IBM was my first major role after graduating from university, and what a learning experience it was. I was surrounded by some incredible engineers, on the QRadar UI team.
During my time working on the QRadar SIEM I worked with NextJS and NodeJS extensively. We mantained a complex GraphQL API gateway that connected the various QRadar Java services.
QRadar uses its own subset of SQL called AQL (Ariel Query Language). One of my most notable achievements was building the QRadar Event viewer, a dashboard which allows users to perform AQL queries against millions of events ocurring across their organisation's network. The implementation had to gracefully handle failed requests. We use Apollo Client to cache certain AQL GraphQL queries on the client for rapid response times.
Another complexity with the application was the requirement for almost every screen/state to be shareable via URL. We had to encode complex UI state in the URL, I achieved this with a custom built react state -> URL "compiler" and "decompiler". This meant that no matter how complex the current UI state was, the analyst could share their view with colleagues.
I used Rust only briefly to create a few CLI tools that allowed non technical users to spin up development versions of the app.
I received multiple promotions at IBM and had the opportunity to travel around the world and talk at several events on topics such as Docker and Cypress.
Working on a data-intensive system like a SIEM, our UI had to be very cognant and efficient with its data fetching using tools like graphql/dataloader to ensure we aren’t overfetching and implementing exponential backoff for failed requests. Testing was paramount on a system like this, and I developed several testing dashboards and utils to assist with our Cypress e2e testing. I had several placement students under my mentorship by the end of my tenure and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this role!