Working at 8th Light, we have the daily privilege of collaborating with truly brilliant minds—people who bridge the gap between deep engineering and meaningful human connection. We are also incredibly fortunate to work alongside folks who, no matter how tough the problem or early the hour, are overflowing with honesty, curiosity, and of course, the jokes.
That’s why it brings us immense joy to announce our latest Beacon Award recipient at 8th Light, Drake Fish!
The Beacon Award is a peer-nominated honor celebrating the individuals who bring 8th Light’s values to life and elevate everyone around them. Drake was nominated by multiple colleagues last quarter, which tells you everything you need to know about his impact.
As a Lead Engineer, Drake has built a reputation at 8th Light that reaches far beyond client teams. The secret sauce? He learns in the open, bringing everyone along for the ride.
Waggy is an autonomous robot pooper scooper that Drake started building in his spare time. He stepped into the project without much background in electronics or robotics. Instead of tinkering quietly in private until everything worked, Drake shared the entire journey in Slack (mistakes, wiring mishaps, and all) so the rest of the company could learn, and giggle, alongside him.
Along the way, Drake used Waggy to give us a front-row seat to what agentic tools like Claude can actually accomplish when paired with real-world hardware and a little bit of experimentation.
As if building an autonomous pooper scooper wasn't enough, Drake took his AI experimentation even further. He became the first of many 8th Light team members to earn the Claude Certified Architect credential, one of Anthropic’s benchmarks for engineers building production-grade AI systems.
Right after passing the exam, he presented to the company to share tips, break down the material, and demystify the process. If you drop into our internal AI Slack channels or our "AI in the Open" sessions, odds are high you will find Drake sharing a useful tool, helping someone debug a stubborn error, or dropping a refreshingly honest hot take.
Out in the field, Drake is a trusted technical leader at one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, where his clients turn to him for straight answers to difficult questions. Last quarter, he helped ship several major platform integrations, and today he regularly hosts AI enablement sessions for their leaders and engineering teams.
From homebrewed robots to speaking in front of packed audiences at client sites, the pattern remains the same: Drake shares everything he learns, and we are technologists and humans for it.
