Hi, I’m Chris — an Industrial Engineer and Data Engineer based in Cape Town, currently working at Cometa, where I design and implement cloud-native data infrastructure and intelligent data systems that help businesses make better, faster decisions.

I was born in Pietermaritzburg and grew up in Vaalpark, a small Free State town where I attended Vaalpark Primary and Transvalia High School before my family moved to New Zealand in 2007. After completing high school in Te Kuiti, I worked to fund my university studies and began my first year of Health Sciences at the University of Otago in 2012. I soon discovered that my strengths and interests lay more in the mathematical and analytical sciences, which led me to return to South Africa in 2014 to study Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University.

In 2019, I began my career with Pragma, an asset management company, where I worked both in South Africa and later in the Netherlands as a Support and Asset Care Engineer. Living abroad gave me international exposure and a deeper understanding of engineering systems, automation, and data-driven decision-making.

Since moving back to South Africa in 2022, I have transitioned fully into data engineering — combining my engineering background with my passion for data and problem-solving. I’m also completing my MEng in Data Science at Stellenbosch University, where my research explores how shallow ensemble models can rival deep learning models in performance while being more efficient.

Outside of work, I’m passionate about continuous learning, building meaningful systems, and exploring how data can drive real-world impact.