Career Resume

Head of Engineering

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Xiatch Ltd

May 2021 - present

Tasked with scaling and developing the software engineering capabilities of Xiatech Ltd. I am focused on the creation of an engineering centre of excellence, utilising leading edge technologies across cloud providers.

Working with an all remote global team of architects, engineers and developers, a primary aspect of my role is to deliver leadership value through Cooperation, Collaboration and Community.

Xiatech provides enterprise scale systems integration, and real time data analysis through the XFuze Hyper-Integration platform. My role is to coordinate teams and individuals, mentoring and developing their capabilities with asynchronous, event driven, micro-service technologies.

With a software stack exclusively built using Go, and deployed across Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) and Google Cloud Platform ( GCP ) using AWS Serverless, Terraform, and Kubernetes. Xiatech Ltd uses Open Source technologies, are active participants and contributors to many open source projects. It is my role to foster and develop those community connections.

To date I have delivered the following initiatives.

• Introduced agile practices to build teams around projects rather than individuals.

• Workshops and practices to document existing projects.

• Introduce a process for technical documentation, and keep this in easy reach of developers, and part of their ‘Definition of Done’.

• Tooling to automatically update consultant documentation from the documentation stored with the code, and transform it using Markdown for easy reading, and searching.

• Introduce a compose-able Data Model design, to simplify event data modelling, and also transfer workload from integration code to data specific tools better suited to the task.

• Deliver an ‘Engineering Manifesto’ strategic white paper setting out the Mission, Goals & Objectives, and transformation steps to introduce appropriate practices and policies to scale Xiatech to the next stage.

• Deliver a wide suite of technical tooling to enable, and accelerate the engineering team, including.

  • Localised ‘Developer Experience’, using Localstack.
  • Repeatable infrastructure build and deploy, using Terraform.
  • Testing framework for Unit, Integration and Regression testing, using Go Test_Containers.
  • SDV Lite - Intermediate framework to simplify and accelerate event driven integrations, and provide consistency and conformity across projects.
  • Deliver XFuze Next Gen, which is Xiatech’s flagship Hyper-Integration product.

• Transformed the cultural landscape within engineering into a cohesive community, centred around their ‘Engineering Handbook’ which stands upon the philosophy of collaboration, empowerment, and following ‘best inbreed’ practice from global organisations like Gitlab, and Spotify.

• Developed and delivered the onboarding experience for the engineering team.

• Recruited over 30 engineers of varying seniority to support the rapid growth of the business.

Support and assist the onboarding of a new CTO, and establish the engineering capability required to deliver against the defined strategic vision.

I have successfully established the correct patterns, practices and processes, along with the documentation, tools, frameworks and of course the people for Xiatech to succeed. With CTO, and strategic vision in place, I am currently helping Xiatech to recruit and onboard their engineering management layer to take on the day to day delivery of Hyper-Integration for our clients.

Full Stack Developer

The Good Beef Index

October 2020 - May 2021

Engaged in the role of Full Stack Developer working with AWS, Go, React, Redux, Terraform, Git, and GitHub actions. The Good Beef Index is a disruptive start-up operating in the agricultural space, specifically within beef farming. The application connects beef consumers with farmers, and provides detailed traceability data about the animals movements, feed and growing conditions, husbandry and ancestry.

In role I was tasked with constructing and extending the build, test and deploy CI/CD pipeline, migrating the deploy from GitHub actions to Terraform, restructuring the develop, staging, testing and production deployments. This involved migrating the infrastructure from ECS using EC2 to Fargate.

Developing the Terraform build plans to enable automating build, test and deploy into 4 identical, yet separate AWS environments (Staging, Test, Develop and Production) . This incorporated load balancers, network, sub-nets and routing, VPC and VPC peering with infrastructure automation of MongoDB, IAM roles and policies.

Responsible for developing the application back-end service application suite which consisted of a RESTful API an Image processing microservice, video processing integration microservice to coconut and a SOAP XML integration to the UK government BCMS cattle tracing service integration. Utlising Test Driven Development with Unit tests developed using Go Test and employing the Service/Mock pattern. Integration tests developed using Postman, and automated into the CI using Docker and Newman. End to End application stack testing using Cypress

Application server built with a series of custom Go packages, integrated using standard library HTTP and GorillaMux.

