See my latest CV here

My journey in Tech

I’m a relative late comer to software as a career. I landed my first development job at the age of 28, after spending the early part of my career consulting and doing level 2 support for a healthcare software company, and completing a Masters degree in Information Technology.

Right from the point at which I decided I wanted to get into coding, I was recommended by a friend to check out Linux, and I was hooked from the beginning. I was amazed by how customisable everything was, I loved the idea that basically anything was possible as long as you were willing to dig through the documentation and troubleshoot your problems, and I especially loved the feeling of satisfaction I got when I managed to configure my operating system in just the right way. Throughout my linux journey i’ve dabbled with Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch and most recently NixOS.

Naturally, when I asked that same friend what text editor to use, he recommended vim. At first, it was a clunky, slightly frustrating experience, but after a while it started to click, and almost felt like a minigame that I could play while I coded things. On top of that, just like with Linux, the ability to tinker with and customise vim was endless and I got just as much satisfaction out of setting up my development environment as I got from actually coding.

My first gig as a developer was at Blackbook.ai, where I worked primarily on a project with Aurizon. On this project, my time was split between working as a “data wrangler” and doing full stack development. My work as the unofficial “data wrangler” involved automating and optimising many data handling processes that were initally manual. That experience highlighted the value of automation in a really personal and visceral way for me. Eventually, I left that job in order to spend a year living in China and learning Mandarin.

Now that I’m back in Australia, I’m looking for full stack development work to continue to build a holistic understanding of how applications work, and gain exposure to more parts of the technical stack before deciding where i’d like to specialise. Given my experience with Linux and automation, roles that allow me to work on the DevOps/SRE side of things as well would be ideal. If you have any openings that might be suitable for me, please don’t hesitate to email me at egr.smart@outlook.com