2025 First-Half Outstanding Employee Interview — Assistant Manager Lee Jae-an, "A Trustworthy Partner with Whom the Customer Ca
We conducted an in-house interview with Mr. Lee Jae-an, Assistant Manager of the Cloud Platform Technology Team, who was selected as an Outstanding Employee for the first half of 2025 for the second consecutive year. We present the interview content, which covers his story of working to build trust-based relationships with customers as an access control solution engineer, and his role in contributing to organizational communication as Chairman of the Junior Board. 🏆CloudNetworks In-House Interview - Cloud Platform Technology Team Assistant Manager Lee Jae-anQ. Please give us a brief self-introduction and an introduction to the role of your current team.A. Hello, I'm Lee Jae-an, Assistant Manager of CloudNetworks' Cloud Platform Technology Team (hereinafter "CPT"). Our CPT team is a team that supports the entire range from infrastructure configuration to security automation in cloud environments. Together with HashiCorp, QueryPie, and Okta, we operate SAORS, a vulnerability diagnosis solution developed by CloudNetworks. Among these, I am primarily in charge of QueryPie, an integrated access control solution, and I also carry out SAORS regular inspection work. Currently, regarding the Okta solution, I am focusing on strengthening my technical capabilities for future project response. Q. What was the occasion that led you to join CloudNetworks?A. CloudNetworks is my first company. I majored in computer science, and I came to know CloudNetworks while I was studying web development languages. I had originally been thinking about the development field, but I decided to join the company because I found its technical vision and growth potential attractive. In the beginning, I worked on OS tasks, but because I wanted to try more of the cloud environment, I changed my role to access control solution engineer on the Cloud Platform Technology Team. I thought I needed to keep up with IT trends, and since I felt learning about cloud environments was enjoyable, I thought I should learn to incorporate cloud environments as well. Q. What work or project were you most immersed in during the first half of the year?A. I was most immersed in an enterprise company's server access control automation project. It began at the end of last year, and I was stationed on-site during the first half of this year to complete the implementation work. The core of this project was to build a system that fully automates server access control configuration. We implemented automation of the entire workflow, from server request approval to infrastructure configuration and agent deployment basic settings, so as to increase operational efficiency. In particular, it was technically challenging to implement integration between solutions by utilizing the APIs provided by the access control solution and cloud-native technologies. In this process, infrastructure automation using HashiCorp was successfully completed as a complex automation system with support from experts within the team. Working on-site was a new experience for me for the first time, and it felt new and burdensome, but I did my best with the goal of successfully completing the project. Based on close communication with the customer, I went through the entire process together, from requirements analysis to development, testing, and reflecting feedback, and through AWS resource testing I was able to greatly improve my practical capabilities in cloud technology and my customer communication skills. Q. Please tell us about a challenging moment and how you overcame it.A. My first QueryPie project was the most challenging. Since it was the first project for both the company and myself, I had no experience at all with access control solutions, so it felt unfamiliar and burdensome, and I had a lot of worries. However, I was able to overcome it by collaborating with my team members, the Sales Division, and partner companies. In a situation where my understanding of the cloud environment was lacking, I asked many questions about unfamiliar areas, and received a lot of help regarding AWS resources and so on. I was able to learn about terminology, the way things proceed, and access control solutions, and my first hands-on PoC was tremendously helpful. Q. You're active as Chairman of the Junior Board — could you tell us about the role you play?A. The Junior Board is an organization in which one junior-level employee is elected from each team to present a variety of opinions. I think it's a meaningful system because it serves as a communication channel through which the voices of junior employees can be reflected in the operation of the organization. As chairman, I lead the meetings and play the role of creating an atmosphere where people can comfortably share their opinions. I am in charge of having each person present one opinion, then compiling those opinions and reporting on them. Each month, a major topic is set, opinions on that topic are discussed and a vote is taken to narrow them down to 2-3 opinions, which are then discussed as the meeting topic, after which a report is written and submitted. Once a quarter, feedback is received on feasibility, and if any decisions are made in the interim, they are communicated. Q. What did it feel like, and what did it mean to you, when you heard you had been selected as an Outstanding Employee this year as well, following last year?A. I was truly so grateful. Since it was a consecutive selection, I hadn't even imagined it, so I was grateful that I was being viewed favorably, and I resolved to work even harder. I think it may have been recognition for the hardships I went through while working on-site. Q. Colleagues especially remember you as someone who always greets people with a smile — is there a background to that bright demeanor?A. Since I was young, my parents had a wide network of connections, so many people used to come to our house, and greeting them naturally became a habit. Perhaps because of that, at work as well, I tend to communicate comfortably with colleagues and try to create