⚡Career TL;DR
Summary of my professional life
If a traditional resume works better for you, you can download my latest from this page (I'm pretty proud of having a LaTex resume, wdyt?)
Hyped Summary
TL;DR a technologist hoping to start my own thing someday. Founded a startup in 2014, made some bank but not enough to be considered a real job; also taught me how inexperienced I was with technology. Joined the Singapore government's digital transformation team thereafter, made wonderful relationships and thoroughly enjoyed the social-good aspects but got worn out from the bureaucracy from beyond my department. Joined StashAway, loved it but it matured beyond a startup pretty soon after I joined. So I went to an even earlier stage startup to get my full startup experience. Currently at watchTowr as a founding member building a system to help secure large organisations; because which techie doesn't think having a legitimate reason to hack others is cool?
You'll want me in if...
You are trying to deliver awesome software products/services using Agile methodologies
You're looking to improve the business and technological resiliency of your product through adoption of cloud-native architectures and technologies such as Kubernetes
You're looking to kickstart a sustainanable engineering culture with a focus on the fine line between engineering excellence and delivery effectiveness
You're looking for someone who is both technically capable and business-savvy to front an engineering team
I'll want in if...
You are in the bootstrap/scaling out phase of the product/organisation
You pay well and my rewards are tied to performance instead of butt-in-chair time
You focus on outcomes over processes with a culture of trust and autonomy
You can offer me a challenge that involves both people and engineering
Highlights of my missions thus far...
Stared programming with C++ using Borland and DJGPP in 1999
Got banned from Neopets after automating my trading of marketplace items in 2000
Removed IT controls on laboratory computers in and enabled my class to play counterstrike over LAN in 2001
Created a tool that helps life science researchers easily find primer sequences to order for PCR analysis in 2013
Founded and bootstrapped my own tech startup serving as a platform for local musicians to be heard in 2015. Earned my right to say I've received the fabled First Dollar™.
Joined the digital transformation team at GovTech in 2016 before it was cool and was part of its growth from about 100 people to about 500
Part of the seed team that brought the MyCareersFuture product in GovTech from zero to one in 2017, helping to scale the engineering team from two to 25
Brought Kubernetes and IaC concepts into the tech stack of MyCareersFuture in 2017 way before Kubernetes was cool
Did a technical demo of MyCareersFuture's CI/CD pipeline to the Prime Minister of Singapore in 2018
Spoke at the DevOpsDays Singapore 2018 conference
Met the authors behind many super-widely-used open-soruce packages at KubeCon Barcelona in 2019
Serendipitously had lunch with Kent Beck in Singapore in 2019
Led my tribe's DevOps chapter and co-led my department's DevOps chapter from 2019-2020
Got more than 100 stars on a single Github repository in 2019
Managed to somehow get a new job when COVID first hit in 2020 and everything was a mess
Got the chance to mentor junior engineers at JuniorDevSG in 2020
Attended the Newfield Ontological Coaching programme and graduated as a trained coach in 2021
Led the implementation of an organisation-wide runbook solution at StashAway in 2021
Led the Communications Guild at StashAway in 2021
Part of the architects group at StashAway in 2021
Joined watchTowr in 2022 as a founding team member
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