Meet the Gnarnians: Ethan

News

Ethan Fertsch
#
Min Read
Published On
March 13, 2025
Updated On
February 5, 2026
Meet the Gnarnians: Ethan

Gnarnian [nahr-nee-uhn] noun: An employee of The Gnar Company

In our Meet The Gnarnians series, we unravel the stories, experiences, and passions that drive the folks on our talented team at The Gnar. Through a collection of interview-style questions, you'll get a sneak peek into daily life on our fully-remote team, some epic origin stories, and answers to some questions as weird and wonderful as our team itself.

The Basics

Where are you located? MidCoast Maine

What is your Role? Software Developer

When did you join the Gnar? November 2019

If you had to eat an entire barrel of one single thing, what would you choose?

If I could fill a barrel full of sizzling fajitas and eat that I could die happy. I suppose "fajitas" are a marriage of a number of ingredients but I am going to choose to ignore that and embrace fajitas as a single entity, as nature intended.

What's the last song you played or are listening to right now?

The Queen of All Everything by Ott.

If you weren't in your current role, what would you be doing?

There are two things that I absolutely love in this world: growing food and eating it. If I weren't in my current role, I would likely be exploring the intersection of those two things. Oyster farming? Sure. Cheesemonger? Heck yeah. Aquaponic Gardening? Uh-huh.

In your role, do you have any specializations or areas of focus you really enjoy doing?

Working as consultants affords us the unique opportunity to solve interesting, technical puzzles and help our clients bring their software projects to life. From a technical perspective, I am primarily a Rails developer and I enjoy thinking about architecture and design patterns. My favorite part of my role is the consulting aspect, I love building relationships with our clients, supporting our engineering teams, and creating processes. There is no better feeling than helping a client shape an idea into a valuable, real-world product.

What's your favorite part of working at Gnar?

I love our team! I have the privilege of working with an incredibly bright, talented, and empathetic group of humans. We all have such varied perspectives and experiences that make for a really special culture.

What's the most unique part about working at Gnar?

The ability to take ownership of things you care about as opportunities present themselves. For example, I am a developer but I have also lent a hand in HR, managing internal technical projects, leading internal scrum initiatives, managing content, and more! I find it really empowering.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?

  • Bee keeping
  • Gardening
  • Digging around in antique shops for weird stuff
  • Swimming in the ocean
  • Hosting ridiculous, themed parties
  • Hunting & fishing
  • Going out dancing
  • Hanging out with my wife and our two Jack Russells, Liam and Holly
  • Eating my way through every high-end tasting menu I can find

Variety is the spice of life!

Learn more about The Gnar and our team.

Author headshot
Written by
Ethan Fertsch
Software Engineer & Product Manager
, The Gnar Company

Ethan Fertsch is a software engineer and certified Scrum Master at The Gnar Company with nearly a decade of full-stack engineering experience. He specializes in delivering production-ready software across industries while serving as both product manager and engineer.

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