For our next installment we introduce you to Simon Humphrey, our Head of Engineering here at NextDLP. Keep reading to find out what he enjoys most about working here and what his future aspirations are.
How long have you worked at NextDLP?
I’ve been Head of Engineering at NextDLP for 5 and a half years and am a UK founding member.
What is your favorite thing about working at NextDLP?
When we first started the company, my favorite thing was definitely getting stuck into coding and planning how we were going to build the solution. These days I’m less involved in one-liners of code, debugging, or what functions should be called, though I still play my part in code review. The Computer Scientist in me will always love writing code.
I’ve always enjoyed interviewing people, ever since we started scaling out R&D. We’ve found some exceptional engineers on the journey so far and continue to build out across all teams - dev, test, UX, support, ops, docs and more! I love seeing our more junior engineers blossoming into seasoned developers, and am very proud of the engineering team we have built at Next - by far and away the strongest and most grounded I’ve worked with!
These days, I also get a lot of satisfaction from seeing new features roll out across our cloud and hearing all the positive feedback we’re getting from our customers. It's hard to pick a favorite, really.
Why did you decide to join/create Next DLP?
I’ve been really fortunate in my career to work alongside some fantastic founders and engineers. Before deciding to join Next, I was at Acano where I was a founding software developer in video conferencing technology. I really loved reverse engineering and finding ways to interoperate with other solutions in the video conferencing space and I’ve always loved the tech side of things. But when I got the chance to step into Head of Engineering with this founding team and our investors, Ubon Partners (again!), I couldn’t really say no.
It’s been a huge learning experience for me, which I don’t think I’d have gotten at any other company, and there have definitely been challenges at times (and there continues to be!). No start-up is without the occasional hiccup or sleepless night, but I feel very grateful for the opportunity and if someone asked me would I do it again - of course!!
We’re now on a mission to sort Data Loss Prevention once and for all, and I’ve no doubt the Next team is the right team for the job. I’m so proud of the engineering team and what we have achieved so far, and I can’t wait to see where we are in a year from now!
What are your future aspirations for Next DLP?
There are definitely some companies and competitors (I won’t name names!) I'd love to see Next DLP surpass, but as long as we continue to make useful, secure software and we’re making a difference for our customers, I’ll be very happy.
I’d love Next DLP to be THE data loss prevention solution, which we’re on track to be, but there is so much more we can do in the security space… one step at a time.
