MARCOL

VMware Platform Rollout
- Migrating from Citrix XenServer over to VMware vSphere, Dell R630s
- Upgrading from Windows 2008/2012 to 2012R2 and 2016
- Migrating from 1Gbps to 10Gbps LAN and SAN switching, various switching vendors and configurations
- Migrating to VMFS shared storage; 5x shelves Dell PS6210 and PS6210x storage
- Migrating from physically disperse networking environments to logically truncated networks; for ease of centralised management and administration
- Active Directory Cleanup
- Exchange Server Upgrade 2007 to 2010

Infrastructure and Virtualisation Consultant

Federation of Small Businesses

DFS Migration Programme; replicating network shares between sites. Delivering Shadow-Copies for daily restoration points, developed some DFS-R PS scripted reporting.

Implemented several PowerShell Active Directory Audit reports; and Exchange Configuration and Health reports - running monthly. Providing management with an overview stance of both estates.

Network assessment and implementation of VMware Virtual Distributed Switching (vDS); working side by side with Cisco Catalyst switching stack adjustments and Cisco ASA re-configurations with multiple data-centres. 

Aided the project assessment and technical delivery of several Windows Server 2003 OS Migrations, upgrades and complete migrations.

Assisted with the project technical delivery of a Mitel Virtual Phone System; incorporating 200 handsets, spanning several office locations. Majority of the work involved AD Scripting, automating software installs with Group Policies, network switch re-configuration work, VLAN and DHCP setup and general assistance of provisioning the new users. Delivering Firewall and NAT rules for smooth transition to a wide variety of Mitel products; including a Dialler, Call Centre management suite, Collaboration tools and Campaign tools.

Infrastructure Consultant

Frontline Consultancy & Business Services

VMware ESX configuration corrections, host migration, Veeam backup and replication to remote VSA. Backup Exec taking staged jobs to tape; performance optimise tape library. Planned future migration to off-site collection.

Assessment and planning of 802.11 wireless access points; including supporting network VLANS and delivery of PKI certificate services for machine based authentication.

Planned and delivered Symantec Enterprise Vault for MS Exchange. Automated mailbox provisioning and archival, performed PST imports automatically; exchange server upgrade (2010>2013). configured AutoDiscover/OAB/ClientConnectivity rules. Blackberry Server database migration, BES service migration too. Finished mailbox moves, public folder migrations. Old host decommissioning.

WSUS powershell scripting. Working in a dev environment I built automation scripts to deliver a 'roll up' gap for having 9+months of no WSUS services. To perform staged migrations from unmatched to patched, delivering 1x months of updates at a time. Planned to be utilised by several customers in future.

LANSA powershell automated update rollout. Automated the delivery of updated LANSA DLLs, from a staging area to a series of UNC paths. Automated the termination of active running processes for those paths; automated log off of RDS services and handled logging and reporting.

Virtualisation Specialist

Tackling Domain Controller failures making use of dcdiag, ntdsutil, ntfrsutil and repladm detect and correct some fundamental design flaws. This is still work in progress.

Tweaking Active Directory Sites and Services, improving replication, redundancy and overall improving logon and authentication.

Re-designing DNS resolution both internally and externally, improving both performance and security. Linking subnet design with sites/services along with DNS reverse lookup zones.

Migration of email filtering products from Google Postini,EMF and MimeSweeper over to a vastly improved MimeCast cloud service offering. Everything from design, implementation and a very custom configuration has been done. Go-live went very smooth; I also hosted several internal training sessions. I learnt a lot during this; and would love to work with MimeCast again some day.

Broken up the Group Policy Objects into a structured design; re-introduced all of them over the course of 3 months.
-- Power Management (predicted 40% power savings during a typical month)
-- Network Access Control (vastly filter what can be accessed via the TCP/IP layer - firewall, dcom filtering, wmi control, rdp lockdown and much more)
-- Device Access Control (lock device classes; permit individual device IDs - via AD control groups)
-- Internet Explorer (financial industry governance enforcement for browser controls)
-- MS Office/Java/Hydra/Nice Policies (applied application specific customisations)
-- Windows Policies (provide performance enhancements and remove unnecessary services)
-- Company Policy (login script improvements, scripts -> CSE)


AD Automation from HR DB; Powershell Scripting; new OU structure, automated accounts and mailboxes. 

Designed "Role Profiles" for Active Directory; migrated 4x teams as proof of concept, slowly migrated users groups over. This provides a platform for future development of the AD environment.

Senior Platforms Specialist

Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure Specialist, Virtualisation SME, Network and Storage Engineer

Java Services

.NET Developer

The Modern .NET Core Show

I produce, record, and host two podcasts (and co-host a third) covering several topics. This requires me to plan topics, schedule time to record them, arrange for interviews and guests, and produce and maintain several web applications for them.

