Daniel received a Bachelor of Information Technology (Software Engineering) from the University of Queensland in 1999. During his honours year he specialised in distributed systems and computer security.

After graduation Daniel worked at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC). Initially he developed a Java PKCS#12 implementation, including a reimplementation of an ASN.1 codec to support unlimited length decoding. This formed a small part of the IP spun-off to form Wedgetail Communications, which was bought by Vintella in 2004, and then was in turn bought by Quest in 2005.

Remaining with the DSTC's reformed Security Group, Daniel worked within the Enterprise & Organisational Security project, leading the development of the Mesmerize Enterprise Security Framework.

During 2003 Daniel began a Graduate Diploma in Molecular Biology, and in 2004 began working at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences, within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Bioinformatics.

In 2007 Daniel moved to the ARC Centre for Complex Systems (ACCS), while also starting a PhD in Software Development Visualisation. During the years 2007-2009 he also taught UQ's Algorithms and Data Structures course. During 2010 he completed a Graduate Certificate in Research Commercialisation through the UQ Business School. In 2016, Daniel submitted his PhD thesis, which described the implimentation and evaluation of the prototype Visuocode visuospatial programming software development environment.

Since 2009, Daniel has worked in senior technical roles within a number of startups. In 2010, Daniel founded I.S. Labs Pty Ltd a private open source research organisation through which he continues to develop open source software. In 2014, Daniel began working on the iCURO Personnel Supply Chain platform, which in 2018 merged with Resource Connect Pty Ltd and SmartTrans Ltd to become Orcoda Ltd. Daniel continues to lead development of software in Orcoda's Resources and Healthcare divisions.