OpenMetal Team Member

Jacob Hipps

Principal Engineer

Jacob has always been fascinated by how things work. Inspired by a Nintendo console, Jacob became infatuated with computers at a very early age. His interest was reinforced by his mother teaching him about electronics and helping him to create circuits. Jacob even lobbied his father to buy a personal computer so that he could stop using his father’s work laptop to experiment with writing batch file programs.

After getting his own computer – a sweet HP Vectra VL2 with 66MHz Intel 486 DX2 Processor this his Uncle bought for $50 at a surplus auction – Jacob spent most of his time writing QBX programs (Q-Basic Extended) and running early game emulators like NO$GMB and (albeit slowly) ZSNES.

These actions inspired Jacob to pursue a possible career path as a video game designer/programmer, and then later as a 3D artist. Jacob enrolled at Georgia College & State University, with a major in Computer Science. However, after one semester he decided to leave and jump straight into the working world.

At 19, Jacob was hired at the local lumber mill as a QA technician. His role as the “computer/technical” person allowed him to begin learning industrial automation – something that combines computers, programming, and electrical work – all things he was already interested in and familiar with.

This company helped him receive PLC (programmable logic controller) training, resulting in opportunities to work with automation vendors who were all happy to pass on their knowledge and answers to his “many” questions. This company also offered him insights into working with others in a professional setting and realizing that solving problems that might be outside of one’s normal scope of work was a way to increase one’s own value and standing.

Today, Jacob brings those insights to OpenMetal where he continues to work with clients to feed his desire to “make things work.”

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