An experienced engineering manager, architect and consultant; pleased to have had the opportunity to develop my skills in the ever-changing mobile and gaming environments.

Proven track record of building and leading teams to construct innovative and scalable products. Adept at solving complex problems and working with internal and external teams to bring successful products to market.

• Excels at leading the development of engaging, scalable products
• Drives customer-focused, iterative development aligned with business goals and supported by data
• Engages with internal and external teams to ensure products are fit for purpose and engineered for success

Wall Street English are one of the largest providers of English language education for adults Worldwide, with 450 teaching centres in 28 countries. The app provides interactive learning and social features for WSE students, helping them to learn English with the help of their fellow students.

Accomplishments

• Delivered a complete re-write of the existing application on-time and within budget

Responsibilities

• Sole developer of the iOS application
• Liasing with the customer, designers and back-end engineers to align on requirements and functionality

Clothes Doctor is an online clothes repairs and alterations service, serving the whole of the UK. I came on board to take the over-budget and poor quality website over the finish line. After transitioning away from the original developer we have moved to an offshore team for the front-end website and developed a backend order management system in-house.

Accomplishments

• Delivered a performant customer-facing service through effective supplier management and a structured approach to quality
• Developed an effective order management system to streamline processes and provide a quality service to customers

Responsibilities

• Ongoing development and maintenance of the order management system
• Management of the Indian development team working on the customer-facing website
• Development and management of cloud infrastructure

Friend Request is an iOS app connecting active users with others that match their interests. I initially worked with Friend Request to design and implement their Google Cloud infrastructure and deployment processes. More recently I head the development of the iOS app, managing two London-based developers and working with the founders to define features and manage workload.

Accomplishments

• Deployed a complex Python-based API backend across various Google Cloud services and implemented a comprehensive Continuous Integration setup
• Developed various application features such as chat and image handling on Firebase to reduce server load and pressure on development resources

Responsibilities

• Leading the development of the Swift-based iOS app
• Development and management of cloud infrastructure and Continuous Integration
• Feature definition and sprint management

Yogassential provides private yoga lessons to homes around the UK. Driven by a customer-facing iOS app and a Ruby on Rails back-end, the service is delivering on its expectations and building its user base. My initial consultancy phase took the bug-ridden, unfinished and over-budget product to store readiness. Since then I have taken on the CTO role to oversee the ongoing development of the project, transition away from the original developer and drive uptake.

Accomplishments

• An effective consultancy phase, delivering a finished product and streamlined development process at no cost to the customer
• Spearheaded ongoing efforts to franchise the system into new markets

Responsibilities

• Ongoing development and maintenance of the iOS and Android consumer apps
• Product management and marketing consultancy for the live service
• Management of the outsourced development team that work on the back-end and dashboard functionality
• Business development, pushing the system into new markets through a licensing model

Chillingo is an independent publisher of mobile games, now part of Electronic Arts. As Chillingo’s first employee I helped it grow to become the one of the most successful smartphone game publishers in the world, producing titles such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope across all mobile platforms. I architected the Crystal social gaming platform, which was key to Chillingo's acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2010 and developed entirely in-house. As our external developers increased in size and their back-end systems became complex I established a Due Diligence process to provide technical oversight and certification.

Accomplishments

• Designed and developed a 30m user social gaming platform for iOS and Android
• Designed and developed a patented cross promotional network, driving over 3m installs to date
• Oversaw the server implementation for over 40 distinct game projects across all major back-end technologies

Responsibilities

• Leadership of Chillingo's in-house development team producing our own cross-promotion, social and compliance systems
• Ownership of Chillingo's technical roadmap and strategy for both internal technologies and partner solutions
• Technical oversight and consultancy for all external suppliers to ensure scalability, security and reliability
• Legal support for all projects, including a legal compliance SDK and technical investigations for litigation cases

During my time at EMCC I progressed from Graduate Software Engineer to Principal Software Engineer. As well as heading up several in-house projects I enjoyed extended on-site placements at Symbian and Sony Ericsson.

Accomplishments

• Designed and developed a Microsoft ActiveSync push email client for Symbian devices
• Technical feasibility study for the development of a new UX paradigm on Symbian UIQ, which was used in several Sony Ericsson handsets

Responsibilities

• Leadership for the development of several in-house projects for customers such as Motorola, Symbian and Sony Ericsson
• Supporting the Business Development team by producing proposals, estimates and liaising with the customer

After leaving university I worked at the former National Computing Centre in Manchester. My duties involved Windows and UNIX development in C and TCL/TK, and working on customer sites to integrate the telecommunications testing software that we produced.

  Objective-C, Swift, iOS & related tech

  Java, Android & related tech

  Software architecture and design

  SQL and NoSQL databases (MySQL, MongoDB, Google Datastore)

  Google Cloud (Cloud Compute, Container Engine, App Engine, Big Query, Datastore, Firebase)

  AWS (EC2, S3, Elastic Beanstalk, DynamoDB, RDS, Route53, ELB, CloudFront)

  Serverless / PaaS (Firebase, Google App Engine, Lambda, Parse)

  Containers (Docker, Compose, Kubernetes)

  DevOps (Team City, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Elastic Beanstalk, CircleCI)

Mountain biking, microlight flying, walking, gigging with my band