Software Development Engineer at Amazon in London. Specialising in innovative, effective APIs supporting our many client devices and applications for Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM.
I worked closely between Seattle and London in integrating LOVEFiLM on the new Kindle Fire HD. I was intimately involved in developing and integrating the APIs/platform behind the Videos app in the UK and Germany, then supporting ongoing post-launch improvements to the device.
Software developer on the LOVEFiLM Instant HD project, adding HD support to the LOVEFiLM platform, including development work to ensure correct delivery of the appropriate HD releases to devices, particularly the website, and integrating HD stickering across product images.
I led the development team of Heart Internet's VPS product, responsible for both the front-end UI (jQuery) and back-end platform (Perl). The product was extremely successful and has since been adopted by their sister company, 123-Reg, for their VPS product.
Amazon Development Centre London, UK http://www.amazon.com Software Development Engineer
SDE/Technical Lead focusing on our APIs and services supporting client devices for LOVEFiLM in Europe and Amazon Instant Video in the USA.
Developed for and supported launch of Amazon Original Pilots free TV content on LOVEFiLM.
Worked closely integrating LOVEFiLM on the Kindle Fire HD for its launch in the United Kingdom and Germany. Coordinated between development teams in London and Seattle, from client APIs to DRM (digital rights management), to deliver unique features such as watchlist, X-Ray and Next Up. Then technical lead for post-launch optimisations and updates including the 8.9" device.
Migrated the LOVEFiLM Perl/mod_perl/Mason/Solr platform from a co-located datacentre to the Amazon environment, and between Apache 1 and 2. This included personally architecting the migration of the entire product image platform.
Architected and developed a new image framework for dynamic image delivery for product and editorial images for use on website and client devices.
Developed for the LOVEFiLM Instant HD project, integrating various elements of HD imaging on website/devices and ensuring correct delivery of HD content to the LOVEFiLM website.
Remote software development work for clients, including Heart Internet and 123-Reg (Host Europe Group companies).
Maintaining and developing the VPS (Virtual Private Server) platform I created when working full time for Heart Internet, and development on a large-scale project to reimagine the 123-Reg user experience.
Personally developed and launched one-click VPS scripts, Hybrid Servers (high performance RAID-based virtual servers) and SSD VPS for Heart Internet, all European firsts.
Worked between July 2010-June 2011 in Thailand, expanding personal knowledge of Thai language. Freelance work included writing a ground-up auditing tool in modern Perl/HTML5/jQuery, an analytics system based on the Royal Mail PAF database and supporting a fitness website written in PHP but in desperate need of coding cleanup.
Heart Internet Ltd Nottingham, UK http://www.heartinternet.co.uk Software Developer (previously System Administrator, Technical Support)
Led development of extremely successful VPS project (http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/vps/), built from the ground up in Perl, providing completely customisable servers to customers. Product has gone on to massively exceed sales targets and receive great accolade, including adoption by sister company 123-Reg as the backend for their own VPS product.
Personal focus on improving and modernising code, using libraries such as jQuery to create a better user experience. Used my experience in teams across the organisation to develop to improve both internal and external processes.
Originally hired for work placement as a technical support engineer, rapidly proved myself and promoted to gain system administration/development experience.
Education
University and college
BSc (Hons) Computer Science First Class University of Nottingham
Dissertation: developing context-sensitive word prediction for the Android platform, based on a corpus of medical texts (NHS Direct transcripts) compiled by the School of English. Wrote thesis and developed prototype mobile application (alternative predictive keyboard for Android).
Other key modules: Human Computer Interaction, Computer Security, Advanced Computer Communications, Compilers, Operating Systems.
Team leader and lead programmer of second year group project developing an audio processing tool using Java.
Colleage & Secondary School Cheadle & Marple Sixth Form College Chapel-en-le-Frith High School
A Levels: Computing (A), English Language (A), Government and Politics (B)
AS Levels: Electronics (A), Mathematics (B)
GCSEs: 10 subjects at A/A* including English, Maths, Science (Double Award), French and Applied ICT.
Worked on college paper. School prefect.
Techical Skills
Programming, databases, and all that
Regularly working on service orientated Java Spring (and similar) platforms for Amazon.
Highly experienced Perl programmer, with both modern frameworks (Moose, Dancer, Mojolicious, DBIx::Class) and vanilla Perl (mod_perl, CGI, etc, dangerous as it is). Migrated LOVEFiLM's 1m+ customer platform between environments and Apache versions.
Skilled with SQL, particularly MySQL (directly and through ORMs like DBIx::Class), MongoDB ("NoSQL") and Solr in enterprise environments like Amazon.
Regular user of Git and Subversion.
Frontend-wise, experienced with jQuery and modern HTML5/CSS/LESS, having used it for many personal and freelance projects as well as massively expanding its use at Heart Internet.
Happily cable with Linux system administration (particularly Red Hat/CentOS, although fairly familiar with Debian/Ubuntu). Fully competent at standard LAMP-stack configuration/maintenance as well as shell use.
Other skills and talents
Personal and professional skills and abilities
Experienced in working on and leading successful scrum and kanban-driven teams, such as the delivery of LOVEFiLM & Kindle Fire HD.
Member of cross-organisation "Samurai" leadership and design team, driving best practises and design reviews across the Amazon Development Centre in London.
Regularly vet and interview engineers, interns and graduates for Amazon, through technical tests, phone screens and in-house interviews.
Motivated, outgoing and challenge-seeking individual, who can adapt quickly to new environments and languages. Personally, friendly and easy to get on with.
Have been programming since introduced to the computer around the age of 5 by my father (one of my first ‘projects’ was developing an application in Visual Basic 3 that made a picture of Thomas The Tank Engine wink at you – fairly revolutionary).
