Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Danny. You recently crossed a big milestone at Datapath and have now been at the company for 15 years! First of all, congratulations. Secondly, can you talk to us about how you originally found your way to Datapath, walk us through how your role has changed over the years and how things have changed since your early days?
I graduated from Loughborough University in 2003 with a degree in Microprocessor and Software Engineering at a time where the semi-conductor industry was going through a rough patch. Graduate roles in the semi-conductor industry were few and far between so I had to move towards more embedded software engineering roles.
After a short stint at AEA Technology Rail and Siemens Communications, both roles working in C/C++ on embedded Linux platforms, I got the opportunity to join Datapath in 2009 to create a Linux driver for the Vision capture cards. That was a great challenge because while I had worked on many different types of Linux device driver the video capture side was completely new to me. After a couple of years IP video began to loom on the horizon. The Vision Linux drivers/software was stable and being used by customers, so my role moved to support the Vision Linux drivers/software and start to develop the initial concepts of IP video encoding and decoding. This began with the “Render Station” (an IP decoding product that integrated with Wall Control-red) and the VisionHD2-SQX (a Vision capture card capable of encoding on the same card). These products were Datapath’s first foray into IP video encoding and decoding and provided valuable learning, helping to drive the development of all the SQX encoding and decoding technology that we have today.
At that time Datapath was probably around 40-50 people in total. As the company has grown, and SQX technology has grown, my role has added the Technical Lead aspects as well as the day-to-day software engineering responsibilities. This now covers design aspects of SQX technology as well as guiding team members in areas of SQX technology that they might not be as familiar.
Can you give us a bit of insight on what normal day looks like for a Technical Lead at Datapath?
After my initial cup of tea/coffee (!) there’s chance to tidy up any loose ends from the previous day’s developments before joining the daily stand-up meeting, although with the emergence of working from home in the past couple of years this is now mostly a ‘sit-down’ daily meeting these days! This is useful for the team to share what they’ve achieved in the past day and what their plans are for the next day and gives me the opportunity to help colleagues in technical decisions and to hear about any technically challenging work areas that might need further technical discussion/decisions making.
For me, not necessarily on a day-to-day basis but throughout the week there are meetings discussing what’s happening next for SQX technology. This can be short term work required imminently, all the way to thinking longer term.
Because I’ve seen almost all areas of code, from graphics to Vision to SQX, I often get involved with investigating/debugging customer support SQX issues.
After all of that there might even be some time to write some code!
What are the most rewarding and most challenging parts of your role?
One of the most rewarding aspects of the role is seeing the outcome when the team has completed a new feature. Especially if it is something new for Datapath. As an example, SQX streams now contain encryption at the encoding side. The encrypted SQX stream then needs to be decrypted at the decoding side. The encryption model we use incorporated SQX technology as well as Aetria and developments like this are a real R&D team effort.
The obvious challenging aspect is customer support. Ever since I joined Datapath supporting customers with issues has been key to developing good relationships. That does mean though at times current activities have to be dropped to dive in to investigating customer issues. A lot of these issues are rare and so the initial investigation is about having an educated guess as to where the issue might lie and then working things out. The reward for that effort and challenge is a happy customer!
How do you like to spend your time away from Datapath HQ?
If my knees allowed me to, I’d play a bit more 5-a-side football than I currently do. Aside from binge watching true crime documentaries on Netflix I try and get out to swim once or twice a week and the once a month or so (even during winter) you’ll find me fishing on the bankside after carp, often for three or four days at a time. To say fishing is a mad obsession – they all get thrown back after catching (!) – is an understatement.
Tell us something people may not know about you…
In 1999 I swam 200m butterfly at the British National Swimming and Diving Championships, which also doubled as the trials for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. In my heat was Steve Parry who went on to win a silver medal at those Commonwealth Games. Suffice to say he finished a long way in front of me! I finished 25th in my age group and 53rd in the overall country at that time.
