Andrew Downs

Background

About Andrew Downs

I am a senior software and systems engineer with over 25 years’ experience designing, building and scaling secure, cloud-native platforms across aviation, audit, fintech and industrial sectors. My career has been defined by solving complex challenges through hands-on engineering, clear leadership, and a commitment to delivering secure, scalable, and maintainable solutions. At Flight Safety Foundation, I led a once-in-a-decade modernization of the global BARS audit platform, re-architecting a legacy Java system into a distributed, cloud-hosted solution (C#/Blazor/AWS, multi-node MySQL cluster). This enabled AI integration, process automation, and mobile scalability for a global user base while improving uptime, resilience and security. In this role, I also directed IT operations, managed cybersecurity programs, and led a distributed team across Australia, the US, Europe, and India. Previously, I engineered secure financial transaction systems at Bluechain and POLi Payments, developing microservices in C#/.NET Core and deploying them across highly available AWS infrastructures. These projects sharpened my expertise in encryption, automation, CI/CD pipelines, and system security, while also giving me opportunities to mentor developers and drive agile delivery practices. Earlier in my career, I contributed to large-scale industrial and mining systems, including telemetry platforms, autonomous vehicles, and drone-based inspection systems for global organizations such as GE, BHP and Vale. As a founding engineer at MTData, I helped build real-time event-driven telemetry solutions that scaled into enterprise environments worldwide. I thrive at the intersection of strategy and delivery, aligning business needs with technical direction, leading teams through modernization, and ensuring solutions are practical, resilient, and future-ready. My expertise spans.NET ecosystems, distributed event-driven architectures, microservices, hybrid cloud, DevOps and security. I also stay ahead of the curve by experimenting with automation frameworks, RPA, and AI/GenAI to deliver measurable value. Colleagues know me as a collaborative leader who can bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders, mentor teams and build platforms that enable innovation at scale. I am passionate about creating systems that endure secure, flexible, and designed to support long-term business growth.