A background beyond the desk
My working life has included electrical and industrial environments as well as technology companies. I’ve worked with equipment and physical systems, built networks, and spent a great deal of time getting different parts of a system to work together.
That background is one reason the distinction between software and hardware has never felt particularly important to me. Both involve understanding constraints, making choices and finding out whether the result does what it needs to do.
Some of the projects I remember most clearly sit between those worlds: networking aboard an Icelandic trawler, supporting live football radio, and solving practical equipment problems. They are different settings, but each involved making technology useful in a real situation.
SecurStore and KeepItSafe
A substantial part of my career has been in backup and infrastructure. At SecurStore, and later KeepItSafe, my work included systems serving customers across Europe and the United States.
I became familiar with the layers beneath a service: networks, storage, virtualisation, backup software and the operational work needed to keep them together. That experience continues to inform how I think about the applications I build.
Co-founding Datastring
In 2016, I co-founded Datastring with Jon Thordarson. My work included building and operating infrastructure across Europe and the United States and developing the customer portal.
The portal connected the infrastructure to the customer experience, giving people a practical way to use the service.
This combination of systems engineering and software development has become a recurring part of my work. I enjoy understanding what sits underneath an interface and then finding a clearer way for someone to work with it.
Engineering at Ekco
At Ekco, my work spanned networking, infrastructure and software, with technical involvement in more than thirty acquisitions. I worked alongside teams with different systems and established ways of operating, helping bring those environments together.
Networking was an important part of that work: understanding how systems connected and how services depended on those connections. My work combined design with practical engineering and troubleshooting, looking across the environment to understand how its parts worked together.
Each acquisition brought its own history, decisions and experience. Understanding an environment meant working with the people who knew it, learning what already worked well and deciding where changes would help. That practical understanding shaped how I approached integration.
I also designed and built Ekco Shield, including its web interface and iPhone app. It brings backup, security and support information into one place, helping people understand service health and investigate what needs attention. Building it brought together my experience of operating infrastructure and creating the software people use to work with it.
Still close to the work
I enjoy hands-on engineering, troubleshooting and helping colleagues develop their understanding.
My preference is to build and operate systems in-house, with a strong interest in open source. Understanding the components and retaining control over the result are important parts of that preference.
My personal projects take those interests in different directions. Some involve infrastructure and automation. Others involve community, transport information, electronics or a physical object I want to make.
I often say, “There are no problems. Only solutions.” It’s what keeps me investigating, trying things and working through a problem.
What connects it all
I like taking something complicated, understanding its parts and making it more useful. Sometimes that means writing software. Sometimes it means changing a process or building a physical prototype. Sometimes it starts with listening carefully to someone who is struggling to explain the problem.