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Please welcome Simon Downey, ARK’s new full-time developer and first official member of our IoT Team (hired directly from the ARK community).

Simon is a self-taught developer and hardware tinkerer who’s vast interest lays in hardware and learning how things work and coming up with cool new gadget ideas and IoT devices. Simon’s other interests include science, decentralized technologies, open-source software, and maker movements.

His experience comes from being in the retail sector for 15+ years as a sales manager in the cellular and computer repair industry where he could truly get to know the inner workings of mobile phones, computers, and other pieces of communications hardware. With all of his retail experience he has developed great communication skills and the ability to explain ARK in an easy to digest manner. Simon will become a regular at our events like hackathons and conferences, helping students and other guests get a better understanding of ARK and Blockchain technology, brainstorming with them and on-boarding talented future developers.

When asked about what programming language he is most proficient in he immediately blasted C++ (yes he is working on a C++ library for ARK as well) and Swift. He is also an IoT developer, iOS/macOS application developer and is an avid Arduino / open-hardware fan.

Simon has proven over the past few months (like previous ARK hires from our talented community) that he shares ARK’s spirit, enthusiasm and genuinely believes tech like blockchain and IoT have a potential to make people’s lives better. He also thinks that idea sharing and open collaboration are keys to a great project and as a parent is truly concerned with the issues the next generations will have to fix.

Be sure to say hi in [ARK’s Slack](https://ark.io/slack) (he goes by the name ‘sleepdeficit’ — seems fitting since he is a working machine).

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