<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/st-bernard-dog-rescue-mountain-wasdale-scafell-pike-a9638521.html" target="_blank">St Bernard mountain rescue dog rescued – from mountain</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<font color="#6f6f6f">The Independent</font>

St Bernard mountain rescue dog rescued – from mountain - The Independent

<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/dogs-polling-stations-general-election-2019-best-photos-twitter-a9243666.html" target="_blank">General Election 2019: The best photos of dogs at polling stations across the UK</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<font color="#6f6f6f">The Independent</font>

General Election 2019: The best photos of dogs at polling stations across the UK - The Independent

Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd

Senior Software Engineer at Google

As a privacy engineer, I perform privacy design reviews and provide expert consultation for meeting privacy requirements. My team and I consult at all levels of project (requirements gathering, design, implementation, and final launch approval) to help product teams navigate the complex and fast-moving privacy landscape. I have received excellent feedback for my ability to form relationships and provide constructive suggestions on how to improve products.

We work across all Android platform products, but I am particularly specialised in Enterprise and Wear OS.

Google

Privacy Engineer, Android

Wrote metrics, data aggregation and anonymisation pipelines, and dashboard UIs to understand Android product quality at scale. Full-stack developer; I wrote all the code from data probes inside the Android framework, right through to TypeScript/Angular UIs to make the metrics usable to the wider Android org.

Significant emphasis on data analysis. Designing metrics that are (a) something we can technically implement but also (b) provide meaningful insights into Android's behaviour on end-users' devices is a difficult challenge.

Senior Software Engineer, Android Telemetry

Working in the Play Developer Console team.

My main area of focus has been on the integration of the Firebase Test Lab (https://firebase.google.com/docs/test-lab/) into the Play Developer ecosystem. This allows developers to have their app tested on physical Android devices hosted in Google's data centres.

I have also contributed to various large-scale data analysis pipelines using technologies related to mapreduce.

Tech Lead / Senior Software Engineer

I worked in the Travelgateway team with responsiblity for Comtec’s supplier connector layer -- engines that provide harmonised XML interfaces for searching and booking across diverse backend data sources. Comtec’s flights, car hire, and train booking systems are written in Java and maintained by a small team of which I was the technical lead. 

Users of these products include Thomas Cook, Gold Medal, Sunspot, Sunair, Vacation.com and Travel Impressions. Through a cluster of 40+ virtualised blade servers, these products handle more than a thousand bookings per day with an annual transactional turnover of more than £200m. 

As well as ownership of new developments throughout the entire software life cycle, I participated in architecture design processes, produced customer-facing work estimates, mentored junior developers, carried out code reviews, and managed task allocation and project planning. I also acted as the last line of tech support for a number of difficult live issues, which was a challenging but enjoyable part of my role.

Comtec

Application Architect

Following a number of posts to my personal website regarding the iPhone 4 antenna problems in June 2010, I was interviewed by publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. This led to the offer of a part-time role as a staff writer for AOL’s Apple-orientated news site, TUAW.com. With a focus on covering more technical and longer pieces, I have written about topics as diverse as comparisons of Android and iOS from the perspective of user openness, the deprecation of Java in OS X, iOS jailbreaking, the intricacies of GPL licensing, the TRIM command and SSD garbage collection, as well as everyday news coverage. 

I very much enjoy the challenge of communicating complex technical details in an easy-to-follow way. A portfolio of my work can be viewed at http://actionatadistance.net/portfolio.

This is a part-time role, carried out in my spare time.

Blogger for The Unofficial Apple Weblog (tuaw.com)

As the most senior developer on one of Comtec’s key products, I was responsible for the flight engine, a SOAP-based data aggregation web service that allows the user to search for airline fares through a harmonised interface across many diverse backend sources. This was hosted on Apache Tomcat and written in J2EE.

I planned resource allocation and time estimation across a flexible team drawn from a pool of five developers and QA staff, undertook key developments, and acted as a customer liaison on live server issues. This was a challenging role that required me to take the next step in my career.

Senior Developer

I returned to Comtec on a contract basis to fill a skills gap left by my departure a year previously. I was assigned three failing projects where no-one had been identified to lead the scalability testing element and managed the project planning, delivery, and completion of each one. These were completed to rigorous demands from high-value customers, so the pressure to deliver against difficult timescales was considerable.

Scalability engineer

My initial responsibility within Keima was as a build engineer for the suite of C#/C++ network optimisation products for the telecoms industry. I migrated a manual build process to a fully automated build server with regular builds triggered through checkins, driven by a complex family of MSBuild scripts and incorporating proprietary DLL obfuscation. 

I led the team in writing a unit test suite and coached colleagues on test driven development best practices. I devised strategies to attempt to meaningfully test the 250 KLOC codebase as quickly as possible, achieving 50% code coverage of key assemblies. This process familiarised me with the architecture of the system in readiness for the next generation of products.

I developed a prototype ASP.NET web application which would act as a network diagnostic tool for front-line support staff in a cellular operator. It gave users an easy-to-understand window into current network problems that are usually only accessible to the engineering department, thus reducing the call escalation rate to level 2 and 3 support.

Keima

I had many roles in my time at Comtec. As a J2EE developer, I worked on the flight engine, a SOAP-based data aggregation web service that allows the user to search for airline fares through a harmonised interface across many diverse backend sources. 

I also worked as a technical liaison to the QA department, primarily concerned with scalability testing. This part of my duties was frequently customer facing. I wrote standard scalability testing procedures,  authored numerous analysis tools to facilitate the testing team (in Java and .Net), and I conducted scalability exercises to help secure multi-million pound sales. My reports were discussed at board level in First Choice, Thomas Cook, Cosmos, and Vacation.com.

The final aspect to my role was as a senior developer for the Core Engine team, who are responsible for extremely high performance web services for the largest package holiday search engine in the UK. This involved work on very high performance database systems.

Comtec Europe Ltd

Software Developer

I wrote 7 articles for Dennis Publishing, on a freelance basis, for PC Pro and Computer Shopper magazine.

Dennis Publishing

Freelance

Working in the Perl language to write CGI scripts, I developed several dyanamic data-driven websites for clients including the Farm Holidays Bureau, Osprey Publishing, and the Welsh Tourist Board.

I started working during my university studies on a part-time basis, then during my summer vacation my contract was expanded on to a full-time basis.

Imaginet

Perl developer

I worked as a self-employed freelance IT contractor on a variety of short and long term contracts. 

I acted as principle IT support for an electrical engineering firm for five years, growing their network from three standalone PCs to fifteen workstations with centralised printing and a Linux fileserver with offsite backup.

I developed a bespoke liability tracking database for a civil engineering firm (in Microsoft Access/VBA).

I provided IT support for a local dentist's offices, dealing with client PC configuration and migrating a file server from Netware to Windows 2000.

clmConsulting

Owner

I worked on Perl based data processors and FORTRAN computer models to run tests demonstrating how a nuclear reactor would behave under various conditions.

Work was initially for a gap year, then a series of summer placements during my university studies.

Richard Gaywood