Download my resumé here.
I’m a highly skilled web and mobile software developer with particular experience of working with the creative, marketing, public relations, publishing and charity sectors. I have excellent team and project management experience, which includes ultimate responsibility for project delivery; managing creative and technical teams as well as full client account management.
I have in-depth knowledge of both back-end and front-end development, relating to a range of different languages and technologies, specifically: PHP, MySQL, Apache, Javascript/jQuery, XHTML/HTML/CSS (including HTML5 and CSS3), Flash & ActionScript and Objective-C/C++/C/C#, as well as frameworks, such as Symfony & .NET and integrated development environments: XCode and Visual Studio.
Overall I’m considered to be a diligent, motivated, pragmatic individual; capable of leading, or participating within any lively team.
Working on a five month contract, my main responsibilities included supporting business systems, which run on the .NET framework and SharePoint, as well as co-ordinating support operations with an offshore team.
I joined Gemin-i.org on a three month contract to assist with finalising the beta version of their software which had been built using Symfony. My responsibilities included bug fixing and adding further functionality.
On leaving Vivid London, I joined Everywhere on a three month contract to act as their senior developer to lead the development of four distinct projects. My responsibilities included planning technical project workflows, communicating with the creative arm of the business and working to – often – very tight deadlines.The projects I was responsible for belonged to clients from the creative industries and ranged from small independent artists through to internationally acclaimed organisations, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, which meant the final product had to resonate with the client’s vision and carry all the functionality that was specified during the initial planning phase.
Since the team at Everywhere were very creatively driven, I also provided advice on how to structure technical assets within the company; with a view to developing a working strategy for project planning, implementation, testing and delivery.
As a founding partner of Vivid London, I was responsible for much of the day to day operations within the firm; which included – but was not limited to – liaising with project team leaders on behalf of clients, mentoring and hiring new staff members and providing strategic technical and marketing direction.
Since forming the agency in 2002, I was wholly responsible for the development and delivery of digital services, including leading development of our content management framework called Aftershock; this responsibility required that I kept up to date with new technologies and provided guidelines for effective technical project implementation, as well as liaising with the firm’s creative team to guarantee high standards.
Other responsibilities within the firm included: managing budgets and providing final sign-off for cost estimates, writing and contributing to sales proposals and liaising with suppliers to maintain exceptional service levels.
Taking a sabbatical from Vivid London, I joined Evolving Media for eight months to head up their digital team responsible for a new client acquisition. My responsibilities included managing a team of junior developers, liaising with designers and the company’s management team and providing accurate development timescales.
The project in question represented a significant investment for the company, so it was critical that the client’s precise specifications were delivered upon; this meant that I had to gain an almost immediate technical understanding of the company’s existing systems, including their content management service, in order to provide effective leadership and guidance to my team.
I also provided advice on how to gain efficiency improvements from technical staff, and how to safeguard against natural attrition, to the company’s management team.
Before I founded Vivid London, I completed a six month contract at Virgin Radio in Golden Square as a Consultant Developer. Working with their in-house technical team, I used Visual Basic to develop services and applications for Windows servers to support the streaming of music and information for the dDAB trial. dDAB was an experimental service that was pioneered by the dDAB consortium, which included Virgin Radio and Loughborough University, to send rich content alongside traditional DAB transmissions to provide the end-user with a more interactive user experience.
Owing to the slow uptake of traditional DAB receivers, this technology was never rolled out to the public, however working on the project presented me with an invaluable opportunity to understand how digital transmissions work and how limitations of bandwidth can be overcome.
My skills and interests
Since the explosion of the iOS mobile operating system and my subsequent entry into developing apps for the iPhone and iPad, I have found an interest in building upon my experience in C# to develop Windows Phone apps. I am the proud owner of a Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia’s first Windows Phone offering, and I have been exploring what the operating system can do and how Microsoft’s user experience seems to represent the next logical step for mobile device development.