A Norwich based IT expert has won an international award for his work within the software development community.
Chris Sainty, Lead Software Engineer with Flagship Group, has been recognised for his outstanding contribution by securing the prestigious ‘Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award’ run by the software giant.
The award is given by Microsoft to ‘technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community.’ The scheme has been around for 20 years and is extremely exclusive – there are only around 2,500 MVPs worldwide with just 153 in the UK. This is out of a technical community of over a million.
Chris’s achievement is due to his work on a Microsoft product called Blazor. He has been blogging about the product for the last 18 months and he has even written about it for a number of high-profile technical publications.
He also offers support and expertise online to fellow software engineers, and more recently, he was invited to take part in a podcast and present at a software development event in Cambridge.
“I’m delighted to have won this award, I still can’t quite believe it, it’s like signing for a football team like Real Madrid in the software world” Chris explained. “From a professional perspective at Flagship, I hope having an MVP will help us attract more like-minded people that are passionate about technology and inspire others to work towards the award”.
For Chris, this recognition gives him the opportunity to work with the teams at Microsoft. All MVPs are invited to the annual MVP Summit at Microsoft’s HQ. “Having the opportunity to give feedback and help shape the products you love is pretty cool.” Chris said.
This award is highly celebrated at Flagship, an employer who encourage their staff to do great things. Matt Brazier, Director of IT & S at Flagship said: “We are thrilled to see Chris getting this recognition. He is committed to developing his knowledge and technical expertise to meet the needs of our colleagues and customers. Having such expertise in-house is a major benefit to Flagship and winning this award from Microsoft is a huge endorsement for Chris – we are very proud of all that he has achieved”.
MVP status is awarded for 1 year after which MVPs must re-submit for the next year.
*You can read Chris’ personal website here: https://chrissainty.com/
ENDS