Employee Spotlight: Q&A with Daphne Shaw, Chief Science Officer at Nasuni

Nasuni sat down with Daphne Shaw to talk about her journey with the company and what she enjoys most about her job. Daphne started her engineering career at Akamai Technologies as a Streaming Architect, where she worked until 2002. Following Akamai, she worked at Archivas and Hitachi Data Systems as a Software Engineer and Consulting Architect, respectively. Currently, she is Nasuni’s Chief Science Officer, where she leads the company’s engineering function including a strong focus on security design and strategy (such as cryptography and testing), as well as working to bridge informational gaps across teams.

Q: It’s nice to meet you, Daphne! You have such an interesting background. Were you always interested in computer science?

I actually was, even though I pivoted to film and theater briefly during my undergrad. Even while I was working on a stage, I had bought myself a computer and was determined to learn more. It was a craving I couldn’t rid myself of, so I turned back to engineering for my Master’s degree.

Q: Of all your various experiences in tech, what initially drew you to Nasuni?

A combination of factors drew me to Nasuni. One was the people involved; I knew the two founders from our time together at previous companies. When I was looking for a new challenge after Hitachi, Andres (Founder and CTO) and I would frequently meet in Cambridge to discuss storage ideas. He told me he had an idea brewing and to give him a minute to get everything lined up. As soon as he shared his vision, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. It was clear this was going to be my next exciting project.

Q: What does your typical day look like at Nasuni?

Every day is quite dynamic. I might start the day focused on one task, and later find myself juggling multiple tasks simultaneously. Some days are dedicated to progressing an ongoing project, while others are spent designing new ones. Most days involve a balance of both.

Each day offers something different. Some are all about design, others focus on coding, and a fair amount of time is spent assisting colleagues. For example, yesterday was a blend of all three: an engineer needed help creating disks for different hypervisors. As it turns out, I’d written some code for that a few months back, saving him a few days of work. Today, I’m immersed in writing code for an ongoing cryptography project.

Q: You’ve been with Nasuni for 15 years. Could you share some pivotal moments that have shaped your experience with the company?

Personally, my pivotal moments are just the little things, which, in retrospect, were not so little at the time. The launch of Nasuni 1.0 was a pivotal moment. It was the early 2000s, and we had essentially gone dark for a year; no one knew what Nasuni was. We put our noses down and spent a few hours each day on design and the rest on coding until we wrote the original product. When 1.0 shipped, that was the big start of Nasuni.

After that, we started multiplying. We added more sophisticated features, evolving from a single filer to a single volume on a single cloud. Suddenly, sharing capabilities were enormous. It took months of work, but it was a wonderful feeling.

Walking into the Boston Seaport office for the first time was surreal. Initially, we worked out of a small office in Natick, located across the street from the Natick Mall, above a daycare center. We were wired in a tiny machine room, like a baby data center with three racks. Quickly, we grew bigger and bigger, and suddenly, it was time to go to Boston.

Q: It’s amazing to hear about Nasuni’s growth from the early days to now. Are there any notable projects that stick out? What role did you play and how has it progressed?

When we added multi-filer support, which is essentially volume sharing, it was an early project that was particularly interesting because, for the first time, we weren’t designing something from scratch. Designing something brand new, like Nasuni 1.0, was a blank sheet of paper with free range to do whatever we wanted. Adding volume sharing was different because we were building on top of the existing product we had already designed. We picked up the breadcrumbs we had laid down for ourselves a year prior and asked, “How can we expand it to add new capabilities?” Adding a sharing feature was complex, nearly doubling the size of the product. Yet, building it on top of the existing product allowed us to do it faster and more simply.

Another recent project was adding new support for cryptography. From day one, I pushed very strongly that we encrypt everything. We redesigned our cryptography to allow for the agility to use different cryptography providers or engines, each with its pros and cons. Our goal is to choose the engine that has the best overall performance while maintaining maximum security.

Q: Nasuni is a very high-growth company. How do you foresee Nasuni evolving to meet the increasing demand?

What’s most exciting to me is the Vista Partners announcement from mid last year. The investment is taking us to a new level, providing resources to pursue more exciting opportunities. Over the past 15 years, we’ve continually surpassed significant milestones. I don’t know where it will end, but this investment is a remarkable step up. What once was four people in a room, is suddenly a company valued at $1.2 billion. It amazes me.

I’m grateful to have been there from day one because I’ve seen Nasuni’s journey. I have enjoyed every day of it, watching it evolve and expand over time. Nasuni is a different company than what we started, which is as it should be. It makes me wonder, where will it go tomorrow? It’s likely somewhere far beyond what I can even imagine.

Q: Thank you, Daphne! Can you share a fun or unique fact about yourself that helps us get to know you better?

I started my career in the film industry, where I held roles from camera operator to special effects artist. Along the way, I embarked on numerous side quests—learning how to eat fire (it’s not as tricky as it looks), becoming a puppeteer for a Matt Dillion movie, and even having a photograph I took unexpectedly make its way to a book cover. As of recently, I’ve been trying to master knitting!

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