A little over a year ago Derek Allard appeared in our CodeIgniter forums, making an immediate impact.  He was friendly, enthusiastic, and incredibly helpful.  Our community loved him instantly.  Derek developed a neat little invoicing application running on CodeIgniter.  I believe it was the first full application to be developed for CI.

A few months later when we needed someone to fill our Senior Tech Services position, Derek’s name immediately came to mind.  At the time Derek had a full plate.  He was running a web services company and teaching college web development courses.  Despite his full load, he accepted the position part-time, and has been a visible and enthusiastic presence in our ExpressionEngine Forums ever since.

Ever since Derek came on-board I’ve been hoping that some day we might be able to expand his role with us.  Derek is immensely talented.  His skill-set is so broad, in fact, he’s a veritable Ginsu knife of web development (he slices, he dices, he filets!).

Recently we determined that it was time to grow our ExpressionEngine development team, and to my surprise, Derek wanted the opportunity.  We are thrilled to have him on our team in his new capacity of Technology Architect, and believe his contribution will be invaluable in helping make ExpressionEngine better then ever.  Welcome Derek!