Working as part of a 5 person scrum team
developing serverless React based SPA for Irish
social enterprise Prepareme.ie
Led on UI/UX, preparing the project's style
guide. Gently reminding everyone to stick to it
and advocating for the end user.
Built Figma prototype to
facilitate early stage user testing to validate
(and invalidate) assumptions before starting the
build. Continued regular user testing during
build.
Led on design of data model. Researched and
presented tech spikes for colleagues to
introduce them to new concepts.
Championed use of React's
useContext and
useReducer hooks to consolidate
model logic and avoid anti-patterns such as prop
drilling model logic in event handlers.
Leveraged Cypress testing to
provide a lot of test coverage in comparatively
few lines of code.
Made 2020 with React (with hooks),
react-router, styled-components,
material-ui, google-custom-search,
cloudinary, netlify, react-pdf,
cypress.
QA / Testing lead in 4 person scrum team developing a simpler alternative to Anki for making and sharing flash cards. Final student project for Founders & Coders full stack web developer bootcamp.
Led on QA establishing clear standards for creation and maintenance of API documentation, ensuring availability of good examples for each type of test and consistent error handling with meaningful error messages very early in the project.
Led on design of API and it's implementation using Node and Express. Wrote custom middleware to help with authentication and provide granular, secure error handling.
Advocated for TDD and security, especially on the back end, ensuring protected routes were actually secure and testing was regarded as a first class citizen. Also pushed for model tests and Codecov to be incorporated into the CI/CD pipeline giving us over 85% code coverage on the back end and insight into the effect of each PR.
Made 2020 with Node, Express, Postgres, Bcrypt, json-web-tokens, Jest, SuperTest, React (with hooks), styled-components, material-ui. Numerous small React modules e.g. router, quill.
Primary carer for my two kids, and often two or three of their friends, with responsibility for the smooth running of a household of four.
Extensive experience gained in precision logistics and stock control, PA & diary management, short order cheffing for a demanding clientelle (>8000 dishes served), laundry and wardrobe services, personal transport and security, management of multiple stakeholders with hetrogenous needs and priorities.
IT Consultant - 2005 to July 2015
Providing onsite and offsite IT and technical services to a diverse range of domestic, charity and business clients across North London.
Sole responsibility for the IT systems of dozens of small businesses and charities.
Mix of commissioning, desktop and server support, data and database management, data recovery, hardware repair, bespoke programming, and website creation and maintenance.
Numerous scripts and several full applications created for internal business use.
This counts for a lot. I have a young family and my wife has a career that often places harsh demands on her time so openness to working from home, compressed hours, part-time / 4DW etc is very welcome. In turn I can be flexible when the exigencies of business require it, assuming they don't require it every single week.
Personal development
The opportunity to learn from my peers and seniors is a big part of what I want from any job. Consequently I really value positions that afford high-engagement with my peers and more senior colleagues, and mechanisms like pairing and code review. Also a culture that makes space for employees to explore new technologies and keep their skills up to date is a big draw.
Healthy culture & good practice
At a minimum any organization I would like to work with would get a decent score on the
classic Joel test
. A really great organization would score highly on
this more modern Developer Culture Test too
. In particular I would love to see a culture that values code quality, high engagement and energised working plus an open minded management with clarity of vision.
Mission and purpose
In an ideal world I would like to work on projects or products with a strong social purpose and/or projects that make significant contributions to open source projects.
My interests outside of coding
Live music
has always been a passion of mine. Until this Coronavirus thing I would always have tickets for something or be up for a random dingy backroom gig.
Making music
is something I've always been involved in too. Before my infatuation with computers and coding began as a teenager I was obsessed with music tech, and in particular recording studios. Later in life I discovered a deep and abiding love of Karaoke and to this day I produce recordings for myself and others in my home studio (aka my lounge).
Computer history
is another obsession of mine. I never tire of reading about the work and lives of the early computer pioneers who accomplished so much, often under incredible constraints.
Vintage cinema.
Primarily 1960s to 1980s with a strong leaning towards Horror, Sci-fi, budget thrillers and VHS Trash. My watchlist runneth over but, of course, as a family man you are more likely to find me watching Pixar films these days so there tends to be a backlog.
If it's anything at all time sensitive please give me a
call. I don't always notice email & text in the daytime and I
generally prefer talking to writing.
Custom linux live CD for backing up / rescuing and restoring customer data over Ethernet at both block and filesystem level. Created for internal business use.
Made 2009-2015 with Linux, Python, TCP & UDP, Sockets, Bash, NBD, Rsync, Gnu-ddrescue
TBCRM
Custom CRM system for managing customer and system information for quick recall. Included VOIP phone and Android integration. Created for internal business use.
Made 2013-2015 with Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, Android, SQLITE, MySQL
SSH DB backup
Graphical utility to automatically back up customers databases and monitor status of backups via ssh. Created for internal business use.
Made 2013 with Python, WX-Widgets
