Milton Ngan

Milton helped create the massive render farms, data centres and other Weta Digital tools that made Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Avatar possible.

Milton worked at Weta Digital for 11 years after he finished his MSc in Computer Science at the University. While at Weta he helped build and design the technical infrastructure for the massive render farms, data centres and some of the core pieces of workflow used on Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Avatar.

Milton is now working for Valve Corporation, a games company based in Bellevue, Washington, US. He supports the technical infrastructure that allows the company to develop and ship its games—work that involves anything from writing build automation systems or bug tracking software, optimising and analysing people's workflows and designing storage, networks and data centres.

“I love working in a dynamic environment where you are constantly learning new things, and finding new methods to improve the way people get things done”, says Milton.

“The way I think about IT is perhaps different to most—I’m always looking at IT solutions from a programmer’s perspective, with questions like, how do I create an interface between the functions of these two components, or how can you configure this system in a more automatic way?”

“I enjoy the customer focus side of things as well as the business side. Customer focus is an important attribute for an effective engineer to have, since most problems are not your own and require solutions that are right for that person. This requires communication and the ability to understand the customer to create that solution.”

Milton studied at the Victoria University of Wellington between 1991 and 1996 and completed a BSc and MSc in Computer Science as well as some BCA courses in economics and management.