Hi! I’m Andrew Lockwood (everyone at work calls me Lockwood, and you can too 💪) and for some reason you’ve decided to read my bio… Thanks, I guess? 🥳

Personal

Spending time with my wife and kids is something I enjoy (don’t tell them I said this, it’ll go straight to their heads!). Playing games, skateboarding, snowboarding, or just generally hanging out together as a family is always great. I also like to read, watch movies, and work on cars & motorcycles. Home improvement and general tinkering/making are things that keep me busy and I find enjoyable.

Career

These days I work in tech in Canada and I’ve been doing that for about a quarter century now. 👴 Before getting into tech I got my B.Sc from the University of Waterloo and worked in some classic science jobs including a Lab Tech for DuPont’s Automotive R&D paint labs, and as a Plant/Wet Chemist for an innovative surface coatings company where I was responsible for maintaining all the electroless and and electrolytic plating chemistries. 🧪

I began my transition into tech back in the lab when I started automating a lot of my work with Excel, Access, and good ‘ol VBA macros. From there I went on to work the phones in a call center for a large Canadian telco, providing technical support for their high speed internet products. I was promoted there into my first leadership role and not too long after that I was promoted to Sr. Supervisor. 🤓

Around that time I was also modifying Hondas and their electronics, playing with Microchip PIC microcontrollers , and writing/using my own (E)EPROM editor and programmer software (in VB 6!) in my spare time. Looking back, I guess that’s what the kids today call a “side hustle”… 😤

Eventually a friend caught wind of what I was doing and got me an interview at this cool place he was working which was called Research In Motion . I joined RIM as a Systems Architect and over the better part of a decade progressed through MS SQL DBA and Database Developer roles before eventually leaving to join a startup selling a cloud based intranet solution (“cloud” was new back then kids!). During my time there I was promoted into tech and team lead roles and eventually Director of SW Eng. 💃

After about five years I left that startup for a more hands-on role as Data Architect with a startup in Construction Tech. In an unexpected turn of events a few months into my start there I was promoted to Director and then after a few years, VP Eng where I’ve had a great time leading a high performing, high-satisfaction, high-trust team which has built and scaled a brand new product from $0 to >$10MM ARR over the last four years! 🚀

…and the ride isn’t over yet! 👀