Brunel University London

Software Development Manager at Tesco

London, London, United Kingdom

Tesco

Software Development Manager

Built a small team of specialised UI engineers migrating a brownfield site to a modern React based architecture utilising storybook, a monorepo approach, and design-tokens.Built bespoke code and type generation tools around the openapi (swagger) specification.Developed various technical leadership strategies to maintain documentation, reduce churn, and improve inter-team relations.

Velo Payments

Principal Software Engineer

Shortly after joining I occupied an interim Head of Engineering role for 6 months before returning to the principal role. During this time I dealt with tackling technical debt across the Sun portfolio of products and modernising the client side aspects of the website experience. This necessitated aligning several contributing teams, designing robust and performant architecture across the stack, and recruitment and/or effectively structuring teams.Roles & Responsibilities:• Technical oversight and strategy for the Sun family of products.• Hiring and team(s) structure.• Technical leadership of agile teams.• Code and systems architecture.• Maintaining relationships with the rest of the business.Notable achievements:Built a new agile team to assist with interactive editorial content, setting the strategy and technical/process integration aspects, and heavily involved in the hiring process.Technical design and approach for migrating legacy code toward React componentised architecture with "universal rendering" via partial client-side hydration/portals and Redux.Design and future roadmap toward cross-cutting cloud-native CI/CD pipelines with jenkins, docker, kubernetes, helm, and terraform.Technologies: React/Preact, Redux, React Router v4, Express, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS

News UK

In taking on the role of a SDM, I was responsible for managing a team of software engineers, contractors, and third party teams in order develop the next iteration of the YouView software product.Roles & Responsibilities:• Recruitment activities (hiring, interviews, attending hacker x events)• Tutorage of direct reports• Investigating and implementing development strategies across the YouView web technologies team• Technical leadership for agile teams• Code architecture and solution oversightNotable achievements:Ran two agile feature teams in parallel as the technical project lead, one of which was an external party. Designed and developed a build time IoC solution for a microservices architecture.Technologies: Typescript, javacript, RxJS, nodejs, HTML/CSS

YouView TV Limited

As a lead engineer for YouView, I was tasked with directing a migration into web based technologies involving a significant up-skill in existing resource. I was also given development oversight of a prominent hardware integration project.Roles & Responsibilities:• Development lead for Sony 2015 TV integration• API architecture for both javascript and Android application boundaries• Technical documentation of YouView domain and product features• Exploration of emerging technologies relevant to YouView, managing directed proof of concept work streams• Developing build infrastructure for web based projects• Mentoring and upskilling junior and mid-level members of the team and distributing knowledge• Producing interview materials and assistance with hiring decisionsNotable achievements:Launched the Sony 2015 TV YouView integration in October 2015, lead a team of developers, testers, and external contractors to feature complete.Technologies: Typescript, Dart, Haxe, javacript, nodejs (gulp), HTML/CSS

Lead UI Engineer

I returned to YouView in a permanent role after they had just launched the first generation product. I worked on new features for the product as well as addressing some of the technical debt in the form of both bugs and architecture.Roles & Responsibilities:• Software engineer working in an agile team of 14, pair programming, code review• Assisted in candidate interviews• R&D for software improvementNotable achievements:Significantly improved the approach to application memory profiling by writing and improving tools in bash, python, and javascript. Investigated porting the existing architecture to new AS3 frameworks, and additionally the HaXe language.Technologies: AS3, python, groovy, javascript, HaXe

Flash Developer

When the current Technical director departed, I stepped in to cover the transition period while a new technical director was found. In this role I became involved in most of the technology decisions across the agency.Roles & Responsibilities:• Pitching business to clients• Liaising with client technical teams for the proposes of security and software evaulation• Producing technical documentation for clients• Setting the technical direction on new and existing projects• Managing the software development teamNotable achievements:Architected and developed <a href="http://Umbraco/.NET">Umbraco/.NET</a> controls for ingesting Facebook/YouTube/Twitter content to provide an aggregated stream of interleaved content. Oversaw the global site consolidation of the Desperados beer brand (owned by Heineken) into an Umbraco CMS, with age gating and region detection. This included 8 countries and 22 language variants overall. Created multi-region custom YouTube channels for Desperados and Heineken.Technologies: Umbraco, .NET, XSLT, Azure, backbone, Selenium, Facebook/Twitter/YouTube API’s

