Appstem Employee Profile: Chris Newhouse, CTO
For many people, the path to a career in software engineering starts with an education in computer science, but Appstem CTO Chris Newhouse took a more unconventional route.
Chris was in a PhD program, studying neuroscience, when he realized academia wasn’t the right fit for him. A self-taught developer, Chris had created some games back in middle school and decided to return to those roots. He left his university and began making apps for Android platforms. After a couple of years building his portfolio, he found Appstem and has been working with the team for the past eight years.
“Science, at its core, is problem solving,” he said. “My work at Appstem is at the cross-section of neuroscience and engineering. Neuroscientists are discovering how things that exist work and engineers look at how people use those advancements. We put both of those things together.”
In his role as CTO, Chris spends his time mentoring his team of developers to build their skills, managing client projects across platforms, and strategizing new client innovation. Appstem gives him the outlet to combine both passions – science and development.
“Our philosophy is that there is a necessary interdependence between design and development,” he said. “There are lots of companies that can build apps that simply work. Appstem really understands how humans interact with technology and that sensibility is behind our design. It all comes down to creating the best user experience.”
Chris believes part of Appstem’s success in this area is the team itself.
“We’re a small fish in a large sea but we work hard to differentiate ourselves by finding the right people with the strongest skills in both design and development. We’re able to have tight collaboration among the team which leads to greater integration and sounder strategy.”
Given the current COVID-19 situation, Chris sees the opportunity for new innovations – particularly in healthcare technology. It is also a chance for some companies to reset and revisit the way they do business once we are in the new normal.
Further down the road, he’s looking at ways to make virtual reality and augmented reality emerge as something more than just “bells and whistles.” Those kinds of experiences will make a huge impact on businesses, especially sports, in the not too far off future.
“Chris is a huge asset to the team, not only does he help with overseeing all of our development efforts, hiring and pre-sales efforts he still does a decent amount of software development himself. We would not be where we are today without Chris.” Robert Armstrong, CEO.
But Chris isn’t all business. When he’s not developing innovative software solutions, Chris and his two dogs, Moss and Tesla, compete in flyball races. He also enjoys getting outside and exploring nature with his two young sons.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to play a leadership role in a company I believe in while being able to use technology to solve real world problems.”
Chris is always looking for talented engineers to join his team, to learn more about Appstem and to see some of our open position checkout our careers page: https://appstem.com/careers
