Profile

• Architect and full stack lead developer for many successful projects. Experienced with greenfield and established projects.
• Experienced building services and websites from conception to production.
• Experienced developing websites, REST APIs and event-driven architectures for AWS, Google Cloud, OpenShift, and Docker.
• Experienced product technical lead with knowledge of Government Digital Service standards and UX.
• Many years experience of Agile practices including Scrum and Kanban.

I am a full stack architect, technical lead and developer. I specialise in collaborating with business, product, and technical colleagues to design and deliver sustainable solutions for complex requirements in a timely manner, and ensuring their quality, reliability and security. I bring domain and technical knowledge to product discussions, together with attention to detail and experience of accessibility and UX, to assist in the refinement of requirements.

I have lead development teams as they delivered new features and ongoing technical improvements, providing detailed specifications as required together with background knowledge, guidance during development, code reviews, and assistance with testing and planning releases.

I regularly liaise with colleagues in other product and enablement teams to define and share solutions to common issues, troubleshoot and rapidly resolve production problems, and plan the retirement of legacy hardware and software.

Technology

Below is a sample of the technology I have worked with.

Work History

• Consultant Domain ArchitectRegisters of ScotlandJan 2018 - Present

  RoS maintains 20 public registers of land and property for Scotland. I am Domain Architect for the Customer Facing domain, which provides land and property data and deed registration services to citizens, solicitors and other professional clients.

  The domain has two development teams and my responsibilities include working closely with their technical leads, product managers, business analysts and UX researchers to refine the requirements for new features, designing an architecture consistent with RoS standards and objectives, and discussing requirements with other teams. I also liaise with other domain architects to discuss upcoming changes that have cross-domain impacts, and work with product and enablement teams to resolve issues and plan migrations away from legacy services.

• FreelancingApr 2017 - Dec 2017

  Following the acquisition of Screen Time Labs I took a sabbatical to work on freelance projects.

  • Silicon Safe

    Silicon Safe provides a secure password storage service using custom hardware. I built a multi-tenant REST API wrapper and registration site for the service using Spring Boot and Angular, running in Docker using AWS services including ECS, EC2, ELB, RDS and S3.

  • BoatRemote

    BoatRemote was a personal project started with a former colleague. We prototyped a connected boat device, featuring GPS tracking, telemetry, alerts and remote control of equipment. I implemented the REST APIs, encrypted communication protocol, and Angular front end. Cordova was used to wrap the webapp for Android and iOS, with added Bluetooth functionality.

• Principal Software EngineerScreen Time LabsNov 2015 - Mar 2017

  Screen Time helps parents monitor and limit their kids' use of phones and tablets. As a multi-discipline full stack developer I worked on new features and enhancements in the Java backend services and REST APIs, web application, internal tools, and hybrid native/Cordova client apps for Android and iOS. The service was hosted in AppEngine, using various Google Cloud services.

  • Added support for logging in with email address and password, alongside the existing Google and Facebook authentication.
  • Improved Stripe integration and added support for subscription payments using PayPal and iTunes.
  • Ported the Android parent's remote app over to iOS using Cordova. Integrated Firebase and Fabric analytics in both platforms.

• Consultant Integrations ArchitectBrightpearlJan 2015 - Nov 2015

  I was invited back to Brightpearl as an architect. My role involved designing and building extensions to the core platform, and supporting partner developers to do the same. I also led a small internal team of developers and testers, and assisted other teams with the architecture of their projects.

  • Supervised and assisted with the development of an Authorize.net payment processing app. I worked closely with the third party developer, then took over the project, and prepared it for internal deployment.
  • Developed two add-on apps for the Brightpearl platform - an integration with Alibaba Wholesale for streamlined product sourcing, and a shipping costs calculator.
  • Restructured microservices to a standardised pattern that allowed REST calls which previously involved several hops between microservices to be executed transactionally within a single service.
  • Trained and supported a new offshore team as they developed an integration with Mailchimp.
  • Extended API authentication to support new Magento integration and an OAuth-style app installation flow.

• Tech LeadObrussaOct 2014 - Dec 2014

  I joined this new startup as the first permanent employee. I worked to establish good development practices, prepare a prototype for trial, deploy the prototype on cloud hosting, and plan the architecture of the first public release.

• FreelancingJune 2014 - Sep 2014

  Following the end of my first Brightpearl contract I took a break to look for a senior permanent position, and used the opportunity to learn new skills working on freelance and personal projects.

  • Sundroid

    An Android app that calculates a range of astronomical information including sunrise and sunset times, useful for photography and outdoor activities. Downloaded over 450,000 times.

  • Pinpoint Works

    An issue tracking solution for use on construction, maintenance and restoration projects. I built an accompanying Android application to view and create defects and upload annotated photos, designed the web user interface, and worked with a team of two others to build the website and REST APIs.

