Vinh Nguyen didn't set out to build a career in cybersecurity, he started in pharmacy, and on paper the two careers have little in common. But for Vinh, both came from wanting to help people and solve real problems for them, and that thread is what eventually led him from a pharmacy counter in Australia to a Senior Sales Engineer role on Abnormal's ANZ team.
From Prescriptions to Prevention
Vinh trained, interned, got registered, and practiced as a pharmacist, and he genuinely liked the work because it let him help people while solving problems along the way. Over time, though, that satisfaction started to wear thin.
"The intent was good, the job was important, but it felt almost like Groundhog Day, the same thing happening again and again," Vinh said. He noticed the same feeling in colleagues who'd been in pharmacy just as long, and what struck him most was how little control any of them had over where the path led. The day, the week, the years ahead were already mapped out.
That lack of control is what eventually pushed him to look elsewhere, and cybersecurity offered the same two things he'd valued in pharmacy, helping people and solving hard problems, but with more room for him personally to grow and change direction over time.
"It did really feel like we were stuck in one path, and we didn't really have control. We knew where we were going to end up, and I think that took the fun out of it in a way, that natural progression."
His advice for anyone who recognizes that same feeling is to pay attention to it. If you're dreading the day before it's even started, and you can already picture the next five years without much changing, that's worth taking seriously.
A Pause That Said Everything
Vinh works closely with nonprofits and charities, organizations that tend to be underfunded, under-resourced, and heavily targeted because of the nature of what they do. Helping them never gets old for him, and one experience in particular stayed with him.
Vinh was running a proof of value with a nonprofit that had already been hit by a fraudulent invoice attack. He pulled up the exact pattern in the system and walked the IT manager through it, showing him the incidents that had been eating up time and, in some cases, money, and how it all changes once the right tool is in place. When he finished, the response wasn't what he expected.
"There was a pause, some silence, and he never said anything," Vinh said. "And then he looked at me and said, 'how'd you do that?' I told him it was because we use behavioral AI. And he said, 'show me another one.'"
The IT manager scrolled through threat after threat that had quietly been caught, and Vinh could see it land on his face, disbelief giving way to relief. He'd assumed nothing could stop attacks that sophisticated, and watching proof otherwise, in real time, changed how he thought about the problem entirely. It's a moment Vinh still thinks about, since it captures exactly why he does this work: watching someone realize a problem they'd written off as unsolvable actually has an answer.
Push, or Get Left Behind
Vinh is candid about how different the energy at Abnormal felt when he joined. People push themselves without being asked to, and that showed up almost immediately.
"Everyone's pushing, and pushing," he said, describing how quickly that energy became contagious. "All of a sudden you feel like you've got to push too, otherwise you're going to be the one dragging your feet." He'll admit it took some getting used to, but that same pressure has become the thing that motivates him to show up at a higher level every day.
That standard was set for him before he'd even joined, during one of his final interviews, when a VP told him something he wasn't expecting to hear.
"He told me, 'We are not a perfect company. When you move with that kind of velocity and pace, things are going to go wrong. But it's all about how we learn from it and move forward. The intent is just to get one percent better every single day.'"
Most interviews sell a version of the job where everything works and nothing breaks, so hearing someone at that level say it outright told Vinh exactly what kind of place he was walking into, and it's a big part of why he took the job.
Letting AI Carry the Load
Vinh doesn't consider himself an early adopter of AI, and he started small, mostly using it for quick questions here and there, which he'll admit wasn't the most efficient use of the tool. What changed his approach was watching how the people around him used it.
Working alongside people he describes as A graders, all constantly looking for faster and smarter ways to work, pushed him to go further than the occasional question. He built agents that summarize his day, flag outstanding tasks, and surface updates automatically, and he now records his call transcripts to get coaching feedback pulled straight from them. Looking back at how far that's come, even he's a little surprised by it.
"There's so much now that when I look back on it, I'm like, wow, I can't believe I'm using AI to this extent to help me work day to day."
A Team You Can Actually Get To Know
Ask Vinh about the APAC team and he'll describe it as sitting in a good middle spot, smaller than the US team where Abnormal is headquartered, but well past the one or two person stage some emerging regions start from. What he values most is how close the team feels, even though most of that closeness happens over a screen.
His favorite offsite so far was last year's Christmas party in Sydney, themed heroes and villains, and while the costumes made for good stories, what stuck with him most was simpler than that: shaking hands and sharing a drink with people he'd only ever known through Zoom and Teams.
His advice for anyone considering the APAC team is to come in with an open mind and be ready to laugh.
Vinh's path from pharmacist to Senior Sales Engineer was never planned out in advance, and that's part of why it worked. He walked away from a stable, mapped-out career because it stopped giving him room to grow, and found something at Abnormal that keeps giving that room back: a team that pushes him, a company that owns its mistakes out loud, and a job that occasionally puts him in the room when someone realizes their biggest problem finally has an answer. It turns out that's the kind of work he was looking for all along, even if he never expected to find it here.
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