Behind every support request is a person. Every week, we feature someone in support who inspires us. Today, we're featuring Conall Ó Gribín – Support Engineer at Airbyte. Here's his story 👇

💭 What inspired you to pursue a career in support?

I’d always known I wanted to work in tech from a young age. My misspent youth was spent on BBSes and mIRC in the 90s, learning how technology worked and setting up private MMORPG servers – long before Wikipedia revolutionized how we consume knowledge.

The internet was wildly exciting back then. I loved the freedom it gave me – especially the fact everyone assumed I was an adult! I listened to comp sci grads talk about hobby projects and started asking questions. Eventually, my niche expertise got me a reputation, and I began solving problems for others.

That endorphin hit got me hooked, and support was a natural fit.

💥 What’s the hardest case you recently worked on?

The most challenging cases usually involve proving something is happening that a customer may dispute or not fully understand.

This happens more with larger customers – where siloed teams don’t know what others are doing, or responsibility for a system lies elsewhere. The person you’re talking to might not have the expertise to grasp the issue.

Networking is a frequent culprit. In this space, understanding how Public Key Infrastructure works – especially certificate trust – can make life much easier when supporting SaaS or web apps.

✨ What’s your top tip for staying up to date with the product you’re supporting?

There’s no substitute for dogfooding. You have to use your product: get to know common workflows and happy paths.

For Airbyte, that means deploying in Docker via abctl, or to Kubernetes/OpenShift via Helm. (More here: https://lnkd.in/eX2Hb39c)

Once you’ve nailed the fundamentals, start exploring the exotic – like extending functionality to external systems (logging, identity), or using APIs, Terraform, etc.

This is also how I learn in general. (Oh, and: homelabbing!)

We live in an age where you can run open-source, enterprise-grade services at home on a shoestring.

Want to learn how to support something at scale? Emulate a SaaS company in your home lab. If it breaks, you fix it. You’ll build skills across DevOps, networking, systems – and it’s deeply rewarding.

📣 What advice would you give to someone considering a career change?

Be patient with yourself. My younger self rushed and missed nuance. That made the learning journey longer.

Grasping the basics fast is great – but shore up the fundamentals before moving on.

When I started, I couldn’t retain new concepts because there was just so much I didn’t know.

My fix? I kept a OneNote notebook. I tracked what I learned, and what to circle back to. YMMV – but it worked for me.