Abraham Gomez

As an online student, Abraham Gomez appreciated the flexibility Arizona State University gave him to pursue a degree while maintaining his work as a full-time behavioral therapist in the San Francisco Bay area.

“I needed to go at my own pace depending on when I had availability,” Gomez says.

At the same time, he wanted rigorous education and technology training needed to become a successful software engineer.

“I was pleasantly surprised by having coursework that gave me experience in using tools employed in the industry, like Git, Agile Frameworks and project management software,” Gomez says.

He would find the advanced computer science and engineering education he needed to pursue his goals in courses taught by Ruben Acuna, a computer science and software engineering lecturer in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Those courses, especially in data structures and algorithms, “really expanded my ability to handle programming challenges and taught me how to approach software problems,” Gomez says.

“The skills he taught helped me not only throughout my academic career, but also in the transition to becoming a professional software engineer,” he says.

Gomez twice made the dean’s list for his academic performance, but says more importantly he was often able to experience the “fun” of engineering by “solving challenges in innovative ways.”

One of his more meaningful achievements at ASU is that he “became more goal-oriented academically and professionally,” Gomez says. “I will continue to set goals, and work toward them step-by-step, both in professional settings and my personal life.”

One of Gomez’s big goals is to become a lead software engineer so that he can make major design decisions and help new engineers move ahead on their professional paths.

“I hope to one day become a software architect and lead a project from inception to the deployment of the final product,” Gomez says.

For now, he will be joining Salesforce as an associate member of the company’s software engineering technical staff in San Francisco, California.

“Engineering has given me pride in what I’ve done and what I will do, and has given me purpose in my career,” Gomez says, adding that his accomplishments would not have been possible without the support of family and friends.

“So, my success is really their success, too,” he says. “Now I can start to repay them for what they’ve done for me.”

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ Fall 2021 class here.