Full Stack Software Developer

About Me

Highly skilled developer with expertise in the development and deployment of Java / Spring Boot microservices and ReactJS web applications. I’m looking to leverage my knowledge to contribute to innovative and challenging projects, providing technical leadership and excellence. I have a proven ability to deliver well-structured, maintainable and efficient code whilst mentoring others to do likewise. In addition, my wide-ranging experience of AWS and containerisation ensures the delivery of resilient, highly scalable solutions.

Core Skills

Backend Java 17, Spring Boot, Hibernate / JPA, NodeJS, RDBMS, Kafka, Microservices	Databases Oracle, MySql, Postgres, Mongo, Elastic Search	Data Analysis Python, Jupyter Notebooks, Numpy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn
Frontend Javascript, React, HTML, CSS, Jest, Mocha, NPM	Cloud AWS (ECS, SQS, S3, Lambda, VPC...), Terraform	Build / Deployment CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CodePipeline
Source Control Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket	Process Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Jira

Personal Projects

The Finance Toolkit

https://www.thefinancetoolkit.co.uk

In an effort to hone my frontend development skills, which had become rusty after several backend-focused roles, I developed “The Finance Toolkit.” This project was inspired by my prior experience using take-home pay calculators to compare contract day rates and presented an excellent opportunity o tackle a comprehensive challenge. The website is built using the ViteJS framework, leveraging React and TypeScript for robust functionality, and Material UI for a polished user interface.

To ensure the integrity of the calculation logic and to introduce an additional technical challenge, the site incorporates a NodeJS AWS Lambda function, fronted by an API Gateway, for performing all calculations. The deployment process is streamlined using AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), and the website itself is securely hosted in an S3 bucket, utilizing CloudFront as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for optimal performance and global accessibility.

ViteJS, ReactJS, Typescript, NPM Workspaces, AWS - Lambda, API Gateway, Cloudfront, SAM

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Experience

Twinstream Limited

Software Developer (Contract)

November 2024 - April 2025

https://www.twinstream.com

Provided Java microservice expertise within an agile feature development team responsible for building and extending cross-domain technology components for use in security critical environments. Work included:

Adapting legacy applications to handle high-volume data by focusing on rate limiting, observability, performance and flow prioritization.
Improving the exceptional release process to allow data flows to proceed after passing required checks & user approvals
Integration with the end customers ticketing and workflow management system.
Upgrading Java microservices to Java 21 and Spring Boot 3
Writing Integration & end-to-end application tests

Java 21, Spring Boot, Kubernetes (RH OpenShift, EKS), AWS, RDBMs (Postgres, Oracle), Terraform, Bitbucket

Edenred PayTech

Software Developer (Contract)

November 2022 - Present

https://paytech.edenred.com/

Joined a new scrum team and played an integral role in building and architecting a new microservice compliance solution for PayTech’s payment systems. This solution enabled real-time fraud and money laundering detection, required to meet their compliance obligations.

Implemented a high performance low latency message driven data transformation / adapter services
Collaborated with external partners to design external facing data collection Rest API
Integrated the Featurespace ARIC events API
Worked closely with platform engineers to configure build pipelines using Maven and AWS CodePipeline
Mentored Junior developers

Java 17, Spring Boot, Docker, AWS (ECS, SQS, S3), Postgres, Terraform, Jenkins, Bitbucket

GoDaddy

Software Developer (Contract)

April 2022 - October 2022

godaddy.com

Joined an existing fully remote scrum team developing new microservice APIs for handling customer baskets in an existing e-commerce web application.

Led on the development of the basket migration feature - enabling seamless migration of customer data from the live legacy system
Introduced Junit 5 features improving maintainability of unit tests whilst improving test coverage
Mentored junior team members through code reviews and pairing sessions
Worked closely with QA engineers to triage bugs

Java 11, Spring Boot, MySQL, Docker, AWS (ECS, Secrets Manager), NodeJS, Jenkins, K8s, Github

Elsevier

Software Engineering Lead (Permanent)

January 2021 - April 2022

elsevier.com

Led a new fully remote, scrum team composed of permanent staff and offshore contractors, building from the ground up, an event driven microservice framework and UIs for curating data and supporting ML data pipelines.

