I've spent several years working in the tech industry in various roles and now work as a developer, passionate about creating the best possible solutions and holding myself to a high standard. I'm an open source advocate and agile proponent who believes firmly that everyone has skills to contribute and that even the best ideas can be improved upon if you're not afraid to ask another's opinion.
I'm not easily overwhelmed having spent several years working in consulting, often being pulled into projects which were initially out of my comfort zone, and quickly getting up to speed with large quantities of information to lead individual areas or provide input as a trusted advisor.
- Working with a large banking and investment client I was asked to help ready the IT group for major changes to the organisation structure to ensure that business could continue as normal, I had to quickly understand the clients heavily customised system integrations and help prioritise where to focus our efforts. Several thousand people were effected with over 90% success, a feat which was deemed a miracle given the extremely tight timeframe.
Much like a google car I enjoy navigating my way through complex projects or career changes, imposing self-set targets in order to continually move forward.
- Joining a long running project I identified a number of immediate requirements which would allow us to move forward more cohesively and took it upon myself to set deadlines and drive the delivery of these, listing out where I needed input from other teams and what elements I could complete myself. This subsequently enabled the teams to work more efficiently and joined-up as a result.
- As the primary EMEA and Asia lead in the deployment of Deloitte’s new tax compliance technology solution I devised two tiers for clients entering the deployment cycle and set ambitious targets for the onboarding process which allowed us to exceed leadership targets whilst using client feedback to continue to develop the platform.
As a project manager and tech business analyst I was frequently required to communicate with and between very different stakeholder groups, sometime where these were in conflict.
- While building the next generation of an online client tax platform I was one of the only people a particular dev team would not get annoyed at for reporting issues due to my clear layout and depth of exploration. Leading me to become a central through-point between the dev team and other business side teams, managing the communication styles and requirements of each to reduce conflict.
- I enjoy those occasions where I have had the opportunity to explain a coding concept to my pair partner, using this to cement my own interpretation, and take great satisfaction in their subsequent understanding by trying to provoke the discussion with questions rather than recite textbook answers.
As an open source fan I believe that collaboration can create fantastic products and benefit both the end product and those who contribute.
- As a member of empower hack I worked on a project to look at how medical record information could be stored by refugees and shared with medical professionals on their journey. There are a number of huge problems to overcome in order to create a technological solution which would be viable and having come up with an initial idea I have spent time in conversation with front-line doctors to understand their needs and concerns as well as collaborating with NGO's to explain how the tech could work and limitations. I hope to carry forward some of these ideas in my spare time as an ongoing project within empower hack's volunteer incubator.
- During our final project at Maker's we formed a particularly tight team, able to read one another's mood and use humour to break moments of stress. As a team of only three people I would occasionally be working alone on a feature but would frequently break to be a 'rubber-duck' for other team members or help with a particular issue and would borrow other team members to talk through issues I was having. Consequently, we were able to keep clear communication on the team with everyone being aware of what others were working on.
- Makers Academy is a highly-selective, intensive 12-week coding bootcamp which requires a passionate and dedication to get the most from
- Pair programming every day, solving problems together with often daily changing code base to build on
- TDD skills developed from day 1 using testing frameworks such as RSpec, Capybara, Jasmine and Karma
- Weekly weekend projects, providing an opportunity work and solve problems independently while consolidating and stretching on the course content
- Experience with agile principles gained from running daily standups
- Focus on producing good quality code by following OOD and SOLID principles
- Technologies learned: Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, Angular.js, Node.js, ionic framework, postgresql, HTML, CSS
- BSc Neuroscience (Hons.)
- Dissertation in schematic learning patterns; how we can learn faster by building on pre-existing neural patterns and use these to succeed in new areas.
- ACA Chartered Accountant with the ICAEW (2010)
- PRINCE2 Project management (2011)
Deloitte Technology Strategy & Architecture (May 2014 - Dec 2015)
Senior Consultant - BA & IT Strategy
Deloitte Tax Management Consulting (2010 - 2014)
Manager - Tax Technology - Programme Manager, Product BA & Implementation Manager
Deloitte International Tax (2007 - 2010)
Assistant Manager - Tax Advisor
Theatre/event lighting and sound technician (2004 - 2007)
Freelancer
I'm a massive musical theatre fan. The theme song from Sunset Boulevard will de-stress me under almost any circumstance.