Our people make us

Why think the way everyone else does?

Our people

We choose staff from a variety of sectors whose skills transfer across to software development, as well as those who’ve trained in the sector. Our innovative approach to gaining employees means that we have experience outside of the software sector that can be brought in to benefit our clients.

We encourage our staff to think their way outside of problems so they can come up with innovative, sector-disrupting software which takes outdated, unwieldly systems and replaces them with game-changing, business amplifying ones.

In turn, our close-knit team are flexible to work on any project to any timescale in an agile way.

Here’s a snapshot of our team members, many of whom our clients will get to know across their projects.

Simon Pringle

Co-founder

I have been here since the beginning and before January 24 2008, just as a global financial slump started.

My first career was designing scientific instruments (like electron microscopes), I ran multi-disciplined teams and worked all over the world, from Japan to America. I was mad on total quality, smart manufacturing and design and made and created some beautiful things, however I struggled to find software companies who could create matching beautiful software to control them. In my frustration I picked up a C++ manual, remembered my FORTRAN experience from uni, went on a course … and another and two and a half years later, in 2000, left to join a small software consultancy and starting writing software for Nokia.

Product design is my thing. Having the multidimensional, complex, big picture in my head and creating things that change the world. I love life-long learning and inspiring, helping others to do the same.

I’ve not made it as a rock star yet but I play and sing in bands. Accomplished martial artist, artist, foodie and generally keep the physios of Sussex in business by the many sporting activities I do.

Kieren Johnstone

Co-founder

I have been at Red River since the beginning.

I always wanted to be an inventor when I was little (the work-away-in-a-shed-and-change-the-world kind), however I didn’t have the tools or means. When I was 14 I partnered with a company to produce some software for the to-be-released Cybiko handheld computer. Though the product wasn’t a success I went on to complete a C++ course via the Open University, with special dispensation as I was the youngest person to do it at 15 – I did very well, though I got some strange looks walking into the exam hall.

At 17 I worked on some emulation software for an unreleased ‘hackable’ games console called XGameStation, created by Andre LaMothe (a famous guy in the games industry and publisher of many games) and he invited me to his ‘elite demo coders team’. At roughly the same time I sent out a load of CVs to local software companies. I heard back from Aicom, where Simon was Sales & Marketing Director. They gave me an interview, set me a technical task and I began working part time there whilst I completed my A Levels. By the time I was considering university I’d already had a job in the industry for the best part of a year, so decided to just go full time and see where I went from there.

What’s my thing? – optimisation, scalability, distributed systems, embedded systems.

My hobbies include guitar, music production, pole fitness and general fitness.

Graham Cuthbert

Business Operations Team Lead & Software Engineer

I have been here for 15 years in March.

I worked in a different industry and wasn’t fulfilled, so did some programming courses. Started writing my own games/apps and then moved on from there, that’s how I got into software.

I’m a software engineer, so all parts of development are my thing, but most of the time is spent writing software, although as Dev lead on OPUS quite a lot of time seems to be Support and Documentation.

My hobbies are playing and coaching football, cricket (which I’m terrible at), gaming, quizzes.

Nick Phillips

Development team lead & senior software engineer

I have been working here for 9 years now when I started it was my first job in a programming role.

I came here straight from University of Brighton after finishing a Computer Science degree.

My focus is on mentoring developers, building/improving the processes we work with and have a love for solving performance issues in code.

In my spare time I enjoy seeing live music and comedy, gaming, reading and movies.

John Hopkin

QA Manager

I’ve been here for Eight years and counting!

I started testing computer games 21 years ago and over time moved into testing regular software.

I pay a lot of attention to detail and replicating hard to replicate bugs.

My hobbies – gaming, still a gamer and suspect I always will be. Painting miniature figures, and tabletop war gaming (see, gaming again!)

Lisa Legg

Product Owner

I’ve been at Red River for 11 years

I taught myself software development in my spare time when working in a support role at a software company, then was offered a job there as junior developer and worked my way up from there. After joining Red River I found I was more interested in the customer focussed side of software. I did some courses on Human Computer Interaction and User Experience and gradually changed role to become a Product Owner.

I enjoy talking to customers and solving problems in the most user friendly and elegant ways

My hobbies include walking, dancing, reading