After attending the University of California, San Diego, Derek quickly became an expert in digital cinema technology and post-production working with such filmmakers as David Fincher, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, and Ang Lee. Derek spent 6 years working with Vince Pace and James Cameron at the Cameron-Pace Group, in a leadership position on over a dozen 3D feature films, including Oscar Winning "Hugo" and "Life of Pi". In 2016, Derek managed the post production lab for Ang Lee's groundbreaking 3D high frame rate film, "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk," followed up by supervising the dailies and finishing workflows for “Gemini Man.” Since 2020, Derek has been developing a new generation of cloud workflows at the Innovation Team at frame.io focussing primarily on Camera to Cloud technologies.