The .NET Core podcast (https://dotnetcore.show) covers a wide range of topics related to the "core" technologies, interview prominent community members and reached an engaged audience in the tens of thousands - see https://dotnetcore.show/press-kit/ for the latest audience statistics.

Tabs & Spaces is a podcast which presents a "pub chat"-like conversation. The three hosts (Zac Braddy, James Studdart, and myself) talk about the aspects of software development that aren't as technology-specific. Previous topics have been: interviewing, office politics, the lies that we tell to ourselves and others, whether you should learn the latest technologies, etc.

The Waffling Taylors podcast is a podcast about video gaming, the industry around it, and some of the developers who are changing how we experience video games (and related entertainment) daily. It has been a long-held belief for mine that video game development can be one of the most challenging arenas for developers to work in, and my interviews for this show prove it as they get to the details of what it is like to be a games developer in the 21st century.

Producer and Host

Williams F1

I was engaged by Williams Racing to work solo on a project which had encountered a number of serious challenges in relation to both code quality and release cadence. The code base for this project was first written almost half a decade prior to my working on it, and had no test coverage; this meant that the long change history was done with almost no assurance that changes wouldn't cause regressions or failures in other areas.

At the start of my time working alongside Williams Racing, I was tasked with getting to grips with the code base - one that very few engineers in the business knew much about. I spent some time documenting how the code worked, adding integration tests for known good inputs and expected outputs, and adding metrics and logging to the project. The metrics and logging were almost as important as the tests and documentation, as there was almost no visibility into which areas of the code base were being used.

"Code which isn't exercised should be exorcised." - Chris Zimmerman of Sucker Punch.

.NET Development Expert

Servita

I was engaged by Servita to augment their existing team on a project which had encountered a number of serious challenges in relation to both code-quality and release cadence. The code base for this project was purchased from a previous supplier, and required reviewing and getting into a running state before any other work could be completed.

At the start of my time working alongside Servita on this project, the code base was not in a running state, and I was the only engineer on the project. I was required to get to grips with a large, complex code base (around 50,000 lines), provide a review of the quality, and get it in a running state within days - which I achieved.

After getting the code base in a running state, my aim was to build a stable DevOps pipeline for the project. This would allow for greatly increase velocity for delivering new features as they were added.

I was also tasked with double-checking the quality of the code that other engineers were providing. This required careful, considerate communication with the other engineers, providing constructive feedback as I went.

Consultant

Packt publishing

I was one of the technical reviewers for Modern Distributed Tracing in .NET, a book which focusses on Open Telemetry and modern .NET, published by Packt.

My work as a technical reviewer has required me to read through chapters of each book and provide feedback on:

- Clarity of the topic being discussed
- Correctness of code samples
- Correctness of technical points raised
- What the reader will learn
- Whether there are points which are not covered in the text

This is a demanding, yet very rewarding position to be in. It requires my communications skills to be at their best, and for me to focus on the correctness and clarity of the technical content.

Although there was one other technical reviewer, I was in charge of reviewing the content in chapters 7 through to 15 - the second half of the book.

Technical Reviewership

I was one of the technical reviewers for the book "Event-driven Microservices Architecture in .NET 7", published by Packt.

My work as a technical reviewer has required me to read through chapters of each book and provide feedback on:

- Clarity of the topic being discussed
- Correctness of code samples
- Correctness of technical points raised
- What the reader will learn
- Whether there are points which are not covered in the text

This is a demanding, yet very rewarding position to be in. It requires my communications skills to be at their best, and for me to focus on the correctness and clarity of the technical content.

Although there was one other technical reviewer, I was in charge of reviewing the content in chapters 5 through to 13 - the majority of the middle of the book.

Odondo

I was engaged by Odondo to join a small team of contractors whose focus was on building onto and maintaining an agency-built Python and React-based application suite.

The application suite required some new features to be added before an in-house team could take over its development and maintenance. This required me to build out several new Web API features (using Python), work with Postgres databases, and build out React-based components (using Atomic design patterns).

The additions to and maintainance of the code base that I worked on where built entirely using Domain-driven Design (requiring a deep understanding on the domain problem that each feature would solve), and Test-driven Development. This ensured that the features I shipped could be relied upon when it was released into the wild.

Logtrade

LogTrade engaged my services to aid in building and maintaining their Internet of Logistics project as I have a proven background in shipping .NET-based solutions and my ability to quickly get a detailed understanding of a project.

