I'm an adaptable, motivated and passionate full-stack engineer with strong ethics, planning, logic and communication skills who is ideally suited for a role in a startup or corporate environment.
Unknowingly, I began debugging around age 10 when failed attempts at running cracked games and mods required manual manipulation of code in a text editor. I also dabbled in modifying config files in some games to alter the physics. I remember thoroughly enjoying feeling like a 'hacker' at the time, oblivious to the fact that this process of "change it, test it, keep/scrap it" is an integral part of being a software engineer.
At my last role, having worked closely with the founder on a range of simultaneous projects, my time there fully embodied the startup energy. I proved myself to be a creative problem solver in time-sensitive situations through my organisation, negotiation, delegation skills and by leveraging my network of contacts. I was a strong team player who took pride in his work and wanted the firm to succeed.
I decided to switch careers after almost three years when I felt my learning had plateaued. I thrive in environments with constant challenge, and I'm happy to have found an industry where I can combine my love of tech with creative problem solving daily.
| Name | Description | Build Time | Tech Stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ridgewell House: Frontend, API | PERN stack staff holiday management system for a client. This has been a great project to put all my current experience into a small scale production app. Includes role & route authorization, JWT authentication, babel for latest features in Express, a custom calendar with modals, redux & thunk, formik,yup. | Ongoing | Frontend:  API: |
| Algorithm-Visualiser | Front page of Hacker News for 3 days.Built purely in react, this app visualises different route finding algorithms. Was a good learning opportunity for walking the user through an abstract idea. Was a nice opportunity to try hooks. Also first time looking at algorithms, learned a lot about recursion. TDD. |
3 Weeks | React.js |
| Pocket Positivity | Makers Help for Heroes hackathon winner. Build an app that could help key workers during the current crisis. This is an idea I had for a cross platform native mental health personal tracker app, including mood logging (with graphing), scheduled push notifications with positive mantras and a chatbot with resources. First time using Expo/React Native. I spent an additional 3 weeks integrating with firebase and making some improvements bringing it to small scale production status. | 2.5 days / 3 weeks | |
| Finbot: Frontend, API | Final project at makers. Chatbot using react, django and tensorflow to provide brief educational responses and links to recommended resources on matters related to personal finance. It offers users the choice of additional resources on some topics. | 2 Weeks | Frontend: API: |
| Acebook | Facebook clone in rails. TDD | 2 Weeks | |
During my time at Makers my ability to work productively in a team has increased dramatically. Although initially finding difficulty keeping my teammates in constant consideration under the pressure of a deadline, I learned patience and that I equally enjoy following as well as leading. I have strong empathy and communication skills that allow me to challenge my team and share ideas in a comfortable, non-confrontational manner. These skills transfer to managerial, presentational and client facing scenarios. I have a passion for sharing knowledge, and I enjoy helping and showing others what I have learned. I had two mentees while at Makers.
While growing up I lived in different environments, in my work life I frequently faced new and unexpected challenges. I have excelled in many of these situations thanks to my growth mindset, creativity and decisiveness. For our final project, we learned enough python, django, react, circleci, jest, webpack/babel to have a successful launch in two weeks. My experience shows I have the capability to survive and thrive in any work environment regardless of language experience and contribute to any team.
Unknowingly, I've spent much of my life trying to automate and improve systems around me. This transfers to project work where I aim to learn and understand as much as possible to gain perspective and avoid future bugs. An example of this was when learning Ruby on Rails on our Acebook project, much of the project is auto generated. When presented with the option of using devise for user authentication; I put forward to my team that we should build from scratch for fear of not understanding what was happening under the hood with more new technology. Despite a day and a half of frustration the decision paid off as we gained more flexibility with our custom model.
Although there is financial incentive in this industry. I am here because I enjoy the whole process; from the various considerations when modelling a project, inevitably being forced to think up creative workarounds or learn a new library because it provides what is needed to the satisfaction of seeing an end product that provides a quality service to users. My motivation is internal, one of my current goals is to improve to a point I can contribute back to the developer community (by making a pull request to a major codebase or releasing a tool that could help others). I want to work in environments with fellow developers who are as passionate about engineering as I am.
Brooks Holdings Ltd (June 2016 to March 2019)
Operations Manager
- While at this private family office, I was responsible for both on-site management and head office administration for two restaurants, a lettings portfolio of over twenty apartments and a sales portfolio of six.
- We were a very small team which meant I had to coordinate well with others, and logistically plan out how to maintain operations.
- I had a high level of responsibility. Learning how to manage and train others, negotiate and find new business, write a business plan while budgeting, forecasting and handling operations (accounting, legal, compliance, public relations). With minimal supervision and no formal resources this role directly contributed to my resilience and ability to work under pressure.
12 week intensive coding bootcamp in which covered many industry best practices:
- Practices: OOP, TDD, Agile, MVC, Agile/XP
- Languages: Ruby, JavaScript, Python, HTML, CSS
- Test suites: RSpec, Capybara, Jasmine, Jest
- Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Django, React.js
- Other: Heroku, TravisCI
- Economics BSc
- For my dissertation I analyzed the 2008 recession from a different perspective to what are widely attributed as the main causes. The economic mindset of opportunity cost and evaluating options has been key to my approach as a developer.
Exercise, guitar, tennis, ping pong, bouldering, yoga, boxing.