There’s a calmness to Niall, something serene about his aura.

He tells us his favourite place is Capri as we discuss his background for Source Code.

It makes sense. Tranquil tree-lined avenues, dotted with whitewashed holiday homes. Winding coastal roads with views that look hand-painted by an Italian master.

“I was there as a child and it’s just stuck with me,” he adds. “There’s nothing to do there but it’s hilly and peaceful.”

Niall joined Cranmore in August 2023, applying because of his interest in app development. A Computer Science graduate of University of Ulster, he was known as the “computer guy” in his hometown of Newtowncunningham, itself a tranquil town.

Niall spent his youth taking computers apart. He built his own PC in secondary school. Yet, it took a while for him to realise computer science was even an option.

“I just loved computers, but I hadn’t realistically considered it as my future. In my mind it was the hardest role to go into and beyond my reach,” he says, explaining he was first inspired by those 90s movies with hackers bashing green code into black screens. 

“I started studying computers at A-Level but that didn’t involve any programming, so I was learning that on the side to supplement my studies,” he says.

And those side studies paid off when one day he found a way to bypass the “child lock” on the school’s computers, install Minecraft, and spend an afternoon playing the game with his school mates.

“After I got caught, I had to show the teachers how to fix it as they couldn’t figure it out,” he says.  

But when not hacking his school’s network, Niall was most often writing scripts for everyday tasks.

“I wrote an application in school to find where most storage was being used on my computer so I could save space for games,” he says.  

“So I mostly create things that help in everyday life; that solve everyday problems.”