Meet Koos Myburgh, technology enthusiast & Head of Engineering at RSAWEB

July 07, 2022

At RSAWEB, we pride ourselves in attracting and retaining the best talent. We sat down with our Head of Engineering, Koos Myburgh, to learn about his career journey at RSAWEB, which almost spans to a decade. We asked him what his favourite technological gadgets are and his future predictions of technological advancements, which will ensure environmental and economic sustainability across the globe.

 

Picture Credit: Janine Fredericks.

Q: What attracted you to the tech and engineering space?   

A: I’ve always had a passion for computers and at school all my friends had computers. I actually only got my first computer when I was nine years old. I was just waiting and saving money, so I think that’s where it all started. In terms of the tech space, it’s one of those fields where there are always advancements. You can study for it today, but after two years what you studied actually changes and might not be relevant anymore, that caught my interest, as each year would never be the same.

Q: Why did you get into the telecommunications industry?  

A: The fact that I get to work with networks which allow people to communicate with one another, that intrigued me. 

Q: What are your favourite technological tools or gadgets? 

A: It’s my password manager and the Olarm smart security system at home.  

Q: What would you say our country needs the most to catch up with global technological advancements and to bridge the digital divide?   

A: I think infrastructure is obviously one of the challenges in South Africa. There’s so much opportunity in South Africa. I think education is one of the best things to invest in because if the end user is not educated, they can’t effectively use technology to solve their day-to-day challenges. RSAWEB gets involved with connecting schools to ensure that the future generation has fast fibre internet to access information from anywhere in the world. This is just one way we’re trying to bridge the digital divide in South Africa.

Q: Do you have any prediction of technological advancements that will solve global-like socio-economic issues?   

A: I think the adoption of the internet of things (IoT), but more on a sensor level. An example would be something like water meters having sensors to save natural resources across the world. Everything is under pressure around the world, especially due to wars or just the production of electricity or water disks due to droughts. I think that’s really a lot of this sort of involvement like Dubai’s IoT strategy, which aims to build the most advanced IoT ecosystem to transform the city into a model smart city.

 

Q: What do you love the most about what you do?  

A: The fact that things are constantly changing all the time and you get to solve real-world problems. In my field of work, we don’t have to follow a conventional way of solving problems. Yes, we have these guidelines, but we need to think outside the box and I think we’ve done that very well as the engineering team at RSAWEB.

Q: Take us through your career journey. 

A: I started with my mission systems engineering and I joined a company called Sintrex which offers native management servers and network operations services. I was a Network Operator Centre (NOC) Engineer and after four years at that company I joined RSAWEB as a Network Engineer. At RSAWEB I was promoted to a Connectivity Product Engineer and later as a Core Network Manger and now, Head of Engineering, it’s been quite an exciting journey. 

Q: What do you love about working for RSAWEB?  

A: This business is all about the people, the products and the technological solutions we offer, and the excellent customer service. RSAWEB is driven by people, even though there is technology to support the end user or the service. We’re the fastest growing Internet Service Provider (ISP) and people enjoy dealing with us and enjoy using our services because of the exceptional customer service we offer.

Q: What do you think your superpower is? 

A: I think it is to bring people together, you know. When things aren’t going as planned. In a crisis situation or just when we work on a very difficult problem. My ability to unpack it and to try and encourage people to listen to the person in the room who still need to make their contribution. So, I think that might be my superpower. To successfully encouraging that collaboration within a team. At RSAWEB we encourage collaboration, we encourage free thinking. We encourage people to engage with one another on available solutions and ideas and that’s very much the company culture.