Thinking about a career pivot? A Google engineer shares what he learned from taking a leap of faith.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Prerit Pathak, a 28-year-old security engineer at Google in New York City.

I think some people mistakenly believe that being a 'tech employee' is synonymous with being a software engineer.

Despite that interest, I started my career as a software engineer at Dell Technologies in India.

Now, as a security engineer, I create and run threat simulations to replicate adversary behavior in enterprise environments.

Looking back, making the shift from software engineering to cybersecurity was a leap of faith.