Geek credentials

I value team-work and believe that a champion team will always be stronger than a team of champions. Here’s a brief summary of my experience in the software industry.

Education

The university of Waikato
1998 – 2001 Bachelor of Computing and mathematical sciences degree.

Experience

Oct 2021 – Present LIC (NZ) :: Software development manager

• Worked with 7+ team members to ensure professional growth plans are set and worked through
• Created an Engineering competencies and growth framework that was built with people who would use it
• Used a continual feedback process for performance reviews to encourage professional growth
• Responsible for recruitment and resourcing into Agile teams from posting jobs adverts, working with recruiters and planning long term resourcing strategy
• Worked with software engineers on best practices and allowing them to be autonomous whilst holding accountability for their work
• Involved in strategic planning of wider engineering practice and department
• Working with the Product team to align product customer value and provide technical assistance to discussions
• Applies leadership by influence to work on empowering teams and individuals in their daily activities
• Close relationships with other practices including Architecture, Support services, Product, DevOps, Agile practice, Testing practice, Security Ops
• Managed team resource movements balancing work priority, team dynamics, individual growth opportunities and department culture
• Worked and guided engineers on their career progression and transition to more senior roles

May 2010 – Oct 2021 Rezare Systems Ltd (NZ) :: Senior Software Developer / Team Leader

• Full stack development of ASP.NET MVC as well as back end development of software modules in c# .NETCORE.
• ASP.NET Web API application design and implementation. Client to Server integration, application to application to help promote good system design
• Most .NET applications used Entity Framework with a SQL database (or postgres) back-end. Typically using code first however I have also had experience with Database first development
• Exposure to TDD using MSTest, xUnit
• Primary development methodology involved Agile practices primarily SCRUM. However I have been pro-active in reading other methodologies such as Kanban and am active in promotion of Agile in my current role
• Git is the current source control usage however I have had experience with SVN and TortoiseSVN.
• Developed .NET desktop applications using primarily WinForms
• Instigator and advocate for Continuous Integration and Build servers (Inedo BuildMaster) for successful deployment of software and code integrity
• In 2015 I was promoted to Team leader and responsible for 5 team members. Duties included weekly one on ones to monitoring progress, removing roadblocks, ensuring staff satisfaction, performance reviews and technical mentoring. This role also involved staff task management as required
• Developed solutions in both Microsoft Azure and AWS using DevOps to promote deployment

May 2009 – 2015 Symtech Ltd (NZ) :: Contractual work – PHP / ASP.NET MVC

• I took over from a previous employee and worked on completing a website application in PHP. The role also involved creating a number of websites using PHP and WordPress with a MySQL back-end
• In 2010 my role reduced somewhat and took on a limited contract role. Some of the projects during this time have included ASP.NET web development using Windows Azure. Features used have included Azure Service Bus and SignalR
• Created nuget packages that have been used as a core library component in a socket server application
• I developed an application using J2ME to work on the Blackberry mobile phone to interact over GPRS with a web server.
• Recent exposure to GIT and gitHub using SourceTree to monitor and control file commits

October 2004 – April 2009 Digital Id (UK) :: Software developer -> Team leader

• I started in this role as a software developer developing applications primarily in Visual basic 6 with Microsoft SQL. The role required not only development but also customer support and software installation and training of their primary software package
• In 2007 my position progressed to a Team leader role after the expansion of the team. I was responsible for ensuring the team members handled support requests, ensured a smooth operation of the company hardware and network services and produced high quality software. During this phase I also developed a number of pieces of software in c# .NET
• Successfully implemented software to control Laser marking at the Jaguar Solihull UK car manufacturing plant. This software was instrumental in allowing on demand car labels to be produced as cars rolled down the production line. Key factors here were ensuring a robust application as a car was produced off the line every 3 mins so any delay/failure in the production line itself is effectively costing $$. Software interacted with PLC’s to control hardware functionality and SQL databases to store application data

April 2002 – August 2004 Talking tech (now Illion) (NZ/UK) :: Software developer

• I was initially employed as junior programmer with responsibilities to help maintain the primary software (VB 6.0) and also deal with customer support requests. During my time there I progressed to an application installation engineer and was also responsible for a short period in the role of primary software and support technician for their UK base

Skills

_{Proficiency scale
1 – 2 No experience – familiar with
3 – 5 Low level user – good working knowledge (able to read)
6 – 8 Proficient with – highly skilled
9 – 10 Expert, able to train, guru}