Meet Damien, our Head of Engineering

What inspired you to pursue the professional career you have today?

I chose computer and electronic engineering because I had always liked both fields. Before going to university I was already quite familiar with these areas, having done things on my own, and it was what attracted me the most for personal reasons. Once I did my degree I had other personal concerns and I decided to take a turn and orient myself more towards renewable energies. It all came because when I left the university I had a little sabbatical and reflective year. Once that stage was over, it was when I decided to do a master’s degree in this field and specialize in it.

What is your previous experience in the world of software engineering and renewables?

I spent a few years working in energy consulting in the building sector. The first half of my professional career I have been linked to this type of project, specifically designing sustainable buildings. I did all the energy models for these type of projects, as well as for research projects, but always in relation to the building sector. He worked alongside architects making recommendations on what could be done to make a building use less energy. In short, it was more sustainable, self-sufficient and comfortable. This involved models, data analysis, projections to show that choosing an option would be better for the building and its occupants in the long term.

This first experience was the one that made me move away a little from what I had studied in my career, such as energy in buildings, but little by little as I already had this programming knowledge, I reconnected with this knowledge since there was a great need to analyze large amounts of data, develop small programs or connectivity projects. The experience I gained designing all this set of projects and my interest in technology together with my previous background made that when I started programming again, I saw that everything was more useful and I was trained in data science or machine-learning topics.

Thus, from 2012 I did more and more projects of my own and around 2016 was when I decided definitely that I wanted to take projects based on software development. Later, in 2017, I joined NNERGIX and dedicated myself 100% to software product development.

What caught your attention in the Bamboo Energy project?

On the one hand, the truth is that I had a previous contact about the Bamboo team. I did not know Cristina or Manel directly, but I did know someone who knew them well, and this person introduced me to the team. He told me about the two of them and the project they were developing. I believed that I could be interested and I was introduced to both the people and the project with a high degree of confidence.

On the other hand there was the issue of flexibility. As I have been working in the sector for some time, I kept hearing about the field of flexibility and its importance and relevance in the future. I just think it was a year and a half ago when I first heard about the subject and from that moment the interest and news did not stop growing. It was shortly after that when I learned that the Bamboo project was being developed, but without a formally structured company. The project caught my attention for being new, with a lot of potential and with many challenges to do.

In addition, another thing that interested me about the project is that it has a link with the sustainable energy management of buildings. What I was doing at NNERGIX was exclusively focused on power generation, but at Bamboo I saw the possibility of contributing to a new project and a new sector with my experience in modeling and energy management of buildings, in addition to my experience in software development and in renewable energies.

What are your tasks within Bamboo Energy?

I have joined Bamboo Energy as Technical Director, or Head of Engineering. Thus, I am the person who has to complement Cristina and Mattia in the field of product development. They have all the know-how of how to do things and develop the algorithms and what I have to contribute is how to turn this into a scalable product. I complement their knowledge of what to do with how to do it. In short, they know what and I contribute how to make the software we develop robust and scalable, and following agile methodologies.

What’s the most exciting part of your job?

Since I’ve been working in software, what I like the most is creating products from scratch and building the entire architecture to achieve the desired end product. I really like the part of strategic thinking and deep technical knowledge that this type of exercise requires. Likewise, since I have been dealing with the agile work methodology, I have considered that it is an exciting field due to all the dynamics that are created. Because of my type of work I am used to working and I have done many projects alone, but now I like more to work as a team when these methodologies are adopted, because it makes everything more interesting and dynamic.