubernetes](https://yomu.fyi/topic/kubernetes), [Onboarding](https://yomu.fyi/topic/onboarding), [Open Source](https://yomu.fyi/topic/open-source)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/from-farmer-to-security-engineer)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/from-farmer-to-security-engineer
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T13:36:05.363Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/from-farmer-to-security-engineer)