Worked closely with product owners and architects on the overall design of the framework, ensuring a robust application and enabling future reuse across the business.
Designed and oversaw the development of micro-frontend UIs for actioning data curation tasks.
Designed and co-developed a new CI/CD pipeline ensuring deployed code was fully tested and exceeded required quality standards - integrating with tools such as SonarQube and Contrast
Mentored junior team members through code reviews ensuring that the application code, business logic and tests were to the highest standards.

Java 11, Spring Boot, React, Kafka, RDS / Postgres, Docker, AWS (EKS, S3, CloudFront, WAF), Jenkins, Spinnaker, Cypress

Blackcat Technology Solutions

Application Architect (Permanent)

November 2013 - January 2021

(LinkedIn Profile)

Blackcat was an agile software development consultancy, serving both large and small organisations, providing expert software delivery teams producing cutting edge custom technology solutions. I was involved in numerous and varied projects.

Blackcat ceased trading January 2021.

Project - Elsevier - Open Access (4 months)

I joined an existing scrum team on a long running project involving the development of several key public facing web applications. I worked on the development of new application features including updating the existing UI flows, replacing legacy code and integration involving Elsevier’s internal payment and invoicing systems. I worked closely with product owners and technical leads to drive improvements to customer user journeys and expand available payment options driving an increase in market share in the Chinese market. I left the project as Blackcat ended its operations, and was immediately hired in a permanent tech lead role in another division of the business.

Java 11, Spring Boot, ReactJs, Bootstrap, AWS Cloud Formation, Postgres, Jenkins, Serenity

Project - Proagrica MDM (8 months)

Myself and a small team of Blackcat consultants started a greenfield project tasked with designing a taxonomy and data lake for storing CRM and product catalogue data. I was primarily involved in the UX design and development of a new single page web application for identifying and maintaining links between similar customer products. I was also responsible for developing REST APIs providing the application data layer for the data lake. This project provided a strong foundation for future data lake backed services providing potentially transformational new business capabilities.

ReactJs, Material UI, Java 11, Spring Boot, K8s, AWS, Jenkins

Project - Elsevier PPE (18 months)

I was the technical lead of a large scrum team assigned with the task of developing a UI and associated services for compiling articles into journals - the first part of a programme of work to modernise the systems involved in journal production. The solution introduced a new microservice architecture and a new React based single page web application. Deployment was via a new continuous delivery pipeline - a first for Elsevier. I worked closely with the product owner and solution architect to lead the design of the technical solution. The foundational work we produced for this project has provided the foundation for several further projects, and has significantly reduced the burden of journal issue compilation for journal managers, reducing time to publication and providing significant cost savings for Elsevier.

Java 11, Spring Boot, ReactJs, Redux, Pact, K8s, MongoDB, Serenity

Project - Informed 360 (6 months)

I was a member of a small scrum team delivering an innovative compliance web application product for a small startup. I was involved in developing new functionality for user stories, optimisation of AWS deployment infrastructure and development of the CI/CD pipeline.

Java 8, Spring Boot, ReactJs, Redux, Terraform, Docker, AWS

Project - Deb Group (9 months)

I was taken on to support a lone internal developer in completing, improving and productionising an Internet-Of-Things Spring Boot backed dashboard web application. My work included web application development - implementing dashboard widgets & charting, the dockerization & deployment of the application in the cloud and also the development of a CI pipeline

Java 8, Spring Boot, Backbone JS, D3.js, Docker, AWS

Project - Thomson Reuters - Regulatory Intelligence (2 years, 10 months)

Initially Joined a scrum team working to add new features to a single page web application written in Java and Dojo UI.

