Skills | Work | Education | Experience
I am a Full Stack Developer who loves to build first-class user experiences and solid, maintainable software for the long term with the best technologies available. I am passionate about clean code and test-driven development, and crafting software with care and skill.
- Javascript (ES6+)
- Test-driven development
- Vue, React
- Functional programming
- NodeJS
- GraphQL
- Docker
- Git and Unix shell
- Ruby, Lua, Rust
- AWS
My first major task as a junior developer was to upgrade an existing Vue 1 application to Vue 2, and iron out issues that had arisen during its somewhat haphazard, experimental initial development. I was new to the framework and found many parts of the code difficult to understand, so focused first on building a comprehensive suite of unit tests around the application, which had no existing automated tests at all.
The tests formed a foundation on which I could better understand some of the more complex areas of functionality, and gave me a much safer starting point from which I could upgrade and refactor the application.
The last year of my time at Madgex has been spent taking a major role in the migration of our two legacy, monolithic products into a single-tenanted microservice application. In particular I've focused on transitioning our front end, which was previously based on a proprietary in-house templating language and full of complex overrides and per-client disparities, to a Node application using the Nunjucks templating language and unified around a core design system.
I've taken a technical lead on much of our monitoring, including writing a custom UDP transport for logging, and on automating our generation of client-specific branded CSS based on our design system, which involved improving my knowledge of Docker and our CI systems.
Something I have particularly enjoyed about the change in technical direction that I've been a part of at Madgex had been the opportunity to provide support for and learn from others as we made Javascript a bigger aspect of our tech stack. I've provided support to colleagues on everything from testing to design patterns, and have appreciated the challenges this has allowed me to tackle outside of my normal work. I have particularly enjoyed working with colleagues who are much more experienced than me in general, but who are new to the language, so I can help with problems around syntax or tooling while learning from their expertise in other ways.
Outside of work I enjoy coaching at Codebar Brighton. Teaching and coaching people who are very new to coding is a terrific challenge in terms of being able to express my knowledge in a way that can be easily understood, but is also enormously fun and rewarding.
Since first learning about the ways screenreaders and other assistive technologies can interact with browsers I've been fascinated with the ways that following very simple best practices can help create online experiences that benefit and support all users. I have taken a lead on incorporating automated accessibility testing of components into our design system with Cypress and AXE, and am always seeking to improve my skills in manual testing of sites and products.
- OOP, TDD, SOLID, MVC, DDD
- Software craftsmanship
- Ruby, Rails, Javascript, Node.js
- Rspec, Jasmine, Mocha
- PhD in Theology & Religion (incomplete)
- My thesis explored the idea of the parish as the fundamental political structure in England, and its role in a post-recession politics of subsidiarity.
- MA in Ethics, Religion & Society
- Pass with Merit
- My dissertation staged a critique of the Mennonite school of Christian Pacifism through an examination of structural systems of violence exemplified by the meat industry.
- BA(Hons) in Theology & Religion
- 2:1
- My dissertation was a literary analysis of women in the patriarchal narratives (Genesis 12-50).
- 4 A-levels (AAAB)
- 10 GCSEs at A*-C
Madgex (March 2019 to present)
Front End Developer
Madgex (Nov 2017 to February 2019)
Junior Javascript Developer
Exeter Diocesan Board of Finance (Jun 2015 to Dec 2016)
Executive Officer
Exeter & Greater Devon Coroner's Office (Nov 2014 to Jun 2015)
Assistant Clerk to the Coroner
Maidstone & Weald Samaritans (Sept 2009 to Jan 2011)
Listening Volunteer
Durham Nightline (Jan 2007 - Jul 2009)
Listening Volunteer, Information Officer, Supplies Officer