About Me
Developer, Founder, Former Professional Athlete, Outdoor Enthusiast and Adventurer.
During university, a friend and I were building fun projects with embedded systems which spiralled and ended up selling as a product to a multinational lighting control company. This mini success and a couple more clients led to the creation of a micro-consultancy. I was responsible for the operations side of the business; communicating progress, setbacks and justifying decisions to stakeholders, as well as day-to-day development. Over the course of the last couple of years we were able to hire some of our friends and recruit from the university to grow into a small team. Now I’m looking to step back from this venture in order to grow my career in a product direction and learn from a wider circle of builders.
Work Experience
Captain App (Co-Founder)
March 2021 – Present, Bristol, UK
Off the back of our first customer in late 2020, LiteIP, a university colleague and I started a micro-consultancy to manage our clients and business. We have been tackling a range of full-stack projects ever since.
- We chose Flutter and GCP as our tech stack as we found it opinionated, intuitive and well structured. We were able to upskill new software engineers to produce value in a matter of days. However as a consultancy we worked with a variety of other tooling and providers including AWS.
- Sourced, hired and mentored interns to help scale our development team
- I took on a product engineer role at Captain App, adopting an Agile approach to align our continuous evaluation with stakeholder requirements. I planned the sprints, milestones, and retrospectives using Linear as our primary tool.
- I’m stepping back from Captain App with a full 6 months of consulting time in the backlog.
Glamox Group (Dart + Cloud Developer, Architect)
June 2023 – March 2024, Remote/Bristol, UK
Built a Bluetooth commissioning app and user app for a commercial lighting system, rolling out to the first 100 users.
- Built a Flutter app, which integrates with an existing lighting system using a secure BLE connection
- Utilized Google’s Firebase Auth, Firestore database as a NoSQL database (similar to AWS DynamoDB), and Cloud Functions for asynchronous code execution.
- Setting up CI/CD with Fastlane and Github Actions, and framework specific tools like Shorebird for side-loading security patches in Flutter apps.
- Built as a monorepo project with shared private packages.
- Worked with and managed a 3rd party designer to rebuild the UI to the client specifications.
- Launched to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store after navigating the respective compliance processes.
Uncommon Group (Full Stack Developer)
November 2022 – March 2023, Remote/Bristol, UK
Created an e-commerce website and admin dashboard using Next.js and other scalable technologies.
- Built using a Next.js website
- Sanity.io for CMS and Commerce Layer for payment API
- Built a serverless messaging system with AWS Lambda and SES
Lite IP (Full Stack Developer and Product Engineer)
October 2020 – June 2021, Remote/Bristol, UK
Created a low-energy IOT addon to an existing commercial lighting system, controlled by a custom app.
- Programmed microprocessors in C, which integrated onto existing lighting controls system
- Frontend app, initially developed in Unity, but redesigned for Apple in Swiftui. This communicates with the nodes via BLE to control various light scenes in commercial environments
- Backend admin dashboard built in react, with the addition of MQTT for remote logging and over the air updates
- Integration of the standard ESP32 onto the existing lighting drivers, which involved soldering, 3D printing, and product design
- Creation of an assembly procedure for the in-house manufacture of this product
- Physical tolerances and integration were a challenge, attaching the nodes to the existing system in a repeatable manner led to some simple and fun engineering problems. These nodes are installed at several offices around the UK, including PWC, and the app used by its employees
Education
I hold a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Bristol, with a thesis focusing on Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Kite-Powered Vessels. I also have a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, awarded with First Class Honours.
Technical Skills
- Languages: English (native), French (B1 [CEFR])
- Programming Languages: Dart, Typescript, Python
- Cloud Specialty: GCP Services (Firestore Database, Firebase Hosting, Cloud Endpoints and Functions, Cloud Secrets, Cloud Armour, Billing Limits and Management), AWS Serverless Services (Lambda, SES), Vercel
- Frameworks: Flutter, Next.js
- Dev Tools: Git, Vitest, Github Actions, ESLint, Jest, Pytest, Docker
Interests
When I'm not coding, you can find me exploring the great outdoors. My passions include alpine skiing, mountaineering, climbing, paragliding, kitesurfing, surfing, trail running, and craftsmanship in leatherwork.
Sporting Career
Throughout my childhood, I competed nationally and internationally in Windsurf Racing. This sport took me all around the world, and I met some incredible people along the way. I was fortunate enough to represent Great Britain at a number of World and European Championships, and I achieved 3rd in the 2014 European Championships and was British National Champion in 2015.
In 2018 I transitioned to the new discipline of Kitefoil racing and competed internationally for a few years, becoming national champion in 2019.