We are excited to introduce Simon, our new Infrastructure Manager, to the Pretty Brilliant team. In our recent interview with him, Simon shared his professional journey and past experiences, the key insights he has gained since joining our company, his thoughtful approach to problem-solving, and valuable advice for those aspiring to become Infrastructure Managers in the tech industry.

Can you tell us about your professional background and your responsibilities as Infrastructure Manager?
I’ve been working with AWS infrastructure for over 7 years now, having migrated to the platform to solve a host of problems we were having with our on-premises systems at a company I worked for at the time. I’ve never looked back.

My responsibilities at PT are to work closely with our developers to build and maintain the infrastructure we require to run our projects, conforming to the “Well-Architected Framework”. The principles of which are: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimisation, and Sustainability.

On top of this I maintain our code pipelines for our Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery software development lifecycles. All of our infrastructure is under constant review as we strive to improve our services incrementally.

What valuable insights have you gained in your role since joining Pretty Technical?
The first thing I noticed was how friendly and supportive the team at PT is. Meetings are good natured and informal. This creates a positive and collaborative atmosphere, which I really appreciate. Even the most critical issues are dealt with in a positive way. The insight I have gained is that we work within a highly regulated industry and it is vital to our business that we implement and maintain best-practice at all levels.

How do you approach problem-solving when unexpected issues arise?
First, and most important thing is to be positive. There is a solution out there, you’ve just got to find it. With that in mind I have always taken the approach that problems are never usually one thing, rather a collection of issues that need resolving. The best way to do this is to break them down into their individual components and correct them one by one.

Can you share some past experiences that have played a key role in shaping your path to Pretty Technical?
I was the CTO for a small agency that used to provide creative solutions for experiential marketing companies. One day we were approached with the most challenging brief from Volvo. They had a top of the range SUV, which could be configured with a £10k Bose sound system. The brief was to design and build a system to create a “Carpool Karaoke” experience for visitors to the Volvo stand at the Camp Bestival music festival. Visitors were to be able to get in the car, select a track to sing along to, and be filmed and recorded as they did so. On leaving the car they were to go to a station where their short film would be ready for them, fully rendered and branded, for them to share on social media. The time limit we had to do all of this was 90 seconds from them exiting the car. So, big problem. Solution?  Break it down into small ones and solve them one at a time. The rendering and branding was relatively easy, as all I had to do was record an action in Photoshop to import the file, resize it, add logos, etc, and render it out. However for this to work the clips had to be exactly 60 seconds long (this was the duration the client had decided on), or else it would not work. This proved to be one of the biggest challenges, as there was no video camera available at the time that could be programmed to only record for exactly 60 seconds. The solution I came up with was to use an iPhone as there was a movie app that would do just that. The next problem was how to get the clips off the phone, as everything, phone, iPad for visitors to watch themselves singing, and the sound recording equipment was locked in place and we only had 90 seconds! We overcame the challenge by yet again leveraging the technology in an iPhone. Media files can be saved to DropBox, so we had a laptop nearby with a mirror of the DropBox account on it. The files would be saved on the phone, mirrored to the laptop, which was running a script that, as soon as a movie file hit the folder, would upload the file to a powerful computer (EC2) in AWS, with a copy of Photoshop on it and a javascript file to trigger the action. The file would then be rendered out and pushed back to some proprietary software we used to access social media. The visitor then interacted with an iPad to share their karaoke experience. Over the 3 days of the festival we did nearly 1,000 sessions. It was wildly popular, and the client was delighted.

All of this in the middle of a field. 

The problem solving and the creative and technical fixes I came up with reinforced my belief that there are solutions out there for every challenge.

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to become an Infrastructure Manager in the tech industry?
It is impossible to be an expert in every aspect of cloud based computing services. Get to know the basic services well, and the others you come across in your career will seem less daunting. Familiarise yourself with Infrastructure as Code tools. Keep up to date as much as possible with new and emerging technologies. Be resourceful.

If you’d like to work with Simon and our team why not take a look at our Careers page and send an email to [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about Pretty Technical products and services please use our Contact Form.