I'VE ONE TECH OF A CAREER

NATHANIEL Okenwa always dreamed of becoming a doctor one day – until he became hooked on another career that also requires a knack for diagnostic skills - coding.

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So the 30-year-old from South East London gave up his medical aspirations for software development with American communications tech giant Twilio - and he hasn't looked back.

What do you do?

I work as a “developer evangelist” and currently lead our team across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. When you imagine a software developer, you’re probably thinking of someone who spends their day in a dark room staring at lines of hard-to-read code and building the tech we use every day.

That’s true, but there are so many kinds of developers. I don’t just write code and build cool tech; I make sure that other engineers are empowered to build.

My routine usually involves creating content for our online blog or YouTube channels, preparing talks to give at technical conferences, and building interactive experiences that show off our technology.

What projects are you most proud of?

One of my favourite projects was supporting the building of messaging chatbots for mental health charities in the UK to use as part of their outreach services.

Working on something with such a positive real-world impact was great. I also created an auto-translating phone call tool using AI, which I called Babel Fish, inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.