About

I’m Dr David “Jas” Powell — engineering manager, hands-on engineer, and team builder based in Larnaca, Cyprus. I have worked across enterprise companies and fast-moving startups, had two successful exits, and I’ve spent my career straddling the line between leadership and the terminal.

I have a PhD in High Performance Computing and Semiconductor Engineering.

I’ve taken on remote Management, Leadership, CTO and Head of Engineering roles with startup teams across San Francisco, Milan, Tel-Aviv and Cyprus. Four CTO roles, two Head of Engineering roles, and plenty of times as an individual contributor. The companies that I have worked with have had broad focus across FinTech, Automotive, Cybersecurity, Maritime and Virtualisation.

What I Do

I build engineering teams and I build software for high-performance distributed system. Usually at the same time.

My technical depth runs through C/C++, Python, PostgreSQL, and AWS — from bare-metal embedded systems and cryptography to cloud-scale backends and network architecture. I’m equally comfortable in a C-suite strategy conversation and a two-hour debugging session at 9pm.

I bring experience in cybersecurity, OS hardening, cloud systems architecture, networking protocol design, and embedded OS customisation (Yocto, Debian, Raspberry Pi). The kind of work where you need to care about every byte.

Based in Cyprus

I’ve been in Larnaca, Cyprus since 2009 — first running a university computer science department, then moving into financial software engineering, and eventually into the startup world full-time. I’m connected to the local tech community.

Get in Touch

I’m available for remote management and leadership engagements and contract engineering work. If you’ve got an interesting problem, I’d like to hear about it.