About me
Welcome to my site! I’m currently a technical writer at Datafold, where I oversee the docs and write a lot about data quality and data migrations. I also consult on all things developer marketing for data engineering and data science enterprise tools.
Get in touch: elliotjgunn at gmail.com / LinkedIn / Twitter DMs
How I got here
I pivoted into tech through a data science bootcamp in 2019, started my career off as a Senior Editor at Towards Data Science, and then became a Sales Engineer for the data world’s favourite charting library, Plotly. In 2022, I took a break to fulfil a long time dream, postponed due to the pandemic, to study at the London School of Economics & Political Science.
While I was busy learning about how to construct long-run wage series and the factors behind the historical miracle that is the Great Divergence, I became interested in learning more about analytics engineering (hello dbt fans!) and data infrastructure (pipelines are fascinating). I started taking on freelance technical writing work in data engineering. One client led to another, and I soon found myself working across domains and content types in data.
I learnt that developer marketing is hard to get right because good technical writing is a craft. Also, I deeply enjoy learning new technical things and strategizing how to produce meaningful content. It was no surprise that shortly after I finished my MSc, I began working full-time as a technical writer.
If you would like to collaborate on an idea, or just want someone to brainstorm ideas with, let’s work together or check out my portfolio to see what I’ve published.
Mentorship
I owe my career to many fortunate and generous encounters with peers and senior practitioners in data, and feel strongly about paying it forward. Also, I really enjoy public speaking. I’ve given talks to students and anyone transitioning into tech on how technical writing can make networking easier and more fun (e.g. Lambda School, Brave, PyData Impact Fellowship). I’m always looking for opportunities to share my knowledge.
Other things about me
- Born and raised in Singapore, I currently live in a college town in Canada (Kingston, Ontario) with my fiancé and son
- My undergraduate degree was in International Relations and Economics at the University of Toronto; I’m lucky that I get to wear my foreign affairs hat as the Managing Editor of the International Journal, a peer-reviewed SAGE journal on foreign policy published by the Canadian International Council (CIC) and the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History (CCIH) at the University of Toronto.
- In 2023, I won the 52nd St. Gallen Symposium’s Global Essay Competition with my essay on “Restoring the Radical Promise of Universal Healthcare” (St. Gallen, LSE, Trinity College).
- Before tech, I dabbled in global health research. Several projects I was involved in have been published: The Lancet (global health funding in Canada); British Medical Journal (FCTC & cigarette consumption); Global Challenges (overview of systematic reviews); Canadian Journal of Public Health (global health research funding in Canada); PNAS (international treaties have mostly failed); Canadian Science Policy Centre (op-ed on AMR).
- When not programming or writing about programming, I coach LEGO robotics (FIRST LEGO League Explore), volunteer at the Agnes, obsess over David Hockney, and enjoy planning future travels!
Let’s chat!
I really enjoy meeting other folks in the data industry. Get in touch: elliotjgunn at gmail.com / LinkedIn / Twitter DMs
