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10 minutes with Alistair

Head shot of Alistair

Meet our Android-enthusiast, Alistair

Fascinated by cutting edge tooling, libraries and approaches, this Senior Developer is a champion for best practices.

Alistair’s first introduction to the world of technology was through a magazine which his Nanna bought him, including a subscription to build and programme a robot. He took the byte and gradually immersed himself in learning and understanding how things work, with a sprinkling of energy reserved for Pokémon, Halo and Star Wars.

Not realising there was a job avenue in this programming hobby, Alistair began earning some cache as a paperboy. Still unaware of Computer Science as a study, he enrolled at University to complete a degree in Maths - for the sole reason that he ‘was good at it’. ‘I like Maths because it’s logical: there are a series of steps to follow to solve a problem, it's formulaic and there is always a right answer.’ Did he just describe himself?!

Eventually, during his last year of university, Alistair was introduced to the concept of programming as a job. In retrospect, perhaps he isn’t as thorough in research as we’d always thought. But, from here, his love of Android inspired him to delve deeper into development; playing around to see if he could work out how to make things work by following tutorials and armfuls of books.

On the ball

Perhaps savouring his decision being final, and his satisfaction of stringent rules and best practices, Alistair was a football referee for a number of years.

Proactive, he seeks out evidence and enjoys the process of researching and proving patterns he notices. He takes great pride in things being organised, no wire will be left untied or plug switches unflicked with this guy around. All of which made him an excellent candidate for making sure nothing is eggs-terminated in his role as Quality Assurer at a Scotch Egg Factory. Here he realised how much paperwork was accumulated from the various testing, legislation and temperature checks, and how much space was taken up by storing it. Intrinsically wired to create tools that make life easier for others, he formulated a plan and presented a prototype of a data handling and storage app to the board of directors, who agreed and offered him his first role as Developer.

In the aftermath of stringent taste testing, it would seem you can have too much of a good thing and it took a few years before he enjoyed eating this lunch item again. Alistair also previously worked in a coffee shop, but fortunately, that didn’t put him off Java…

Bright eyed

Having gained experience as a Developer and looking to move South to be closer to his now-wife (who controversially favours iOS), Alistair found a job opportunity at Brightec on Google. Having attended an interview he was fully onboard with Andy’s visions and moral direction for the company, and still highly values our mission to prove that a profitable company and happy workforce can co-exist.

Alistair will never settle for ok and uses this drive to document and extensively share his continuous learning through the Brightec blog and Medium. He drives much of our Android Research & Development, hungry to stay ahead of innovative approaches and be a leader in our field.

A fountain of knowledge himself, Alistair holds other team members in high respect and eagerly takes the opportunity to learn from them. He enjoys organising complex data into simple, digestible and meaningful pieces, making him the perfect fit for our projects.

Once he has set his mind to something, you can guarantee our dedicated and determined Alistair will ensure it is done, to the highest possible standard. Alistair has firm values and uses these to guide his decisions and influence his work.

Hot and Mild

A strong advocate for the demise of all spicy food, Alistair in fact seems to detest any form of heat and can be found hiding in the shade on any summer's day.

But now we come to the big question, ‘If you had a limitless budget, time & technology, what is the one app you’d build?’

No doubt inspired by long hours spent watching Star Wars, Alistair answered; ‘I’d build some sort of live holographic projection for calls’.

‘You could also use it for looking around new places and it would be useful for gaming - being able to have a holographic projected map in front of you while you play.'

Click here if you'd like to stay ahead with Android and Alistair's work at Brightec.

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