AnalogFolk

Acting Tech Director

In joining AnalogFolk as the creative tech lead I was tasked with inspiring and offering guidance to a team of seven developers and to the creative team. I was able to utilise my previous experience to introduce elements of processes and best practice to the company, and lead the migration from some older architectures into some more modern technologies.Roles & Responsibilities:• Introducing and overseeing agile and software engineering practices and processes to a team of seven developers• Researching, prototyping, and applying technologies for client projects• Involved in the creative concepting process, bringing a technology mindset• Upgrading and maintaining legacy .NET and jQuery projects using more modern web technologies and frameworks• Implementing website architectures that integrate with the Umbraco CMSNotable achievements:Demonstrated prototypes in IoT based technologies using Kinect, Arduino, and Processing. Managed the global consolidation of Yellowtail wine sites and Facebook pages into single Umbraco CMS instance, with locale/region detection working with the Facebook API.Technologies: jQuery, backbone, PHP, Umbraco, XSLT, .NET, Processing, Ardunio, Kinect, HAML, SASS, RequireJS

Creative Technology Lead

At YouView I joined a team of 18 Flash developers creating a highly performant GUI on performance constrained set-top boxes that delivered linear and IP TV.Roles & Responsibilities:• Worked as part of an Agile/KanBan team delievering working software in 2 week sprints• Carried out code reviews and pair programming with colleagues• Wrote technical specifications for new features, including UML diagrams and information flows• Collaborated with UX, design, and product to translate requirements into software• Investigated performance bottlenecks and leveraged hardware supported features at the pixel-pushing levelNotable achievements:Created a performant sub-menu system with animation that used blitting techniques to achieve the desired visual fidelity while adhering to memory VRAM restrictions.Technologies: AS3 (NDA for other technologies used)

Flash Developer (Contractor)

Starting out initially as a developer and then quickly moving onto “The Head of ActionScript” I was primarily involved in the development of Flash based “adver-games” (games developed for commercial brands) of various sizes, as well as more traditional brand websites and micro-sites.Roles and Responsibilities:• Research and application of emerging technologies such as AR and Face tracking.• Working in an agile methodology, rapidly prototyping, paired programming• Overseeing enterprise level deployments of big brand websites such as KIT KAT.• Informing design decision through client and inter-department liaison, checking pitch work for suitability•Educating by example, ensuring best practices and code fidelityNotable achievements:Involved in building the multi-award winning “Start Thinking Solider” campaign, a series of 22 “games” that encompassed 3D mechanics, particle effects, seamless video and adaptive AI of which many of these systems were researched and built from scratch by myself. Developed a site for Milkybar that was the first advertising site to make use of face tracking technology.

Skive Creative

Head of ActionScript

EURO RSCG is part of the global media agency EHS Brann, a global advertising and marketing agency. During my short time here I was involved in a large-scale development of a global Flash based website for Jaguar.Roles & Responsibilities:• Architecture/system/framework design for bespoke multilingual widget based site• Implementation of key widgets (client-side search, main menu, content pages)• Collaboration with asset and content production teams across the globe for creating formal technical specifications• Prototyping/concepting of transitioning effectsNotable achievements:Built a run-time xml based markup system for defining and configuring AS3 based widgets, with dynamic layout, multilingual injection, SEO, local persistence, styling, and shared lifecycle/component optimisations.Technologies: AS3, TweenLite, PHP

Euro RSCG 4D

Emak Mafu was a digital media agency specialising in highly stylised interactive Flash websites for architecture, fashion, and niche-media clients. The key features of these sites is that they made use of quality animation, streaming video and SEO/deep-linking at a time when this was uncommon (for Flash).Roles & Responsibilities:• Architecture, scoping and implementation of Flash based websites in AS2 and later oversaw the transition to AS3 across the team.• Implementation of reusable toolkits, widgets, and tools to improve developer efficiency• Mentoring and onboarding of new hires• R&D of emerging technologies and techniques• Editor and writer of technical documentation consisting of UML and API specificationsNotable Achievements:Emak Mafu was responsible for holding FLUG (Flex London user group) and then later held the first FLEXCamp conference in London, in which I took an active role in disseminating information and collaborating with developers.The design and implementation of a framework on top of PureMVC that provided common functionality and components typical for client websites, enabling projects to be bootstrapped quickly and in one instance developed to completion within a day.Technologies: AS3, Flex, PureMVC, swfAddress, Tweener, Graffiti (AS3), PHP

Alex Fell

Alex Fell