Simon H.

Working as part of an agile team using .NET Core to build APIs to handle complex business logic for a Lloyds of London insurance project. The project was to develop an online insurance system that allows brokers and underwriters to digitise various legal documents, discuss and make changes in real-time, and then distribute contracts for high-risk insurance agreements.

I was responsible for working with the business to identify, design and agree technical requirements in-line with the architectural vision and business requirements, implement API code in C#, write automated unit tests with NUnit and document all APIs in Jira and Confluence.

All team members peer reviewed each other’s work, followed a clearly defined build process in Jira, had stringent coding standards to adhere to, and also had to maintain at least 80% test code coverage whilst working to prevent any code smells (identified by Sonar Cloud).

The majority of deliverables followed a micro-service architecture, passing data to a containerised docker instance when running locally, or MongoDB Atlas for other environments. Services communicated via Azure Service Bus and were accessed via APIM with the aim of exposing specific endpoints to third parties in the future.

As an experienced developer on the project, I influenced technical decision making, promoting continual improvement of coding practices and architectural design choices.

It was my responsibility to oversee the development of various software packages used by the emergency services and local authority, varying from statistical analysis tools to Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems. The systems were primarily built as C# desktop applications with integrations exposed via custom SOAP APIs. To reduce installation errors and minimise down time, I built a custom WPF installer that automatically registers application components and downloads any required software packages (MSSQL for example).

A significant achievement was the design and development of a routing engine that calculates the fastest route to an incident (fire) based on current traffic flow, speed limits, one-way roads,

and vehicle limitations, finally generating turn-by-turn navigation instructions. To ensure that the algorithm could execute as quickly as possible, I overcame C# performance limitations by building a custom priority queue that uses a bit shift algorithm to rapidly sort items, ensuring that the highest-

priority item is always first in the queue.

Development of visualization software for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN. I developed software tools to provide an aesthetically pleasing way of analysing data captured during high-energy particle collisions, specifically for the Particle Flow team. All code was peer reviewed by senior

developers because performance and data accuracy were vital for the software to be usable. I had to follow strict coding guidelines and standards to ensure that all code produced was of the highest quality; the smallest miscalculation could have profound impact on the studies and theories being developed by the physicists.

As solution architect for the global ATS and HCM systems, it was my responsibility to provide technical guidance that enabled the business to transition from multiple local architectures to a single global architecture, in-line with the global business strategies (cloud based and mobile

first). Throughout the project I liaised with all levels of the business, providing technical architecture and design artifacts, or concise progress summaries depending on the stakeholder(s) involved. I also played a key part in educating the business and creating a positive experience throughout the entire lifespan of both projects because they were the first

applications launched as truly global applications within Ashfield.

It was my responsibility to manage the delivery of an order management system that is now used by one of the world’s leading suppliers of flu vaccines. Working to extremely challenging timelines and managing the complex requirements to accommodate data shared between our internal applications and client-managed applications, the project was not only successful in securing a contract worth over 3 million pounds to the UK business, but also positioned Ashfield as the obvious first choice partner for the flu-vaccination programme moving forward. The system was

built using Angular 6 (recently upgraded to 11) and C#.NET Core, leveraging a SQL database for storage. The SSO implementation was implemented through Azure and application hosting was on an EC2 instance in AWS.

Accountability for mentoring software developers within the UK. I helped to build a dynamic and highly motivated development team that enabled the business to adapt to the needs of a rapidly evolving market.

I also worked as part of a global initiative to establish an omnichannel capability within the business by leading the development of an internally developed solution. The goal was to improve the Business Intelligence capabilities by processing the various sources of customer data through a single application, whilst also improving our client offering, and reducing cost by decommissioning legacy solutions. The initial delivery phase included integration with our telephony platform to provide inbound and outbound call handling, click to chat, and detailed email analytics.

Before leaving the company I also formed a small team that is working to prove the business benefits of using AI and machine learning to reduce the overhead of back-office administration and help automate common tasks. The proof of concept (POC) was a chat bot that triages user intents to provide first-line support for common technical issues.