At the Intersection of Technical Ability, Methodology and Marketing
Kevin “KMac” Damaso blends creativity and technical expertise to build a distinctive professional brand, combining solid marketing and business development skills with advanced technical expertise. He compares his work specializing in early stage startups to a Swiss Army knife because he brings a wide range of tools to build solutions. Mostly self-taught and coming from a non-traditional educational background, KMac sees IT certifications as a benchmark and proof that have helped establish his credibility and technical competence.
KMac was drawn to the tech field from a young age, influenced by renowned computer scientist Paul Graham’s essays, even though he didn’t have the background or training to understand technology. He said, “I was a kid who had dropped out of high school and college, but wanted to be in tech and didn’t have a clear line to follow.” Undeterred he picked up some web development and server administration skills and taught himself how to code, but financial and practical realities had him taking on sales roles, at one point even selling cars.
In what he calls one of the most stressful transition periods of his life, KMac finally landed his first job in the tech industry at GitLab. He said, “You only need one person to give you a chance, and there was someone there who thought, ‘I don’t know about this guy, but let’s give him a chance.’”
Early Job Frustrations – and Solutions
KMac started in sales and business development, and after a year landed a role on the account-based marketing team. It was there that he kept running into a bottleneck of not having enough technical experience and lacking subject matter expertise to sell or market effectively. He said, “It’s one of my great frustrations seeing marketing teams create content that is disconnected from what developers and engineers are actually facing, and then that content being proliferated to and by salespeople who are reliant on product marketing’s enablement.”
This disconnect led KMac to his first technical certifications, AWS Certified Developer – Associate and Certified Solutions Architect – Associate. He said, however, that he felt the imposter syndrome gap of knowing the information at a high level, but not really being hands-on. He did some research and decided the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification could fill the gap.
“As Nathan Tabor said at Kubecon NA 2024, Kubernetes is the OS of the cloud,” said KMac. “I wanted to learn Kubernetes because it’s exciting, and because it’s where we’re all moving toward, where the future lies.”
“The CKA really helped because I felt a higher level of competence after earning it. It wasn’t like I was an expert, but I had enough understanding to be able to talk about the technology intelligently, to be able to set up a Kubernetes cluster, to be able to write a YAML file. It gave me the confidence and skill set to do my job better,” he said.
CKA Leads to the First Big Step
Two months after earning his CKA, he was hired as a sales engineer at env0. With a non-traditional technical path, he says his CKA helped get his foot in the door. Always a highly motivated self-starter, KMac wanted to keep improving his foundational skills. To be more competent and well rounded, he earned the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) and took the Linux Foundation’s DevOps IT Professional Program.
To prepare for his certifications, KMac prefers hands-on exercises. He said, “Course material and video lessons are fine, but I spent most of my time with killer.sh simulators and supplemented with materials on Killercoda.”
Having earned Linux Foundation, AWS and HashiCorp certifications, KMac has a distinct opinion about the value of each, “The AWS and HashiCorp certifications were multiple choice and therefore easier. They’re fine as a first-level exposure, but I don’t think they’re regarded particularly highly by hands-on practitioners. I would recommend any of the Linux Foundation’s hands-on certifications that show actual proficiency over a multiple-choice test.”
Now and Next
KMac is currently a business development representative for Komodor. His current career goal is to move into sales engineering and solutions architecture as the company grows. In a sales engineering role, he enjoys building demos and helping customers troubleshoot their environment with Terraform and some Kubernetes along with building proof of concept cases.
He particularly enjoys combining his people-facing role with content writing and technical work. “My technical side isn’t fully utilized in a purely sales or marketing role. It scratches a brain itch I have to be able to combine all the skills I love using and learn at the same time,” said KMac.
KMac’s future certification plans include renewing his CKA, then working toward his Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) and then becoming a Kubestronaut in rapid succession. But first, he wants to finish building a 5-node home lab to run applications and demo Kubernetes projects.
Kevin “KMac” Damaso
Sales Engineer / Solutions Architect
Business Development Representative, Komodor
Denver, CO
