Hello, I'm Mark.

What I do now

I work at WasteAnt, a young company in waste to energy. My home is the bunker, which is where the waste lands before it burns, and where a crane decides what gets mixed with what. Those decisions change the burn, and the burn changes what the whole plant produces. I own the system that helps the crane make better ones.

It is the kind of job I wanted before I knew it existed. Code that moves something real, in a place that is loud and dusty and does not care about your assumptions.

How I got here

I was always half hardware and half software. I loved the tech side, but I could never get excited about things I could not touch. So I went looking for the place where the clever software meets something real, where the code moves a thing, or builds a thing, or makes a thing happen. Ideally something that leaves the world slightly better off.

School was Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, doing maths, physics and chemistry. University was Jacobs University Bremen, robotics and computer vision. Then a run of research and engineering jobs in Bremen that I am still not quite over the luck of.

What I am good at

People, first. I like meeting them, I like helping them, and I really like watching someone turn into the best version of themselves. That is not a soft skill I put on a CV to look well rounded, it is the part of the job I would miss most.

At work I am the one who gets it done. Make it exist, then make it better. I am a student for life, I currently have a mentor I am learning a great deal from, and I do not accept a loss. I have had plenty of them. I just do not intend to keep them.

The hardest thing I have pulled off

Putting sensors into the real world and keeping them honest. The bunker throws everything at you at once: dust, vibration, noise, sensors that slowly tilt out of alignment, and a view that keeps getting blocked. On top of that the data itself degrades in ways that are easy to miss.

My mentor helped me spot a few of the things I was walking past. Once we had actually found every problem, the fixes turned out to be simple. The lasting result is that I now test religiously, and I trust nothing until it has proven itself.

What I am working on

Going deeper into full stack and architecture, learning to lead a domain rather than just work in one. Reading more, mostly non fiction, mostly the kind that makes you rethink something. And my relationship with Jesus.

My weakness is my eagerness. I move fast, and sometimes what the moment actually needs is for me to step back, wait, and listen before I do anything. My mentor is exceptional at that. Toph, basically.

Off the clock

Competitive gamer. Music obsessive, which mostly means sitting with a hip hop album and the lyrics open, working out what everything means. Artist when the mood shows up. Perfume enthusiast. BBQ master, and I will take that argument. Currently boxing, and hoping to compete soon.