Today I start a brand new adventure!

  /   1 minute   /   journal   career  

I normally ignore recruiter calls. But when I saw an email with the subject “Distinguished Engineer at Zwift”, I instantly knew I had to look into it.

Welcome kit from Zwift!

I first knew of Zwift in early 2016. I tried it, but didn’t stick with it. I was already deep into TrainerRoad and happy with it, and Zwift was still early days and not nearly as polished as it is today.

I was really into cycling those days. I worked my way up on the road from Category 5 to 3, and raced just about every chance I could anywhere in San Diego or even across SoCal and sometimes Arizona. Eventually, I gave up racing and dialed my cycling way back. But, I was still aware of Zwift. When the pandemic hit, all of my cycling buddies instantly moved over to Zwift. And as things opened up and in-person group riding became okay again, many of them stuck with Zwift. And though I’m not as active a cyclist as I once was, I’m still passionate about it. Zwift gives me an opportunity to combine my work with my passion for cycling.

Before Amazon, I spent 19 years making video games professionally. I chose to leave the industry in 2015 and never regretted it. But, I did miss some of the interesting technical challenges. Zwift is basically an MMO video game where the controller is a connected smart trainer. Working at Zwift gets me closer to the most interesting technical challenges I know.

I spent the past five years at Amazon learning, growing, and practicing my skills at broad leadership as a Tech IC. I’ve worked across hundreds of SDEs on everything from the tactical minutiae to the strategic tech decisions in very large businesses. As a Distinguished Engineer at Zwift, I hope to apply what I’ve been refining and practicing as a PE at Amazon the past five years.

It’s the combination of these three things, a passion for cycling and indoor fitness, getting closer again to really interesting technical challenges like I worked on in games, and landing in a role where I can influence a large tech organization for the better, that makes me extremely excited about this new job!