I assisted the small team with strategic planning around marketing and sales planning. This involved providing strategic plans for Farm outreach, targeted advertising campaigns and consumer / retailer promotional strategy along with advice on the supporting technology to enable successful execution.

Senior Engineering Manager

Dell Boomi

March 2019 - October 2020

I am flattered to have been directly head hunted via the Dell talent acquistion team. Dell Boomi, are invested in the expansion of their R&D “Centre of Excellence” at the Exeter Science Park, where I am responsible for a team of 16 developers, quality assurance, designers and documentors with a remit to extend the team to 40 by EOY 2021. Tasked with implementing systems, processes and automation to support development of the “Boomi Flow” product.

Boomi Flow is a low code application develoment platform for business process automation and is one member of a family of tools that make up the Boomi iPaaS ( Integration Platform as a Service ). Development is primarily in C#, Java, Go, ES6, and Javascript.

The team is divided into 2 elements; Engine & API, and Web Application “Front End”. Each team operating a Scrumban ( KanBan variant ) and Scrum agile development methodologies respectively. The Engine element delivers through CI/CD using Jira and Bamboo for workflow and CI automation. Deployment to AWS EC2 instances via custom Kubernetes orchestration using Docker.

The Front End team develop using Typescript, ES6, React, Redux, NodeJS, HTML, CSS and Bootstrap. Delivery is time boxed in two week sprint cycles.

My role is to manage and support both development elements, QA and technical writers. Working closely with the Product Manager and Engineering Director to interpret product goals and strategic direction, and translate these into tactical activities to deliver on objectives.

I work to support and develop each team member in both the technical development, career progression and pastoral care. I also provide the role of Scrum master for each element, and provide design, technical and architectural support to the team.

Further to the business objectives, I am tasked with delivering Dell Boomi R&D Exeter as a “Centre of Excellence”. I have responsibility for designing, defining and implementing process, and practices to deliver on that goal. This includes delivering the process documentation for accrediation of ISO 27001, IS0 9001 and Investors in People. With ISO 27001 having already been achieved, we are on the road to ISO 9001.

Developer / Head of Development

Lunar Target ( anonymised for security )

September 2018 - February 2019

Initially recruited as a specialist Go developer, to develop automated bots for data gathering and reconnaisence on chat / communication apps including Whatsapp, Discord and Telegram.

Working with political analysts and social scientists to gather requirements, develop requirement specification, technical, design and architectural documentation. To design, develop, test and deploy the code, including designing implementations using patterns and orthogonality by seperating componets into workers, microservices and API resources. Go being used to facilitate the use of concurrency and flexible scaling. Deployment of the applications using AWS services such as EC2, AWS CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, RDS, DynamoDB, Elasticache and SQS. Continous Integration and Testing using Jenkins.

Lunar Target provide global counter extremism / counter terrorism services to national governments and inter-governmental bodies. During my tenure the head of development resigned and left post with very limited notice / handover. I was tasked with picking up the portfolio of existing software tools and continuing their development, along with rapidly recruiting technically adept developers and bringing them quickly up to speed.

This involved developing, debugging and extending software applications already developed in Python, to provide functionality for the political and scientific teams ensuring their projects got delivered.

Implementing a central development management system to hold backlogs, specifications, source code etc.. I chose to build out their development management solutions using Phabricator.

This included source control, requirements, technical, design specification and UI mockup management. Build out of a Wiki to document both, Go software and tools, and the Python applications. Documenting each software project, create and setup issue backlogs and kanban boards for further development.

Development Manager

WiFi SPARK Ltd

September 2014 - current

Using two aspects of my skill set, I work in two capacities for WiFiSPARK Ltd. My primary role is Software Development Manager, responsible for leading the development team, supporting their individual development and directing their activities in accordance wth the companies product road map. I utilise agile development, including scrum. Responsible for software specification, and delivery against project time lines. I also provide technical consultancy to clients and internal stakeholders. It is my responsibility to match commercial and customer requirements to the SPARK platform, and to work with the development team to expand and develop the product set.

