THS Career Stories: Austin Lehdonvirta, Cloud & Systems Administrator
Would you kindly introduce yourself and provide some information on your background?
I was born in China, lived most of my adult life in Japan and am now based in Helsinki. I joined Topcon in June 2023 and work as System & Cloud administrator. When I was still living in Tokyo, I spent most of my free time fishing, playing the piano and studying new technologies. Fortunately, those same activities are also available in Finland.
Could you please tell us briefly about your professional journey? How has your work evolved over the years?
After finishing my master’s degree at Hiroshima University, I started my career in a technical support role. I was sitting in a tidy office and supporting clients with Windows, Microsoft 365 and Google products day after day. But I’m greedy for new knowledge and always curious about how the technologies work behind the scenes. Especially during the covid period I had lots of time to look deep into infrastructure and cloud technologies, and got certified across all the major platforms. I became a member of my company’s infrastructure team. My first cloud project was about cost control and then later I moved to cloud architecture. Just before I left Japan, I was working as a Cloud Architect and mainly playing with ECR, ECS and S3.
What do you find most rewarding about being part of the THS team?
Our THS is helping people see this world more colorfully and clearly every day. And it is also helping me see another “myself” who wasn’t so visible before. What I mean is, my colleagues are always encouraging me to be myself at work. This makes me very relaxed when working together with the team and it inspires me to be more creative. Every morning when I come to the office, I feel I will work with new ideas and get support from my team.
What currently excites you the most about your work, and which skills would you like to develop further?
Recently I got a chance to organise our new alert notification system build-up for the systems team. It’s so fun and rewarding that I can put my ideas to use in the new system. I also learned about arranging schedules and negotiating well with providers to make the whole process smooth.
In the future, I’d love to delve deeper into various technical aspects of our platforms to provide even more powerful support to our Sales and Service Managers who work directly with our clients.
THS members help me to connect with the Finnish society after work, which is very important to a newbie in Finland. I feel deeply motivated and inspired!
Could you please share with us a nice memory from your time at THS?
There have been many nice moments in my THS time. The most impressive one so far was a trip with colleagues to Estonia. Time flowed slowly on the sea and the dark beginning of the polar night looked like the extension of twilight. I am still learning the Finnish language, so sometimes I feel too shy to talk. THS members help me to connect with the Finnish society after work, which is very important to a newbie in Finland. I feel deeply motivated and inspired!