Ken joined the Navy straight from school, and was trained up as an Electronics Technician and worked on aircraft carriers. After leaving the Navy, Ken joined Honeywell who as that time in 1960 had started a programme to build computers. Ken was trained up in Computer Science and worked as an Engineer debugging prototypes. Ken moved to production when Honeywell started making CPUs and worked on the first computers taking commands from a keyboard.
Ken had a friend who was a sales engineer for DEC, and after seeing some of their products Ken interviewed for a sales job there and started working for DEC as a field engineer. He travelled widely, installing some of the first DEC systems in Germany. This experience meant he was asked to move to the UK to provide technical support for Europe as the first European Field Service manager in 1965. Ken moved up the ranks, and back to the USA until in 1989 he was asked to become Secretary to the Executive Board at DEC working closely with Ken Olsen, the co-founder of DEC.