About Me

Hi, I’m Dave 👋

A black-and-white selfie of me, bearded and grinning in a cap and a “DB DAVE” t-shirt.

I’m a Senior Engineering Manager at Canva, where I lead the AI platform teams building the infrastructure behind a lot of Canva’s AI features. Before that I spent a couple of decades in and around databases, systems, and platform engineering, which is a long-winded way of saying I’ve been fighting with computers since the late 90s.

What I’m doing now

Leading platform teams across things like ML evaluation and inference, and the infrastructure that lets other engineers ship AI features without having to become infra experts themselves. A good chunk of the job is the unglamorous stuff nobody puts on a slide: tooling and vendor decisions, reliability, and growing engineering leaders who can handle both the technical and the people side without falling over.

How I got here

25+ years in tech, starting in database administration and systems engineering and gradually wandering into leadership. The rough shape of it:

  • AI/ML platform engineering (2024–present): Canva, building the infrastructure behind AI-driven product experiences.
  • Platform & SRE leadership (2014–2024): Timely, Flux Federation, GitLab. Scaling platform teams, and surviving the chaos that tends to come with fast-growing companies.
  • Data engineering leadership (2007–2014): seven-odd years at Trade Me, NZ’s largest online marketplace, building and leading database teams.
  • The foundations (1999–2007): database admin, systems engineering, and (briefly) teaching IT courses, which mostly taught me I’d rather build things than lecture about them.

Along the way I’ve spoken at conferences (Microsoft Tech-Ed, SQL Saturday, back in the day), run user groups, been through an acquisition, and slowly realised that the best engineering is mostly about getting out of good people’s way.

Where I come from (technically)

My background is data and ops, so I’ve got strong (some would say stubborn) opinions about reliability, observability, and building systems people can actually trust. I’m a database guy at heart, and anyone who’s worked with me will tell you that shows.

Lately I’m into ML evaluation, training and inference infrastructure, the slightly mad economics of GPU compute, and how AI tooling is changing the way engineers work day to day.

The Human Side

Originally from Margate, South Africa, I’ve called Wellington, New Zealand home since 2003. When I’m not fighting with computers:

  • Family: a partner, 3 daughters (now adults, or nearly), 2 dogs, and a cat who tolerates us.
  • Garage warrior: currently home to a Triumph Speed Triple RS and too many woodworking tools. If it can be taken apart, I’ve probably tried (reassembly success rate: variable).
  • Non-athlete: former powerlifter, current “just trying to keep up with the youngsters”. Golfer with no realistic chance of quitting my day-job any time soon.
  • Stereotypically South African: yes, I braai. Yes, I enjoy a good beer. 😄

Why this blog exists

It’s evolved with my career. It started as SQL Server deep dives and turned into whatever I’m chewing on at the time: engineering leadership, AI augmentation, and building systems that make me a little less dumb. I mostly write to force myself to think clearly. If someone else gets something out of it, even better.

Say hi

I’m always up for a good conversation, especially if you’re:

  • Building or scaling AI/ML platform teams
  • Wrestling with engineering leadership in a fast-growing company
  • Curious about remote-first engineering culture
  • A startup after some technical guidance (beer-based payment plans by negotiation)

Find me on LinkedIn , just mention what caught your attention. 🙂

Cheers,
Dave