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More about me

Andy Gout

Senior Web Developer at Financial Times

Andy Gout

I am a Makers graduate, landing my first developer role at the Financial Times in 2015 where I have worked on the new and improved FT.com, and scoutAsia: an Asia-focused companies and news search tool built as an FT-Nikkei collaboration.

Certifications

Technical experience

Back-end

Node.js / TypeScript / Express / Elasticsearch / Neo4j / MySQL / AWS (Simple Storage Service (S3) / DynamoDB / Lambda / Elastic Container Service (ECS) / Identity and Access Management (IAM) / CloudWatch / CloudFormation) / Serverless framework / Docker

Front-end

Javascript ES6/7 / TypeScript / React / Redux / Immutable.js / HTML5 / CSS3 / Sass

Testing

Mocha (with Chai) / Jest (with Enzyme) / BrowserStack (cross-browser automated visual regression testing) / Pa11y (accessibility testing)

Tools

Babel / Webpack / CircleCI / Git / GitHub / Heroku / Fastly

Other

Polyfills / Accessibility / Performance improvements / A/B testing / Data tracking / Analytics, monitoring, and alerting

Courses attended

  • Elasticsearch Engineer I + II (Jun and Nov 2018)
  • Advanced Architecting on AWS (Jun 2018)

Presentations given

  • Things Can Only Get Meta or: Querying Our Metadata With Elasticsearch (FT, Jul 2021)
  • Accessibility (FT, May 2020)
  • Found in Translation or: How Elasticsearch Helped Us Serve Our Asian Language-speaking Customers (Elastic London User Group meetup, Jul 2019)
  • Graph Databases: An Introduction (FT, Nov 2017)

Achievements

  • Introduced multiple sets of region-specific data into scoutAsia (a key request from target customers): a process requiring ongoing communication with data providers to convey requirements and understand limitations, and integration of the data into a complex ETL process.
  • Architecting and implementation of an automated process to select a contract-defined amount of Asia-focused FT articles for use on scoutAsia. Its reliability was ensured with thorough tests and health checks, and incurred minimal server costs.
  • Eased development process of our automated visual regression tests by using S3 as a store for screenshots, enabling the intensive test suite to move from developers' local machines to the cloud.

Skills

Professional

  • Team management: Leadership and mentoring of nearshore team; line management; acting as technical liaison with other teams such as Editorial, Data Analytics, Operations Support, and Customer Relationship Management.
  • Presentational skills: Demonstrating new features to stakeholders, articulating technical concepts in understandable terms, delivering talks to larger audiences (see above).
  • Refining and fulfilling project requirements with UX, designers, data analysts, QA, stakeholders, and developers.
  • Leading recruitment: Composing job specs, liaising with FT's recruitment teams, promoting vacancies at events (including Silicon Milkroundabout), coordinating and conducting screenings and interviews.

Languages

  • British Sign Language: BSL 101 qualification and regular practice with colleagues
  • Ongoing learning of Japanese through instructional books/audio, community meet-ups, and working alongside Nikkei team members - とても たのしい です!

Free Time

Party Tricks

  • Recall of past Oscar winners and nominees
  • A mean Christopher Walken impression (and some not so good others…)

Employment and Education

Financial Times (Oct 2015 to present)

Senior Web Developer (Level 2) (Apr 2020 to present)

  • Customer Products
    • Reliability: Diagnosing and triaging incidents on FT.com and improving its operational monitorability and resilience
    • Platforms (Tech Lead): Creating and enhancing shared build and developer tools, frameworks, monitoring systems, and department-level services for FT.com and the mobile app
  • Enterprise
    • Content Analytics (Tech Lead): Building capabilities to extract insights from and identify trends in FT content

Senior Web Developer (Level 1) (Oct 2018 to Apr 2020)

  • scoutAsia: Asia-focused companies and news analysis subscription-based tool

Web Developer (Oct 2016 to Sep 2018)

  • FT.com
    • Streams: Tech and Opinion page improvements, and realising a bespoke layout for Life & Arts
    • Digital News Innovation R&D (Google-funded): News article topic relevance and exploration engine data visualisation
    • Accessibility: Contributed to FT.com attaining Level AA Conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
    • Conversion: Retaining existing and enticing new subscribers with user-specific offers

Junior Web Developer (Oct 2015 to Oct 2016)

  • FT.com
    • Home page: Iterations based on short feedback loops from editorial and tracked user interactions
    • Navigation: New header built in collaboration with Information Architecture team

Makers coding bootcamp (Apr to Jul 2015)

  • Experience aplenty of group projects, pairing-up, and coding solo, using an Agile approach
  • Ruby, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, AngularJS, PostgreSQL, testing frameworks for TDD, and more
  • Subsequently an alumni helper: first contact for students' blockers; chosen for technical prowess, communication skills and approachability demonstrated during course
  • Bowling scorecard app, built in JavaScript (and spruced up with jQuery), to handle logic of a bowling game, including the fiendishly anomalous final frame: Heroku app

Talent and literary management at Independent Talent Group (2004-2009) and United Agents (2009-2015)

  • Representation of internationally recognised performers (including knights, dames, and Oscar winners), and up-and-coming screenwriters, playwrights, and theatre directors & designers
  • Negotiation of artist contracts, copyright licences, and commissioning agreements
  • Complex schedule management
  • Accompanying clients and professionals to industry events
  • 2:1 BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre Studies