Cosette Kamin didn’t plan on a career in cybersecurity. After three years as a flight attendant and a stint as an English language volunteer in South Korea, she joined Abnormal AI as a security analyst, her first role in tech. Four months in, her team asked her to step into a new responsibility, and the way she handled it started what she calls ‘falling upwards.’
From Cabin Crew to Security Analyst
Cosette had wanted to go to college in South Korea since middle school. When Covid-19 hit the year she was supposed to go, the plan fell through, so she became a flight attendant. After three years she left the airline and spent a short stretch in Korea as an English language volunteer. Going alone was hard, and she says it taught her how to hold her own in scary situations. Tech had always fascinated her, and a remote job appealed right away when she got back.
She joined Abnormal as a security analyst, and she says her gratitude for the opportunity shaped how she worked from the first week.
“The gratitude that I felt towards this company for taking a chance on me was what made me show up everyday to do the absolute best work I could provide.”
Stepping In Before the Title
Four months after she started, Cosette’s team needed someone to cover its VAC queue, which stands for Vendor Account Cases. Analysts on the queue check that the vendors a customer works with are legitimate, so that no one can steal money from the customer, and Cosette calls it the “money queue.” The person primarily in charge of a queue is called its DRI, and she was asked to fill that role.
She took on the work with the same gratitude she brought to the whole job, and she figured out most of it on her own. Imposter syndrome showed up often, and on hard days she reminded herself that “you can do this” and “it’s alright if you mess up.” Six months after she started, the team offered her a promotion to Senior Analyst and VAC DRI. She credits how she handled even the simplest DRI tasks for the title she holds today.
Asking for More Room to Grow
After about a year as a VAC DRI, Cosette hit burnout and knew she needed a change. She talked it through with coworkers and friends, and one of them gave her advice that stuck: “Tell your manager. It’s her job to help find a solution to what you’re experiencing.”
Cosette went into that conversation a little nervous about asking for more room to grow, and her manager responded right away with a plan: time in another queue, new projects, and space to think about the role she wanted next. That plan led to a Technical Lead position covering two important queues that had often been overlooked.
“I think being human and honest about our struggles accelerates our growth, whether personal or professional.”
Cosette measures her leadership against her first manager at Abnormal, who balanced professionalism with kindness and “knew how to listen and validate, rather than assume and avoid issues.” She calls herself logical and fact-focused, so adapting to how each teammate learns takes work, and she says the biggest surprise has been how rewarding it is to help someone find an approach that works for them.
Owning the Work
As a new Technical Lead over queues she knew little about, Cosette wanted to start an audit process for them. Spreadsheets aren’t her strength, so she opened Claude and typed a plain request: “I need a way to view a small sample of messages each of our analysts do each week and grade them.” Claude came back with several ways to do it, and after working through the options she now runs a fully functional audit. She also uses AI as a sounding board for tough decisions and project ideas.
“It’s like having a super smart coworker that’s always signed on.”
Last year Cosette won a company VOICE award for Ownership, one of Abnormal’s five values. The moment behind it came after a holiday break, when a surge in the VAC queue threatened to hold up the team for days. She worked with the other VAC DRIs to find the cause and led the effort to clear it in a single day, so no one’s workflows were interrupted. She describes ownership as choosing where to spend her energy: focusing on what she can influence and stepping in where the team needs her.
Still Falling Upwards
Cosette’s younger self wouldn’t believe she works in a remote tech job today. With no college degree or certifications, that version of her would ask how she got the job and earned a promotion.
“I found a company that sees value in people with drive and passion.”
She didn’t expect to be good at the work or to enjoy it so much, and she credits her teammates for a lot of that. The friendships she’s built matter on a remote team, and they have a playful side. Her teammates call her the emoji DRI, a title she earned by spending months asking, through the weekly team newsletter, for access to add emojis to Slack for the whole company.
That habit of asking, and asking again, is the one she plans to keep. Someday she hopes to move into program or project management, and she expects to get there the way she has so far: take on the work in front of her and ask for what she needs.
Explore open roles on teams protecting people from cybercrime at abnormal.ai/careers.