I was tasked with the following goals:

- Replace an inefficiently implemented API test framework, written in Python using Robot Framework
- Build an MVP product which would allow their IoL system to create and manage smart contracts, using the latest in .NET technologies
 -Implement an entirely new React application which would be added to an existing suite of React applications

I also consulted on the start of a project which would use GraphQL to allow their clients and customers to utilise their APIs with much more ease. During my time working alongside LogTrade, it was decided that the GraphQL project would be temporarily shelved.

Disruptive Global Logistics Project

SAGE

SAGE Publishing engaged me on a contract to build an MVP for a data-mining application for their entire corpus of published literature.

The project consisted of working alongside a React developer and a data scientist to build a WebAPI project (using .NET Core 3.0). This Web API was hosted within a multi-application docker compose based application network with both the React application and a Python execution engine.

Working with the React developer, we created a system which allowed the user to drag and drop components which represented data science operations to build up a script to run on a sub-set of the SAGE Publising literary corpora.

Disruptive Social Sciences Project

Full stack development in a range of technologies

Tech Lead, Full Stack Engineer

Frontend Development in Next.js or Backend in mostly C++ or Python

Team Leadership/Management, Software development for APIs, Databases and Data warehouse management, scripting, Business Intelligence reporting, infrastructure automation, real-time data pipelines

Popsa

Reduced operating costs by ~30%.
Increase product confidence with new processes and automation.
Implement continuous delivery.
Improve service performance and stability. 
Enhance monitoring and implement new logging infrastructure.
Onboard and train new team members.
Automate infrastructure using Terraform.
Report directly to stakeholders.
Guide business decisions around development and process.
Train and manage new joiners.

Software Consultant

Vidsy

Develop new microservices.
Migrate REST API to GraphQL and gRPC.
Improve performance and stability
Automate infrastructure using Terraform.
Operate with company leadership to advise and report.

Jack Morton Worldwide

Design CMS for interactive installation.
Build React components for design system.
Automated testing, packaging and deployment.
Bundle React applications into electron desktop apps.

Application Developer

IPG DXTRA

Built React website.
Automated static deployments triggered by headless CMS.
Implemented interactive video elements.

Landing page for new global brand

REMX

Designed and built highly available golang microservice architecture.
Develop custom audio engine in c++ and Swift.
Built design system for web and mobile.
Built React Native mobile applications.
Automate deployment to kubernetes.
Automate testing and application packaging.

REMX Music Maker App

Built interactive react app for physical installion into retail stores.
Package app into electron for desktop distribution.
Support remote configuration.
Implemented interactive animations.

In-store interactive app

Lloyds Direct

Convert existing design system into React components.
Assist with integration with graphql API.
Assist with golang backend microservice build.
Create re-usable animation components.

Soopers Books

Built market unique mobile and tablet reading experience.
● Developed unique read-along feature.
● Developed audio book systems.
● Integrated with 3rd party APIs.
● Advise on technology and architecture decisions.
● Implement and advise on app UX.
● Deploy to Amazon, Google and Apple app stores.
● Implement in app payments and monetization of mobile app.

Childrens audio book app

Orbzii

Assisted in team hiring and interview process.
● Designed cloud infrastructure.
● Built market leading travel agent mobile app.
● Implemented design system.
● Implemented development and project processes.
● Implemented CI/CD.
● Designed and built GraphQL interface in Laravel application.
● Implemented Firebase services for auth, analytics, performance,
crashlytics and remote config.
● Implemented payment systems by integrating with Stripe.
● Designed and built recommendation and personalization using ML.

GoLang, Microservices, gRPC,Software Architecture, Software Engineering, Automation, DevOps, React.js, React Native

TeleportHQ

Teleport HQ is a startup building a collaborative low-code platform

• Set up and maintaining Kubernetes clusters in Google Cloud Platform
• Implement distributed, real-time features on backend with Node.js
• Set up CI/CD pipelines
• Carried out research and developed PoCs

Back End Developer

Evozon

Developed a software solution for a client in the banking sector that needed a goods evaluation platform for the process of offering loans.

• Did performance and optimization work on various web apps
• Set up CI/CD pipelines

Web developer

DevOps, Cloud, Infrastructure

Fiinu Limited

As a Senior DevOps and Cloud Engineer at a pioneering fintech start-up bank, I functioned as a self-employed consultant, joining the company during its mobilisation phase to construct the production environment. I successfully created a multi-tier cloud environment leveraging Account Factory and Landing Zones, laying the foundation for the company's unique fintech solutions. I built a robust infrastructure to support the mobile app, utilising AWS, Terraform, and Jenkins to fully automate processes, resulting in improved operational efficiency and scalability.

Expert, freelance Kubernetes engineers