Expertise
Derek's expertise is rooted in the design and delivery of highly available, linearly scalable streaming and distributed systems. He has deep practical knowledge of Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Cassandra, and the broader real-time data ecosystem, accumulated across two decades of hands-on engineering and consulting work. A practitioner and advocate of Clojure, Derek has written extensively on the language, spoken about it at Clojure/Conj, and built much of Factor House's core tooling in it. As CEO, he shapes the product vision for Kpow and Flex, and regularly writes and speaks on topics spanning Kafka operations, stream processing, and data engineering platform design.
Experience
Derek co-founded Factor House in 2019 and leads the company as CEO. Before that, he ran Troy-West, a Melbourne-based consultancy specialising in Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra, and Apache Storm, where Clojure was central to how the team delivered streaming platforms for clients across Australia and New Zealand. He also founded Melbourne Distributed, a meetup community for practitioners working with distributed systems. His profile in the Clojure community extends to conference appearances, including a talk at Clojure/Conj 2019, and a feature on The REPL podcast, one of the community's most recognised shows. Earlier in his career, Derek spent nearly a decade consulting across London's financial services sector, with roles at UBS Investment Bank, Fortis Bank, and Fidelity Investments. He began his career as an internet developer at Telecom New Zealand.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, University of Auckland
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