Meet The Team

David Meares

Chief Commercial Officer

David began his IT pursuit at secondary school by taking IT as an option for GCSE, which he continued through to A-Level.  After completing school, he continued to focus on IT at college.

Once he completed his courses at college, he was a manager at two different companies, whilst also doing home & business computer repairs, upgrades, and installs on the side

He got his first break in IT well over 10 years ago working for a local company. He initially started in a sales role, but with the promise of becoming an engineer if he could prove his worth in the sales team, whilst also show he had the skills required to be in the IT team. With a lot of hard work, he progressed through to become an engineer and has not looked back.

He has worked for a couple of local IT companies through the years and progressed from a 1st Line through to 3rd Line Systems Engineer and even gained proficiencies as a Wi-Fi surveyor and is certified in Ruckus wireless systems.

David’s role as Chief Commercial Officer means he oversees liaising with clients in relation to their systems and requirements, promoting the business by attending networking groups, and keeping up to date with all the latest technology and services.  He still loves to get involved in the engineering side of things and carries out installs and site visits where needed.

• Hometown: Herne Bay
• Hobbies: Anything IT and Technology, Gaming and Rollercoasters
• Favourite Music Artist/Band: Papa Roach
• Favourite Song: The Power of Love (Huey Lewis & The News) / Laid (James) / You got the love (Candi Staton)
• Favourite Film: Goodfellas
• Why you went into IT: When I was just 4 years old my parents bought an Amiga 500 computer and I was hooked! Some kids wanted to be a fireman or a doctor, my response was always “computer man”. Since then I have had a keen eye on technology and throughout the years built up my skills in the IT world.

James Skingle

Chief Technical Officer

James was fortunate enough to have access to computers from a young age, which sparked his initial interest in technology. Whilst in secondary school IT was one of his classes up to GCSE, but due to the areas of IT that schools focused on at the time, he decided not to pursue it to A-Level.

After school he went on to College where he studied electrical engineering. He found during his engineering course that he started to become more interested IT again and began building PC’s at home. Shortly after completing the course he decided to look at IT courses he could attend and settled on a Cisco networking course that was being run at the local college.

He started to work for a company doing admin whilst continuing with his cisco course in the evenings. Once this was completed, he was given the opportunity to be involved in the companies refresh of IT equipment. This led to him starting a Microsoft course to allow him to support Microsoft environments. As he was continuing to assist with the support of the IT, he realised that he wanted it to become a full-time job rather than a part role. He applied for a couple of IT jobs in London and was lucky enough to be offered one of the roles, but he decided he wanted to work for a local company and shortly afterwards began working for an MSP as a 2nd line engineer. Over the course of 6 years he went from 2nd line engineer to the installations team manager meaning he was involved in a lot of the major projects that the company deployed. During this time, he attended several courses related to structured cabling installation and became certified as a fibre cable installer.

As the Chief Technical Officer, it is his job to make sure the company stays up to date with the latest technologies. Every company works in a different way and each one requires a different solution, so the best offering for the customer must be determined. Once implemented it is then his responsibility to make sure that it is documented so that the rest of the team know how to efficiently support the new deployment. He does a split role between the helpdesk and onsite visits, as well as attending meetings with new and existing customers.

• Hometown: Ashford
• Hobbies: Cooking / Reading / Origami / Gaming / Travelling
• Favourite Music Artist/Band: Daft Punk
• Favourite Song: One More Time (Daft Punk)
• Favourite Film: The Lord of the Rings
• Why you went into IT: Like most IT engineers I have always had a passion for technology, but I always considered IT more of a hobby than a career. However, I found that the more I learnt about computers and technology, the more I wanted to pursue it as a career.

Conner Day

Helpdesk Manager

Conner started working in IT via an apprenticeship in 2012, which saw him progress through the ranks in an IT support helpdesk environment.

His dedication and drive have since seen the establishment of Virtec IT Solutions with his fellow colleagues James Skingle and David Meares in 2018.

Conner’s role of Helpdesk Manager is to be the lead client liaison for all incoming technical support calls and enquiries. He has a strong passion for the role and a commitment to ensuring service excellence when supporting clients.

• Hometown: Dymchurch
• Hobbies: Gaming & Football
• Favourite Music Artist/Band: Eminem
• Favourite Song: Space Bound (Eminem)
• Favourite Film: iRobot
• Why you went into IT: I always had an interest in IT/computers/technology growing up and when I left school, IT was the only field I could see myself working in.

Ben Lane

2nd Line Support Engineer

Ben joined Virtec with the ambition to step into the world of cabling and other on-site work. He hopes to do this whilst also continuing to build on his knowledge within the more remote aspects of IT.

• Hometown: Ashford
• Hobbies: Gaming and anything technology related
• Favourite Music Artist/Band: Pendulum
• Favourite Song: Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
• Favourite Film: Infinity War
• Why you went into IT: For as long as I remember, I’ve always had an interest in technology and how it all works. After completing my IT GCSE, I was keen to see what a career in IT had to offer. It didn’t take long before I was hooked and I knew it was the career for me.