Ricardo Nolan – Chief Technology Officer

Welcome to week nine of our ‘Get to Know Us’ series!

This week we spoke to Ricardo Nolan who is the CTO here at Simply Workflow.

Ricardo currently works remotely and is based in Portugal and he joined the Simply Workflow team in September 2019.

We asked Ricardo the following questions:

Can you provide some details about your current position and what it entails?
I am the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Simply Workflow. That means I am basically guiding and overseeing all of the technology within the business. So, I define the technology architecture that forms our system and the technology strategy and I also manage the various development teams at Simply Workflow.

Can you tell me something exciting that you have worked on at Simply Workflow and why it was exciting?

The entire system. When I joined Simply Workflow, I was hired to manage a development team tasked with building a pure SaaS version of the system. At the time, I evaluated the original system, then I looked at the requirements for the new product and I created an architecture of what we needed and the technologies we would use. Then we started building the new system from scratch. I chose to go with Laravel, PHP, and My Sequence Stack and we built it from there.

I can’t really pinpoint one piece of the system that is more exciting than the others so I’d say overseeing the creation and development of an entirely new system is what is the most exciting.

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career in your field? 

In my field, I would tell them to be inquisitive, ask questions and never stop learning because the industry is always evolving.

If you could meet any famous or historical person, alive or dead, who would you pick and why?
One person I would like to meet is Keanu Keeves because he seems like he’s a really nice guy.

What three items would you take with you to a deserted island? 

3 items… A Swiss army knife because it’s multifunctional, I’d choose one with a magnifying glass so I could make a fire using the sunlight for warmth. I’d also want to have a fully loaded Kindle, If I’m on a deserted Island there’s not really very much I could do anyways so that’s probably all I’d need. The Kindle would keep me entertained. Maybe a canteen water bottle too because it would be very hard to make my own.

Do you like travelling? – What’s the best place you’ve travelled to?

I do like travelling but most of my travel has been on business. The best place I’ve ever been on holiday was Portimao in the Algarve, which is where I went on my honeymoon.

What superpower would you choose to have and why?

Predicting the future. I’d be rich! And I could prevent bad things from happening too.

Pineapple pizza. Yay, or nay? 

I don’t go out of my way to eat it but it’s food so I don’t mind it too much.

Thank you for reading this week’s Get to Know Us and a big thank you to Ricardo for speaking with us. Join us next time when we will be chatting to Alex Hills, Business Support Specialist at Simply Workflow.

If you would like to find out more about our wonderful team, click here.