a good atmosphere. I'm grateful that these aspects seem to be remembered positively. Q. Have you had any experiences of growth or change since joining the company?A. Since CloudNetworks is my first company, I feel growth every time. At first, it was difficult to communicate even when visiting customer sites, and carrying out work or tests was very burdensome. As the years have accumulated, I've gained confidence in test methodology, customer communication, work processes, and so on, so now, compared to before, I really feel a lot of growth. I feel the biggest change especially in conversations with customers. At first, it was hard even to start speaking and I would stammer, but now I'm able to communicate confidently and logically. Currently, I also play the role of teaching work to junior engineers, which makes me realize my own growth even more. In the past, I used to write things out in detail in a memo pad before making a phone call, but now I can organize just the key points and communicate with customers confidently. Q. Do you have your own work routine or way of working?A. I always carry out meetings or issue-response work in a pair with a team member. After a meeting with a customer, I organize the content discussed together with my team member, and after confirming our mutual understanding of the points, we jointly review the testing direction and solutions. When troubleshooting, my approach is to reproduce the customer's environment as identically as possible in order to accurately identify the problem and propose a solution. Given the nature of access control solutions, most issues are related to network communication, so many problems can be resolved by adjusting configuration values. For complex issues, I collaborate with the Sales team to respond quickly to customer requirements. Personally, I tend to check the previous day's issues every morning and set priorities before approaching my work, and I actively participate in regular team dinners and various gatherings for the sake of communication within the team. Q. Please express, in one sentence, the attitude you take toward work or the value you consider important.A. My mission is to be a trustworthy partner with whom the customer can always feel at ease. I believe that trust is the most important thing in a relationship with a customer. With a customer we are meeting for the first time, the relationship starts as a business relationship, but by continuously providing stable service and professional technical support, we gradually develop it into a relationship where we can communicate comfortably. When an issue occurs, if we resolve the problem through swift and accurate response, the customer comes to trust us and entrust things to us, becoming a partner relationship. I believe this kind of trust relationship ultimately comes from technical capability and continuous service quality. Always doing my best for the business success of the customer is my work philosophy. Q. What are your goals or challenges you would like to achieve in the second half of 2025?A. As new personnel have joined the CPT team, I think systematizing our work has become even more important. My priority goal is to use Notion to systematically organize project history and technical documentation. I want to build a system that can manage, in a clear and organized way, the current progress, person in charge, and major issues for each solution. Based on the project experience with the companies I am currently in charge of, I also think it's an important task to document best practices that can be utilized in similar projects in the future. Q. Does your team have a learning culture or any special activities?A. Technical presentations conducted within the team are really helpful for personal growth. Our team lead creates opportunities to improve team members' presentation capabilities, and the feedback and technical questions received after presentations are hugely helpful for skill development. Since I get a lot of technical questions when presenting, I naturally end up studying more, and even when I can't answer a question, I'm given direction to go look up related materials, which leads to continuous learning. In terms of team culture, every Monday we have lunch together with team members and communicate naturally, and we also hold a regular monthly team dinner, and the atmosphere is really good. In addition, a unique gaming culture that started with login checks and games on a metaverse platform during the work-from-home period continues to this day, so teamwork naturally continues to form. Q. Is there anything you'd like to say to the team members or colleagues you've worked with?A. All of the current team members are each handling their own projects and juggling busy schedules, and I hope that all the projects underway will be successfully completed with good results. I hope the new colleagues who have joined the CPT team will be able to adapt to the team's work quickly and grow together with us.✏️Editor's Note: Through this interview, we were able to clearly understand why Assistant Manager Lee Jae-an was selected as an Outstanding Employee for the second consecutive year. Despite this being his first company, he showed a constant willingness to learn and a growth mindset, and his philosophy of building genuine, trust-based relationships with customers came through especially deeply. His true leadership could be glimpsed in the way he leads organizational communication as Chairman of the Junior Board, looks after his junior colleagues, and contributes to building a culture of collaboration within the team. His work philosophy — being "a trustworthy partner with whom the customer can feel at ease" — was confirmed to be more than a mere slogan, but something that arose from deep insight gained on actual project sites. Through his experience of leading the server access control project to success, and his commitment to increasing the team's work efficiency through ongoing documentation and systematization, we were able to confirm his capabilities as a core talent who will be responsible for CloudNetworks' future.
October 13, 2025
