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.
- Elastic Certified Engineer (Aug 2019: certificate)
- Neo4j Certified Professional (Jun 2019: certificate download)
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Apr 2018: badge verification)
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
Javascript ES6/7 / TypeScript / React / Redux / Immutable.js / HTML5 / CSS3 / Sass
Mocha (with Chai) / Jest (with Enzyme) / BrowserStack (cross-browser automated visual regression testing) / Pa11y (accessibility testing)
Babel / Webpack / CircleCI / Git / GitHub / Heroku / Fastly
Polyfills / Accessibility / Performance improvements / A/B testing / Data tracking / Analytics, monitoring, and alerting
- Elasticsearch Engineer I + II (Jun and Nov 2018)
- Advanced Architecting on AWS (Jun 2018)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- Drawing and painting
- Hobby coding project, TheatreBase: a graph database-powered site of theatrical production and playtext listings
- Competing in the You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat film quiz
- Recall of past Oscar winners and nominees
- A mean Christopher Walken impression (and some not so good others…)
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
Royal Holloway, University of London (Sep 2001 to Jun 2004)
- 2:1 BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre Studies