New Team Member: Barry Walls

We have some great news to announce, Barry Walls is joining Thriday as Senior Developer! Barry will be joining the team all the way from South Africa!

You can read below to find about Barry's professional background, interests and a few of his favourite things below:

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Tell us a little about your most recent work experiences... ‍

I’ve been working at Rand Merchant Bank for the last 9(!) years. It was my first job after completing at Monash University. I got to work on one of the world's best mobile banking apps and worked on one of the first major geo-fenced payment systems, as well as a few other line-of-business mobile apps.  

From there I moved to working on front-office systems for the trading floor, providing tools to enable pricing and risk calculations to various trading desks, as well as general integration between our in-house trading system (and its many components from front-end, to backend & DB) and a few vendor systems.  

When COVID-19 hit, I built an enterprise-wide system for tracking covid cases, as well as for managing employee access to the offices, in line with government regulations.  

Don’t be shy, tell us your super powers! ‍

I can visualize systems very well, and then use Microsoft Paint (who needs Visio?) to draw accurate, readable, sensible diagrams. I’m great at looking at how components fit together, in order to understand where they could (or have…) broken.

I reverse engineered a digital magazine provider, in order to create my own for saving my magazines. On the way, discovered a flaw in their billing system, and got access to all their customer data – including payment – security is important.

Share a little bit about your personal interests... ‍

I love programming and help a lot of friends and family with building out their ideas – I tend to use it as somewhere for me to learn new skills. I have a habit of deeply researching hobbies, and learning about the tools they use, how things are done, and then not spending resources on those things myself.

I watch a lot of movies. And I enjoy gaming and reading. I am also interested in target shooting.  

Which small business do you personally love the most... ‍

I support a number of small businesses on Patreon (namely Lindsay Ellis, as well as NoClip Gaming Documentaries). On a more local level, there is a bird of prey centre that I love: https://www.birdsofprey.co.za/.

Proof Cafe does the best chocolate croissant.

Laughing Panda does the most amazing sushi.

“Stationary and Print” is a small stationary shop, that gives the best personalized customer service (when my car was broken into and laptop bag stolen, they gave me a discount on a pen, to replace one my parents had gotten for me).  

Favourite movie, song and food! ‍

Can you pick just one for any of these categories?  

Movie - Shawshank Redemption.

Song – Mountains by Biffy Clyro, although the song which best represented 2020 for me was Missy Higgins - When The Machine Starts. Yes, I know some Australian musicians!

Food – Takeout: Sushi; Homemade: My own sous-vide salmon pasta;  Restaurant meal: I enjoy going for “degustation” tasting menus at fancy restaurants…Haven’t done that since pre-covid though.  

Welcome to the team, Barry!