Lead Developer at Inkpath (2020-01 – Present)
Lead Developer for a SaaS Learning Management Platform serving higher education institutions across the UK, North America and Australia. Responsible for the ongoing development, architecture, infrastructure management and strategic direction of the platform whilst managing a distributed development team.
- Led the transition of software development and infrastructure management from an outsourced development partner to a fully in-house operation, establishing complete ownership of the codebase, development processes and cloud infrastructure.
- Manage and mentor a team of front-end and back-end developers, providing technical leadership, sprint planning, code reviews, workload prioritisation and ongoing professional development support.
- Act as the primary technical lead across the platform, making architectural decisions and ensuring the long-term scalability, maintainability and reliability of the application.
- Designed, developed and maintained core platform functionality using Laravel, PHP, Angular, Ionic, MySQL and MariaDB.
- Responsible for AWS infrastructure management, including application hosting, database administration, monitoring, deployment pipelines, security and scalability planning.
- Introduced and refined software development processes, testing procedures and release management workflows, improving delivery consistency and software quality.
- Collaborate directly with customers to gather requirements, define technical solutions and translate business objectives into deliverable product features.
- Delivered numerous bespoke integrations and client-specific enhancements for leading universities and educational institutions across multiple international markets.
- Built and maintained CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, streamlining deployment processes and reducing manual overhead.
- Led the delivery of strategic platform enhancements, infrastructure modernisation initiatives and ongoing technical debt reduction projects.
- Researched and implemented AI-powered solutions, including integrations with AWS Bedrock, to support future platform capabilities and innovation initiatives.
- Served as principal developer for significant periods of platform growth, taking ownership of major areas of the codebase and delivering core functionality that remains central to the product today.
Development Manager at Fluid Ads (2017-01 – 2020-12)
Managed a multidisciplinary team of front-end developers, back-end developers and UI/UX designers in the design, development and delivery of a SaaS HTML5 advertising platform.
- Led the development of an award-winning HTML5 advertising platform from concept through to production release.
- Managed and coordinated a team of developers and designers across multiple concurrent projects.
- Delivered solutions used by major clients including Johnson & Johnson and CommunicorpUK.
- Designed and developed supporting RESTful microservices to provide scalable integration points across the platform ecosystem.
- Introduced development standards, workflows and quality assurance processes that improved team productivity and accelerated release cycles.
- Implemented Agile and Scrum methodologies including sprint planning, estimation, prioritisation and progress tracking.
- Worked closely with stakeholders to define product requirements and align development activities with business objectives.
- Contributed hands-on to architecture design, development and technical problem solving.
Software Developer at Go Simple Software (2014-01 – 2017-12)
Full-stack developer responsible for modernising legacy applications and delivering new software solutions for business customers.
- Led the redevelopment of a legacy CodeIgniter-based accounting platform using Angular, significantly improving usability and maintainability.
- Optimised complex MySQL queries and application performance to enhance user experience and system responsiveness.
- Planned and developed a secure document-sharing portal used by hundreds of businesses to manage and distribute thousands of documents.
- Designed and delivered a Time and Attendance web application, expanding the organisation's software portfolio.
- Worked closely with customers and stakeholders to gather requirements and deliver practical software solutions.
IT Administrator / Developer at Vital Pet Products (2000-01 – 2014-12)
Combined software development and IT infrastructure responsibilities within a national distribution business.
- Developed internal administration and reporting systems using PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS, improving operational efficiency across multiple departments.
- Designed and developed the company's e-commerce and social platform serving over 2,000 pet retailers nationwide and supporting a catalogue of more than 19,000 products.
- Provided hardware, software and network support to over 400 employees across five UK depots.
