FAQ
Short answers, with links to the pages that tell it properly.
I'm a DevOps Engineer at RenewCo Solar, a solar installer in Sydney, Australia, and the founder of Software Cowboy Pty Ltd. I taught myself to program in 2025 and built the two systems this site is about: the Job Adding System, which runs RenewCo's back office, and RenewCompare, an energy-analysis tool it runs in-house. The About page tells it properly, with dates.
I own RenewCo Solar's Azure estate as code: the infrastructure, the CI/CD pipelines, identity and security. I built and run the automation platform behind its back office, and I build the tools the sales team and its customers use. The title is DevOps Engineer; the work has grown well beyond DevOps. Projects shows the systems and Experience the roles.
The automation platform that runs the back office at RenewCo Solar: 76 automations across 20 platforms. A signed solar proposal goes in and a fully provisioned job comes out, across the document libraries, the CRM, the customer portal, the work boards, field service and accounting, with scheduled jobs carrying it through to invoicing and close-out. Proposal in, job out. By my estimate it gives the business back 5,000+ hours of staff time a year. On the Projects page you can play the flow through, step by step, and the showreel shows it running.
An energy-analysis tool I built, which a solar installation company runs in-house. It reads a photo or PDF of a customer's electricity bill, prices their real usage against the market and returns a ranked comparison, as a report in plain words with the plan code on it so the customer can quote it to their retailer. Under it sit a wholesale-price forecast built on 27 years of market data and a battery scheduler written in Rust that runs in under a millisecond. Where a figure cannot be supported it is withheld rather than guessed. The engine and the customer's side are both on the Projects page.
My own company, Software Cowboy Pty Ltd, founded in 2026 and run alongside the day job. Its first product is built and not yet announced. Its site is softwarecowboy.com.au.
A narrated tour in my own voice: how a signed proposal becomes a provisioned job, what RenewCompare does with a power bill, and what I'm building now. There is a transcript under the video for anyone who would rather read. Watch it.
Laziness, at first. I had an administration job full of work a machine should have been doing, so I taught myself to make the machine do it. I took on the integrations, caught many eyes, and landed in DevOps, where I rehearsed every failure mode, shifted every perspective and researched without stopping. The true sweetness of a win only belongs to the ones who have known what it is to starve. The arc has the dates.
Self-taught in software engineering, systems and automation. Formally: I did badly at high school, tried a bachelor's degree and left without it, and in 2026 Charles Sturt University admitted me to a Graduate Certificate in Computing with no degree behind me, online through IT Masters. I am keeping a High Distinction average, and the plan is to articulate into a Master of Information Technology with cloud computing as the focus. The Education section on About lays out the before and after, starting from an ATAR of 63.
A sudden thyroid illness, splitting headaches, then a car crash around 23 July and two days asleep. I woke up thinking differently, and within a week I had started building the Job Adder, the workbook that became my first system. That is the short version: Who I used to be tells it in full, the music page tells what came a week later, and the arc has the dates.
Because they come from the same place the systems do. At eleven I worked the Rubik's cube out without a tutorial; the guitar came by ear; I read a hundred classics in a year and wrote a novel I decided not to publish. The habit is the same every time: look at a thing until it gives up its pattern, then make something with it. The poems are published in full, and Hobbies has the rest.
Through the contact page, which goes straight to my inbox, or on LinkedIn. Hiring, building something similar, or curious how any of this was put together? Send a message. I reply to everything that isn't spam.
Share links anywhere and quote short excerpts with attribution and a link back. Don't republish or rehost the content, and don't use my photographs or the showreel anywhere else. Anything beyond that, ask first; I'll almost certainly say yes to a reasonable request. The terms of use have the detail.
No cookies of its own. It uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which reports totals, not people, and isn't loaded for visitors in the European Union. The contact form is the one place it takes personal information: your name, email address and message, sent to me as an email and used only to reply. Your theme choice stays in your own browser. The privacy note has the rest.
There is a desperate version of me who longs for the extraordinary, hidden in his bedroom, writing intricate code. He lives in the back of my mind, and he catches visions of my life and my work with growing clarity. Day by day, as my life becomes the one he is making, I feel tethered to another time and space. My own reflection.
Red. I once made a piece of art that was nothing more than that single colour on a page. Red. Red. Red. Later, staring through the windscreen while driving, all I could see were the brake lights bleeding into the dark. I have always loved the colour red.
Yes, several. I'm not saying where; the hobbies pages are a good place to start looking.
Not answered? Ask me: it goes straight to my inbox, and I reply to everything that isn't spam.