Became Scrum Master / Tech Lead a Team working on XSLT document transformations.
Designed and Implemented a solution for on-the-fly pagination of large XML documents.
Designed and built a test data generation framework

Java 8, Spring, XML, XSLT, Dojo, Gatling / Scala, Dojo, ELK stack

SCISYS UK

Senior Applications Developer

February 2008 – November 2013

Working within the environment division, I was involved in the development of several large projects including the IBM Beacon Award finalist ‘Inferis’ application for the Coal Authority. Inferis was a large integrated JEE web application providing public facing forms and services for logging orders for mining reports and permits, back office workflow driven processes for producing reports, managing assets and spatial data.

Java 6, JEE 5, EJB 3.0, JAX-WS, JAX-B, JSF, IBM Websphere AS / Process Server, Jasper Reports, Spring

Andrew Network Solutions

Java Developer

January 2005 – February 2008

I worked my way up from a Junior Developer within a few months of starting at Andrew, and made a name for myself as a hardworking, knowledgeable and dependable member of the development team. XSP (eXtensible Solutions Platform) was a highly modular, customisable, performance optimised form based web application platform.

Java, J2EE, JSP, Tomcat, SQL, Oracle, GIS / MapInfo

Cintra UK Ltd

Development Consultant

January 2005 – October 2005

Java, J2EE, JSP, Servlets Tomcat, SQL

South Oxfordshire DC

ICT Development Officer

June 2003 – December 2004

Java, HTML, CSS, Javascript

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Qualifications

Professional Scrum Master PSM I

October 2016

University of Leeds

2:1 BSc Hons Computer Science

1999 – 2002

Woodford Lodge Sixth Form

A Levels - Physics (A), Mathematics (B), General Studies (B), Fine Art (C)

1997 – 1999

Woodford Lodge High School

GCSEs - 4A*s (Double Award Science, Art, Design and Technology), 3A's (Maths, French, Geography), 2B's (English Language and Literature

1995 – 1997

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Hobbies and Interests

Music Lover: Passionate about playing guitar, classic rock and bands like Foo Fighters and Oasis.
Formula 1 Follower: fascinated by the technical aspects and strategic decision-making in F1 races.
DIY Enthusiast: Always up for a challenge, tackling projects around the house and honing my problem-solving skills.
Lifelong Learner: Currently exploring Machine Learning & AI through online courses.
Improving Runner: Recently completed my first 10k (almost hitting my 1-hour goal!), now training for a half marathon.

LinkedIn Recommendations

Maksym Shamanov

Scrum teammate At GoDaddy

October 19, 2022

Worked with David in one team at GoDaddy. It was a great experience for me to work with so experienced and knowledgeable colleague who always open to share his knowledge and ready to help.

Michal Pochowski

Scrum Team Lead At GoDaddy

October 6, 2022

David had worked for Catalog team at GoDaddy over the last 6 months. He proven that he is highly skilled and experienced developer, that every manager would like to have in their team. His approach to the task given was always professional and reliable. David was also sharing his knowledge with the other team members, contributing to better code quality and suggesting alternative technologies. I definitely recommend David, I have nothing but positive thoughts about my cooperation with David at GoDaddy.

Andy White

Tech Lead at Blackcat / Elsevier

March 15, 2019

David and I worked very closely together in a development team for Elsevier (a client of BlackCat). He is a very knowledgeable and technically superb java developer and architect. Not only that but his gentle unassuming character means that he is very easy to work and get along with. The combination of his knowledge and character mean that he is an excellent leader who is worth listening to and being guided by. I thoroughly enjoyed working with him and don’t hesitate to recommend him.

Conor O'Neill

Architect at Andrew Network Solutions

February 12, 2008

Dave is an extremely capable developer, with a great grasp of technology and a deep understanding of how to implement solutions for real-world problems. A valued member of any team, willing to contribute actively in design meetings, and he can also be relied upon to work well alone if needed. I would certainly recommend Dave’s work.

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David Young