This quarter, we had the opportunity to have a great discussion with our Lead Developer, Engineering Manager, Ethan Nichol.

Ethan shared with us some highlights from his professional experience, his role here at Micruity and the intersection of technology, his role and Micruity’s role in retirement income.

Can you tell us about your experience before joining Micruity?

Before joining Micruity, I worked as a software developer at several Toronto-area startups. My professional background includes working at FreshBooks, an agency called TWG (which later became part of Deloitte Digital), and a travel company called Sherpa that develops automated bots for obtaining travel visas. Immediately before joining Micruity, I worked at Jobber, focusing on building out their backend and infrastructure.

Can you tell us about your role here at Micruity?

My day-to-day role involves overseeing the team responsible for ongoing implementations for many high-profile clients, which often involve complicated components. My primary responsibilities include ensuring correct staffing, confirming that questions are answered, and projecting into the future to ensure deliveries are met with forward-thinking solutions. I also perform people staffing, people management, and “glue work” to keep the engineering gears turning at Micruity.

What was the transition like moving into retirement income, and how could you leverage your previous experience?

The transition to the retirement income space, I saw it as a new, complicated, and challenging problem to be solved using my existing engineering skillset. As an engineer who previously worked in an agency-like environment, I’m used to diving into very specific industry domains with little fore-knowledge. Absorbing all the esoterica is just part of the process.

What is the most challenging aspect of your role?

The most challenging aspect of managing implementations is juggling the extensive context required to support diverse product types, while still providing a tailored, “white glove experience” for clients. As the company expands its footprint and takes on more clients, a significant effort is required to link all the pieces together to maintain a cohesive, universal Micruity approach alongside tailored solutions.

Can you share your view on Micruity and the intersection of retirement income and technology?

From a technology perspective, Micruity operates in a complicated domain space where many difficult engineering issues are rooted in complex industry problems. There is a constant tension between building a powerful, reusable platform to accelerate record keepers and insurers and dealing with an industry that historically operates in highly idiosyncratic ways. The engineering focus is on abstracting the complicated and difficult parts of the process into a sturdy, common foundation, such as building common, deployable front-end experiences or portable record-keeper integrations

What do you like to do outside of work? I think I’ve heard you’re a guitar player?

I am a new father, and when I’m not working, much of my time is spent with my wife and son. My musical energy, which includes playing the guitar, is currently focused on singing and playing instruments with my son, who enjoys music, so we put music on the old turntable and have our own jam sessions.