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

Amey Strategic Consulting

A major project to produce data science applications to improve the management of the Strategic Road Network

Data Science for Highways England

True 212

A natural language processing pipeline, including Named Entity Recognition, Part of Speech Tagging, Word Sense Disambiguation and Topic Modelling, to identify suitable external content to link to from news and culture blogs by matching on semantics rather than word frequencies.

Rapid Editorial Resource

Sopra Steria

Developing a platform to improve the efficiency of training and calibration of thresholds in HSBC's anti-money-laundering plaform

Snowflake

Rolls Royce

Creating a library to extract logically structured data from technical documents in a variety of formats, mainly scanned PDFs

Rolls Royce AI Hub

GHFP Research Institute

An interactive map of the Better Place Index (a metric of quality of life), allowing users to explore how quality of life varies from country to country and what the main contributing factors are.

The Better Place Index

Data science consultancy, Research and Development

Tech Lead, Full Stack Engineer

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

HEC Service

hecservice.org

http://reliancestaffing.net/

RelianceStaffing.net

Data2AI

Data2ai.org

Software development, software engineering, algorithm development and mathematical modelling.

Software Developent

HMRC-CIP/Equal Experts

Working on secure/compliant real-time data ingestion and warehousing for a petabyte scale analytics platform. Based on AWS using s3/hudi, Scala/Spark, Apache Kafka, Scala/Python/Jupyter Notebooks, and for infrastructure Terraform, Packer, Docker (Linux and bash).

Data Pipelines Engineer

Elsewhen/Finecast

Building an AI assisted TV advertising distributions system. Working as part of a small ML team of Data Scientists prototyping then productionising a model (Tensor Flow) that can optimally match slots during ad-breaks with advertisments based on a number of factors. Hosted in GCP (Cloud Run, Cloud Tasks, Vertex AI, Big Query), data pipelines using a custom Python app (housed in Docker containers linked via Cloud Tasks) and the infrastructure auchestrated via Terraform.

MLOps Engineer

Allplants

Assisting the team to improve a skeleton implementation and grow a data engineering team.

Allplants Data Warehouse

John Lewis

Part of a team developing an in-house recommendations service, to replace 3rd parties. Provided infrastructure and CI/CD tools to improve observability, automation, and more efficient data pipelines. Working closely with Data Science and Software Engineering teams to train, assess, deploy and monitor ML models for the John Lewis website.

John Lewis Reccomendations

Awaze

design and build for a new data-warehouse, consolidating and harmonising data from across many subsidiary businesses across europe. Coaching internal team on data-engineering practices and DataOps. Using Python (DBT, Jinja), Terraform, Snowflake, Matillion, Airflow, Liquibase, SQL, AWS (CloudWatch, EC2, EBS, Lambda, SQS, IAM, Networking etc…), SodaSQL.

Awaze Data Warehouse

data engineering, ML Ops, DevOps, software engineering

Natwest / RBS

Worked in the mPlatform Development team responsible for building and running the middle tier services that provide functionality and connectivity into the core banking systems within the RBS Group. 
Built Java micro-services utilising the Vertx Framework and deployed across AWS Infrastructure using Terraform. Developed the back-end services for the Personal and Business Banking mobile applications across the RBS retail brands representing daily volumes of between 5-7 million logins per day and peak loads of 12-15k logins per minute. 


Java Developer

Elwood Technologies

Elwood Technologies is a fast-growing, London-based fintech, building digital assets trading infrastructure for institutional investors. Its seamless end-to-end platform connects to global crypto exchanges, custodians, and liquidity providers, via a single Application Programming Interface (API). 
Built market connectors for various exchange (Coinbase, Okex and Tagomi) and internal monitoring (audit and risk management). Elwood platform is mainly in GoLang with Python and SQL. 
-	Primarily responsible for trade support in crypto products covering Spot, Futures, Perpetual Swaps, Options and Loans.
-	Configuration of Client funds and books and account set-up, including compliance rules.
-	Maintain the reference data around new exchange product setup and commission schedules.
-	Building risk reports for clients and internal use.
-	Assist in gathering and/or reviewing client's process requirements and assisting on architect design decisions with the rest of the team.
-	Operating and analysing continuous monitoring tools in performing ongoing monitoring tools of Elwood infrastructure.


Backend Engineer

Haruko

Haruko is an easy-to-use platform that gives institutional investors the levels of insights, control, and compliance they demand when trading digital assets. 
Primarily responsible for building API & real-time frameworks for coalescing connectivity across exchanges. 
-	Responsible for building the internal development framework on which the system was built.
-	Built WebSocket integrations and live price sourcing on both DeFi & CeFi.
-	Reverse engineering defi & crypto protocols and building institutional views on the most popular DeFi protocols (Aave, Curve, Uniwap, Solana & Serum etc).  


Senior Java Developer

The BBC Accounts team are responsible for the day-to-day management of online users including the most common workflows (sign in/ password recovery and access across devices). These services are responsible for millions of requests per day.

My function was to rebuild the backend around user password management as well as move to a new in house user token management system. These were mostly typescript / java micro services hosted in AWS.

Lead cross-functional teams across front-end, backend and QA/Security teams as well as extensive input into overall system architecture. 

Java & Go Development, Backend Engineer

FullStack Development

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

Expert, freelance Python engineers