The second aspect of my work is as a member of the Senior management Team. Responsible for the effectivenesss of the business, and its processes. Involved in ISO 9001, and 27001 I have used SuiteCRM as the business centric application to coordinate and integrate the internal systems and processes at WiFiSPARK. This includes mapping workflows to the process patterns ascribed by our 9001 quality management system.

The company is undergoing rapid growth, and expanding into the global market place, and durring this time I have supported and driven the uptake of SuiteCRM across the company. Adapting the system to match business processes, with coverage of sales, support, operations, projects, and software development.

Owner / Managing Director

Abazander Ltd

November 2007 – June 2014 (6 years 8 months)

I founded Abazander with the support of my lovely wife Alison, after experiencing the difficulties one faces in small and medium sized businesses trying to get consistency of marketing and an effective sales generation process.

I utilised my broad experience of Linux and Unix systems, coupled with expertise in business systems analysis, to deliver a Software as a Service built entirely upon Free / Open source software.

Abazander provided a Software as a Service, for CRM and Business managment. Operating Debian GNU/Linux servers from 2 datacentres ( UK and Germany ) the system used an Open Source extended fork of SugarCRM, coupled with RCMail, DokuWiki, OpenOffice. The source code for the product iSAM is available from my Launch Pad account.

I built the complete stack from Debian installation and configuration right through to the software integrations and development, and was responsible for its upkeep, development and monitoring.

The business grew steadily from formation, and continued to develop I appointed 3 directors to work with me. Together, we went on developing iSAM, and won many contracts around the globe.

My role was varied covering all aspects of the business.

• Overall control and management
• Business development and marketing
• Client services and systems implementation
• Product development
• Infrastruture and Systems

Chief Executive Officer

Open Source Consortium

April 2007 – 2008 (1 year)

The OSC is the primary trade body respresenting Open Source systems and solutions providers across the UK. My main role was to coordinate the operational aspects of the OSC. A role that requires active communication, determination and persistance.

Managing Director

Adaptive Linux Solutions

February 2003 – November 2007 (4 years 10 months)

Tasked with replicating the successful work undertaken for Super Tramp, in delivering a 100% Linux and Open Source business system. My role was to lead the development and growth of Adaptive in delivering Open Source systems and solutions to businesses in the south west. Here I lead the migration to another 100% Linux / OS system for a multi-site organisation in Plymouth.

Technical Director

Super Tramp Ltd

June 2000 - November 2007 (7 years 7 months)

The company was in a rapid growth phase, increasing at a rate of more than 40% year on year. The Systems were incohorent, and unreliable, these were the days of Windows 98 and NT4 server. We were advised to implement Windows 2000 AS and Terminal services. While this resolved many of the issue with reliability we were still left with integration and performance issues.
The company grew quickly requiring more workstations. The load and potential for error of manually entering data into two systems became apparent.

I took responsibility for designing and implementing a new business system, to meet the business needs.

I deployed RedHat 7 Server, Mobius ERP, KDE Desktop, and LibreOffice. All these tools integrated to work together as a complete business system. Workstations were extremely lightweight, low power terminals utilising Linux Terminal Server Project via X. Highly reliable and responsive. Ultimately we had one powerful and redundant IBM x86 server driving 40 workstations, and all of our business systems, which then ran uniterrupted for over 1000 days.

Pre Millenial activities

I saw my first computer over 30 years ago, a ‘Commodore PET’ and I was taken straight away! Programming engaged my natural desire to problem solve. I have always considered myself a ‘Fixer’ from a young age. My parents bought me a Dragon 32, and that was it! The Chemistry set never saw the light of day again.

At 15 I got my first paid programming job; A friend and I developed software for a digital audio recorder on the ZX Spectrum, in Z80 Assembler. The device went to market 1984 selling thousands. Of course, we sold the software to the company for peanuts! Ah well you live and learn.

After college, I worked for Scan Optics Ltd on large scale mini and mainframe systems for British Gas and Barclaycard, and early laser scanning EPOS systems from ICL International Computers Ltd.

I digressed from Computer Systems engineering, into Mechanical engineering. Developing skills in turning, machining, sheet metal work, welding. I also explored entrepenurial activities in self employment and establishing small business. During this period I learned how to adapt, innovate and overcome.