• ConsultantBrightpearlJan 2013 - May 2014

  Brightpearl is a multichannel retail management SaaS product for small to medium businesses. I worked on the eBay integration and a variety of changes to the architecture for improved reliability and performance. My role included mentoring junior team members, leading design reviews, and maintaining and improving the continuous integration and release processes.

  • Architected and implemented a new security model for the Java REST API, allowing individual control of registered developers and their applications by Brightpearl and customers. Developed the registration and app submission site for developers and administration site for Brightpearl, using Laravel backed by REST APIs written in Java.
  • Revised timezone support in Java services and PHP from one per server, to any timezone on any server. This project fixed daylight savings bugs, enabled full support for international customers, and reduced hosting costs by over 30%.
  • Led development of a bulk product import and eBay listing publisher tool. Built as an AngularJS and Bootstrap site on top of a Spring MVC application running in Jetty. Highly concurrent for maximum performance.

• ConsultantNokia MusicMay 2012 - Dec 2012

  My work for Nokia primarily involved building and extending services in the Nokia Music REST API platform, and integrating these services with each other. In addition I made performance, reliability, maintenance and monitoring improvements to some of the existing services, and extended the functionality of content catalogue ingestion tools.

• ConsultantDeutsche TelekomAug 2008 - May 2012

  My team completed a variety of projects, including high traffic websites for mobile phones, services to support personalised content delivery, and browser based business systems.

  • Built a web application used to manage a device and browser attributes database that controls rendering of websites across a wide range of mobile devices. Uses JQuery to enable inline editing similar to a Google Docs spreadsheet.
  • Architected and led development of a web based highly concurrent financial application for rating, settlement and reporting of content sales including music, videos, and mobile apps. Built with Spring, Hibernate, JSP and JSTL. Handles millions of transactions daily, and generates over one hundred reports in different formats for each third party.
  • APIs, business logic, load distribution and database access layer of a multi-threaded distributed Java service that sends notifications of new content to idle screen widgets. Designed for minimum memory and CPU usage under high load, with automated failover and horizontal scalability. Supports monitoring hundreds of endpoints and notifying millions of devices.
  • Developed a Java implementation of the OAuth 1 specification, designed to be dropped into any application with minimal Spring configuration and provide authenticated communication between back end components.
  • Implementated a generic framework for highly configurable RSS feed and search widgets, allowing new widgets to be created by content managers without development effort.
  • Ongoing development process improvements including Oracle to MySQL migration, Maven dependency management, and addition of regression testing to integration builds.

• ConsultantT-SystemsJan 2008 - Jun 2008

  T-Systems provides bespoke software solutions for a variety of large corporate and public sector clients. My work involved development of intranets based on the Day Communiqué CMS for DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen UK. This contract required me to quickly become confident with an unfamiliar set of languages and frameworks.

• Senior DeveloperCentennial SoftwareOct 2005 - Jan 2008

  Centennial develops IT asset management and endpoint security solutions. I worked on the full lifecycle of boxed products, including planning, documentation, code development, unit testing, build processes and installation. For two projects I was lead developer and responsible for a small team. Both projects were successfully delivered on time.

  • Full lifecycle of a new budget software audit product. As lead developer, I produced documentation and specifications, managed the development team, and built the J2EE web application component.
  • Planning, use cases, schema design, core business logic and user interface development for a new software licence management product. I also implemented a flexible modular build and unit testing system using Ant, JUnit and batch scripts, and managed development of the installer.
  • Development of a Swing application used to change various settings within a product installation, including Tomcat ports, database connections, logging levels and internet proxy settings.
  • Database access layer testing framework. Allows a temporary database and connection pool to be established then dropped when each test is complete, so each test starts from a known state.
  • Detailed use case documentation and user interface redesign for the web reporting tool of Centennial's flagship asset management product, focusing on ease of use and standards compliance.
  • Configuration of the Linux servers hosting Centennial's online software catalogue, and development of tools for importing and maintaining the data.

• Web DeveloperGCap MediaJun 2001 - Sep 2005

  My team developed websites and business systems for GCap Media's DAB Digital Radio stations, and 32 local stations. I played a key role in the planning, design, development, deployment and support of many projects.

  • Web application front-end for an in-house CMS powering 32 websites. Provides a simple interface for creating multi-platform content, creating links between articles, and associating images, audio and video. Includes an applet that allows images to be cropped, rotated and resized without software, and an AJAX drag and drop screen for adding content to websites.
  • Planning, schema design, database access layer, event processing logic and administration web application for a multi-threaded Java console application that aggregates schedules and playout system events for all stations in a central database.
  • Database access layer, business logic and user interface development for an online music download service. XSLT is used to allow re-branding for third-party customers. Winner of the 2004 ntl Commercial Radio Technical Innovation Award.
  • Schema design, database access layer, message processing and online user interface for GCap's SMS system, supporting keyword responses, music requests, marketing and premium rate SMS. Winner of the 2003 ntl Commercial Radio Technical Innovation Award.