Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
Experienced Leader with a programming background deeply rooted in open source principles. Leading internal teams and third parties to create impactful, secure, and accessible solutions, championing collaboration, diversity, and innovation. I have exceptional stakeholder engagement and strategic planning skills, enabling me to align technical delivery with organisational goals and user needs. I have experience working with governance frameworks, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance within a UK context, ensuring alignment with standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, the UK GDPR, and the NCSC Cyber Essentials scheme. My work includes implementing robust information security policies, conducting risk assessments, and meeting regulatory expectations across sectors. I’m also familiar with FCA and NHS compliance requirements and have supported organisations in maintaining strong security postures while demonstrating accountability through audit-ready controls.
Responsible for maintaining and enhancing a highly customised legacy framework supporting multiple mission-critical applications in the rail industry. Modernised developer workflows by containerising the full application stack with Docker, reducing environment setup time from days to minutes and improving onboarding for new team members. Improved code quality and reliability by introducing static code analysis, allowing potential issues to be identified and resolved before reaching production. Added test coverage through the integration of Codeception, expanding automated tests to cover core functionality and critical business logic. Delivered new features and bug fixes while also identifying areas for long-term refactoring to ensure the system could evolve sustainably. Collaborated with stakeholders to balance immediate business needs with technical improvements, ensuring the framework remained stable, secure, and adaptable.
Initiating a revolutionary transformation within the company, SvelteKit, a cutting-edge web framework, empowers the teams to renovate the company's digital landscape. The efficiency and elegance of SvelteKit components resonate with the philosophy of clean, secure, accessible, and effective code. This transition not only modernises the company's technical stack but also introduces a new level of agility, accessibility and responsiveness to applications. The introduction of Cloudflare plays a pivotal role in this overhaul. By harnessing Cloudflare's suite of performance and security solutions, the systems are fortified and optimised for speed and protection. A comprehensive approach to development underscores the commitment to crafting holistic “Don’t make me think” solutions prepared to address the challenges of the contemporary digital environment. Under my guidance, the company is in the midst of a transformative shift. My leadership approach emphasises active collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the cultivation of a culture of continuous learning. Drawing from my own technical journey, I inspire the teams to embrace innovation and push boundaries.
Provided the opportunity to demonstrate DevOps with a small team and foster its adoption within broader business teams. Streamlining processes and ensuring continuous delivery, enhancements, and integration were key objectives. Eventually tasked with intervening to realign other projects.
Recruited to enhance one of the company's Learning Management Systems (LMS) developed in Laravel, responsibilities encompassed updating the software across several versions and modernising the PHP infrastructure. Substantial efforts were made to create PHPUnit and Behat tests, raising test coverage from 0% to over 90%. Additionally, a robust continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) system was introduced and implemented, with hosting on Azure. Active promotion and advocacy for the DevOps methodology were undertaken, emphasising it as a suite of tools and practices with the potential to revolutionise both the department and the company.
Specialising in the development of secure online applications using an array of open source technologies for web, desktop, and mobile platforms. Proficient in constructing or rectifying as needed. Collaborated with diverse clients, from artistic collectives seeking to commercialise their work to multinational corporations looking to penetrate the UK ISP market. Accomplishments include crafting desktop navigation software for sailors, mobile apps for the education sector, and various web applications, such as a nationwide Health and Safety project. Delivered API-driven solutions for numerous clients. Preference for creating or modifying codebases using APIs, effectively segregating backend responsibilities to enable multiple front-end interfaces that draw upon the same robust business logic and framework. This approach brings several benefits, including enhanced security and the elimination of code duplication. Preferred toolkit includes Silex for the backend, utilising the repository pattern to manage various data stores, including MySQL and Mongo. A couple of quotes from the App Store: "The most useful of the polling apps the I've tried" dweran "Works well, seems to be intuitive and very useful. It should enable further development in using mobile technology in our school - St. Joseph's, Workington" mapandrews "Simple to set up and use" Tonyden
Engaged to develop an Intranet platform aimed at replacing existing systems, an accountable modular MVC system was meticulously crafted. This system logged all user actions and effectively harnessed the Zend Framework. Within this system, users could register, secure approval, and be assigned roles, while also having the capacity to search, modify, or delete details, dependent on their permissions. On top of this foundation, a sales system was constructed. 'Lead researchers' were empowered to input data into the system, either through web forms or bulk uploads. 'Sales users' were subsequently equipped to search for leads and initiate follow-up actions, including reminders, meetings, calls, and notes. They could also access their diaries to ensure timely actions. This subsystem included an overview for managers, offering insights into outstanding or completed actions. The subsequent subsystem, a page builder, provided users with defined roles the capability to create pages for multiple websites. This process was facilitated through a wizard-style interface. Users initiated by selecting their target site(s) and entering a search term. The system queried Google and Yahoo via SOAP, automating the pre-population of forms for metadata creation. This iterative process concluded with fully constructed pages awaiting approval from an administrator.