Faces of the CRL - Vinod Pathak

Delivering the country’s largest infrastructure project takes some seriously talented people, so in this section “Faces of the CRL” we talk to some of City Rail Link’s best and brightest. This month we turn the spotlight on Vinod Pathak, our IT extraordinaire and reason why the team have been able to stay online during the latest lockdown.

Name: Vinod Pathak

Age: 100110 years old (binary)

Suburb: Mt Albert

How long have you been working with the City Rail Link?

Less than a year.

What is your role?

I’m an IT Systems Engineer, and my role is to support day-to-day technical issues faced by the team and keep their digital identity, and their hard work (data) safe in the cloud. 

How do you do it?

Keeping everyone’s identity and data safe in a cloud is a bit of challenge for us as we never know when and how intruders will attempt to gain to access our data.

Everyday it’s a new challenge to keep users’ devices up to date with the latest upgrades and patches and convince users to not fall victim to any phishing attempts. 

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Working in the field of Information Technology has been my passion since the time I started using a 14” drive to save the data and VHS to watch movies. Thus, following my passion I am here today, and this journey was supported by doing lots of odd jobs in IT from fixing PC hardware, teaching computer science in school to building and installing on premises Servers, teaching Microsoft Certified courses to present Cloud solution expert. I enjoyed everything I did to the fullest and at present also really enjoy supporting brilliant brains involved in this one-time project of NZ. 

What is the most challenging part?  

At times, it is hard to keep the devices and users up to date with latest security and software updates. But end of the day it satisfies me once done.  

What have been some of your previous jobs? 

Starting with computer science teacher at school, I have worked in IT support companies as support technicians, Worked for Corporates as IT Manager and Senior Systems Engineer in NZ based MSP.  

Do you have any hobbies outside work?  

I enjoy travelling and playing lots of video games. 

What are you looking forward to most about when the CRL is complete? 

Excited to see the new remodelled rail transportation for Auckland and ride the first ever underground rail system in Auckland with all the CRL teams and families.