Meet the Team: David

Our latest Meet the Team post features David, who works as a system engineer here at Nimvelo. David constantly checks over the servers and existing networks to ensure nothing goes wrong for our customers.

Tell us a little about your role at Nimvelo

I’m a systems engineer, which basically means I design and build systems for new products, and improve the reliability of existing ones. A lot of the time I’m managing and monitoring our existing network and server infrastructure.

What does an average day look like for you?

My day usually starts with a coffee while checking over emails and any non-priority monitoring events from the night before. I then continue working on one of our ongoing projects, which often involves working with the rest of the team to figure out deployments or ways forward.

I often work with Dan to help diagnose some of the more complicated customer support issues we might have during the day.

What are you working on at the moment?

Currently I’m working on designing and building a Kubernetes container orchestration cluster (try saying that a few times fast) to allow us to deploy updates to services without any downtime, scale services when we have higher demand and self-heal services if anything goes wrong.

I have also been working on a network upgrade that will allow us to utilise anycast routing; simply put, it will allow us to route our customers’ traffic to the nearest Nimvelo data centre, which will reduce media latency and improve quality.

How did you get into this role? Is there any advice you’d give to someone looking to get into systems engineering?

I found my way into systems engineering by doing an apprenticeship, which I would advocate to anyone looking to work in this industry. I was able to learn skills while having hands on experience with actual systems. It also gave me the opportunity to make industry contacts – and that’s how I ended up at Nimvelo!

I also think it’s important to work on your own projects or help with other open source projects in your own time. You learn so much by doing this and it increases your chances of getting an apprenticeship or a job. All you need is a computer and the will to learn things.

As Nimvelo’s longest-serving team member, how has the company changed since starting?

Since I started nearly five years ago, Nimvelo has undergone a lot of change. When I first joined I can remember responding to customer enquiries while doing server maintenance at the datacenter. Since then, both the customer base and our team has grown so significantly, the company has rebranded and we have seen massive changes in how businesses communicate. Now it’s always exciting to see the new things that the rest of the team are creating.

What’s the best thing about working at Nimvelo?

One of the best things about working at Nimvelo is having the ability to research and test new technologies. Even when we don’t end up using them, there is generally a lot to learn along the way, which helps us to improve our service and continually push boundaries.

Interested in joining David and the rest of the Nimvelo team? Please feel free to send your CV to hello@nimvelo.com and we’ll be in touch if we have any suitable roles!