Our Amazing Team
The people that make the things happen
Derek Munneke
Captain of Captology
One of the most recognisable faces among Adelaide’s tech-savvy movers and shakers, Derek Munneke has spent a decade and a half working his way up in the IT industry. Originally a developer, Derek has fulfilled roles as varied as manager, salesman, mentor, and social organiser. With vast experience in all aspects of the software lifecycle, Derek brings a passion and dedication to developing good software.
Linda Zaccara
Chief Operations Officer
Linda takes care of business development, operational and financial affairs of the company. Linda has a range of qualifications from degrees in both CIS and Philosophy to diploma’s in Life Coaching. Linda is passionate about furthering NextFaze to be the best boutique App Development company in Australia.
Ric Santos
Software Engineer - iOS, Production Lead
Ricardo has degrees in Computer Systems Engineering and Computer Science, and has over 11 years experience, including 7 years working with the iOS platform. He is very proficient in both Objective-C and Swift, and has experience with many of the iOS APIs. Ricardo also has a Cert IV in project management which helps to keep things on track and on budget.
Ben Tilbrook
Software Engineer - Android, iOS
No one else at NextFaze is driven by such rabid motivation to get software right as Ben. With 13 years experience developing with Java, and 8 years developing for the Android Platform, he is extremely competent with all aspects of Android development and Googles SDKs and APIs. Ben is very proficient in Kotlin and continuous integration with Jenkins, and regularly contributes to open source projects.
Alex Waters
Android Developer
Alex brings some Android smashing, Java yodelling, keyboard canoodling skills to the team. Currently studying a degree in impossibility (B.Eng (Mechatronic) + B.Sc (Biomedical)), he will no doubt drop out at some stage in the near future to develop the T1000 for Cyberdyne Systems
Michael Drozdowski
International Bon Vivant
Bachelor of the Laws, nerd of the beers and connoisseur of the coffees, Droz joined the team to ‘hang around some real code monkeys.’ He must like the place, because he’s been here long enough to make it on the website! Droz spends his days weilding JIRA and Xcode, wrestling the objective sees, and brewing quite possibly the finest coffee this side of the Himalayas.
Zak Barbuto
Web Developer
Zak has completed a Bachelor of Science in Computing & Digital Media and wrote his honours thesis in Interaction Design on cyclical end-user testing. He has over 5 years experience in full-stack web development and has been tinkering with front-end development for over 10 years. Zak has dealt extensively with single-page and progressive web apps and has a particularly intimate knowledge of AngularJS, Angular 2+, Ionic, and Cordova. For the last 3 years he has spent a lot of time working with the LoopBack Node.js API framework. His contributions to the loopback codebase has earned him a position as a code owner for most of the LoopBack repositories.
Dan Silk
Software Engineer - iOS, Android
Dan is our cross-platform app magician. He really can do anything! Dan’s background is in gaming, not just playing them, but actually making them! He’s credited for his work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Hero (Wii, PS2, PSP) as well as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, PS2, PSP) and so many more! You can generally find NextFazer’s skylarking at Dan’s desk either talking code, or cooling down beside his blade-less fan.
Kane O'Riley
Android Developer
Spending a majority of his time tearing apart Android from the ground up, Kane is a self-taught developer that lives and breathes the platform. Kane sees Android development as not only a job but a favourite past-time, developing just as much at home as he does at the office, with his name on plenty of indie developed titles. That being said, he is looking to quit Android dev in order to play Pokemon Go full-time.
Michael Marner
Software Engineer, Production Lead
Michael has both a PhD in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Information Technology (Computing & Multimedia) with honours. Michael’s PhD research investigated interaction and user interface techniques for Spatial Augmented Reality. This has given Michael a variety and depth of experience in different hardware and software technologies, and the technical understanding to create solutions to difficult problems.
Shane Woolcock
iOS Developer
Shane is an iOS, née Java developer. This about-face shines through in other facets of his life, with his Ingress faction-change request finally coming in - he is now very correctly a member of the Resistance, leaving the dark and horrible world of the Enlightened in the same place he left his Java credentials.
Paul Robinson
Web Developer
Paul has over 10 years experience in full-stack web development starting with the early adoption of the LAMP stack. He is entrepreneurial by nature, passionate about software design and driven to deliver solutions which add efficiencies without compromising reliability. Being the company’s Tech Lead he leaves no stone unturned when researching new technologies and paradigms; trying always to map ideas back to deliverable practical solutions. His proficiency in Javascript, Python, PHP and their corresponding frameworks (express, Angular, Node, Flask, Ionic) allow him to reliably take good ideas and turn them into great software.
Caleb Froese
Web Developer
Fresh out of school, Caleb has impressed us enough with his self-taught knowledge to land himself this sweet, sweet job. Previously famous in the office for bringing us donuts with alarming regularity, he has since settled into making sure that his developing programming knowledge has no holes in it (Get it? Donuts have holes). Is desperately trying to learn languages other than PHP so he doesn't have to help Marner with anything.
Stephen de Bruin
Web Developer
After working for six years as an electrician, Stephen decided that he'd make a change and push himself into an industry he has always had a passion for. A Diploma in Software development was the start, now he does his best to take in all the knowledge his tiny brain can handle. Spending most of his free time either playing computer games or coding, the future is not looking bright for his spinal column. Currently edging Kane for the title of "Best T-Shirts at NextFaze".
Paul Fekete
Lead Tester
After being banned from Twitter for trolling celebrities, Paul joined NextFaze as a tester to apply his skills as an annoying, pedantic, nitpicker to increase the quality of production output. Disclaimer: some facts may have been modified to fit the bias of whatever media outlet whose agenda you don’t agree with.
Brent Jacobs
Ruby Guy
Unforthcoming with even a small amount of information that one could form into a humorous/humourless bio, Brent is now locked into this particular blurb until the next website update. He doesn't look like a cartoon in real life, but his Ruby skills are so good that they couldn't possibly belong to a human, so we view him as a fictional character in order to not feel outclassed.
Tegan Giddens
Web Developer
Tegan has stepped up from UniSA's Sofware Dev degree to NextFaze, where she hopes she willl gain the missing knowledge to recreate a digital version (of course using Web technologies du jour) of her first love - McFlurries. She's already familiar with the Ionic framework and the Amazon Web Services stack, and will use our research into practical applications of blockchain technology to implement a solution that tracks who exactly is stealing all the Skittles from her desk.
Jacques Fourie
Web Developer
Collaborated with NextFaze for a University project, afterwhich someone gave him a key to get back inside the building. Not to worry though, Jacques has brought along a thirsty interest in all things 3D & VR with him and he's been put to work building projects in Angular and with AWS. Famous throughout the office for not knowing what he ordered at lunch time, a stint learning the ins and outs of object-relational mapping beckons.
Rushi Patel
Web Developer
Arrived at our doorstep at the same time as Tegan and Jacques, so it would've been unfair to not let him sit at a computer too. Rushi has finished his degree and has been thrust into the Angular-heavy ground floor at NextFaze. No, this is not a punishment - we like Angular at NextFaze! He's been making games in his spare time, and also wants to slide into Android Development. I'd say we'll give him a shot. Plays guitar in his profile pic, but I've never seen any evidence of this in real life.