Web Biscuit

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Email: daniel@webbiscuit.co.uk
Website: www.webbiscuit.co.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-childs
GitHub: github.com/webbiscuit

Experience

Consulant Software Engineer - San Digital

July 2022 – Present

Principal Developer/Tech Lead - BJSS

October 2017 – July 2022

BJSS is an agile-centric software consultancy who have a number of high-profile clients. I work here as a software consultant and have led some of our software projects. I've been mostly developing, but also involved in bids, architecture, analysis and people management at all stages of projects – bidding, pre-sales, workshops, discovery and delivery. I've also been a line manager to help with our developer's professional development. I’ve been helping shape the Nottingham, Birmingham, Lisbon offices and graduate academies to build our future teams by conducting competency-based interviews and providing timely feedback to reduce the time to hire.

A lot of my consulting has been helping organisations realise their digital transformation journeys and move to the cloud (AWS/Azure) or optimising how it is used in the business.

Projects

Government Projects

  • Tech lead to create a new web frontend to enable government backed vehicle businesses to manage their accounts and bookings. Working to GDS guidelines. (Javascript/AWS).
  • Technical lead for high-profile government project to transform the driving test from a paper-based system to digital. Working to GDS guidelines, and the project won awards. (Ionic/Typescript/AWS)

Hack 24

  • Represented the company at Hack24 in a team of four, taking first prize in the Microsoft Azure category for creative use of cognitive services. Won an XBox.

Chatbots

Created an internal serverless chatbot framework and took this to a client to remove the burden from call centre agents. (AWS/Javascript/Python/AI)

Currency Exchange

Tech lead to transform a monolith into distributed microservices (C#/Service Fabric)

Finance

  • Data engineer and platform for big data processing (Python/PySpark/Azure)

  • Data engineer and platform for data processing (Python/Pandas/AWS)

Consulting

  • Advised a law company on the architecture of a patent renewal system

  • Advised a manufacturing company with their current software landscape and helped defined a future roadmap with actionable steps

Law

  • Tech lead building an online web portal to enable customers to view and renew their patent portfolio

Software Developer/Team Lead - Romax Technology/Romax InSight

January 2014 – September 2017

As tech lead at Romax InSight I oversaw and delivered the technical handover and knowledge share during an acquisition by Castrol.

I led a team of 3 developers and developed a wind turbine monitoring system which was used globally. This was written in Python with a front end in javascript. When I became tech lead I transitioned a legacy frontend to Angular and created an architecture to gradually break a monolith system into distributed microservices. I was able to reimagine the delivery process and bring in a more agile way of working, taking the product from a 6-9 monthly release cycle to a more responsive Kanban model and enabling a weekly release if the business required.

Achievements & Responsibilities

  • Promoted to software lead, managing a team to turn requirements from managers, end users and sales into cohesive software
  • Working with distributed team members and requirements from US and Korea
  • Onboarding customers and integrating their data streams into Romax systems and software
  • Ensuring software is reliable and delivered in a timely fashion
  • Architectural responsibilities of entire system, from database to servers to front end and supporting products
  • Embracing AWS services to improve scalability, data flow and deployment process
  • Overseeing and delivering technical handover and sharing software knowledge during company acquisition
  • Supporting hardware, consultancy and research departments with bespoke software and expertise as needed
  • Identifying and implementing new and relevant technologies and methodologies
    • Changing software philosophy to a microservice architecture with restful APIs
    • Migrating legacy code to JavaScript framework (Angular)
    • Moving source code system to GIT
    • Moving to a streamlined and responsive Kanban process
    • Improving documentation and knowledge transfer

Skills

  • Python for data processing and scripting
  • Django/Flask, Javascript, TypeScript, Angular on web frontend, supported with RxJS, webpack, nodejs
  • scikit-learn, scipy, numpy, pandas for server-side processing, machine learning and data manipulation
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS), including EC2, S3 and RDS
  • Postgres, sqlite
  • Mainly Linux based software (Centos, Fedora)
  • Architecture of microservices and REST APIs (design, implementation, consumption)
  • Software team management with Agile & Kanban
  • GIT, Jira, Confluence

Senior Software Developer - Nikon Metrology UK

February 2010 – December 2013

Nikon Metrology’s flagship software product is Camio, a CAD oriented package written primarily in C++. It drives industrial robotic arms and collects data using lasers and trigger touch probes. It is used to collect measurement data at a micro scale.
It is a large product used by industry leaders in the aerospace and automotive industry including Volkswagen AG, Jaguar and Boeing.
It is an extremely complex product containing millions of lines of code written over the last 20 years.

Achievements & Responsibilities

  • Upgrade and restructure of entire database (MSDE 2000 -> Sql Server)
  • Built templated ADO wrapper and cache layer for data access
  • Introduced Boost and unit testing
  • Redesigned multicolumn feature, involving complex multiprocess synchronisation between two or more robot arms
  • Producing installation documentation and support for on-site engineers using industrial secure and locked down systems
  • Writing standalone database administration tool
  • Worked across teams with staff in UK, US & Belgium
  • Fixed compatibility issues with new Windows versions and made the software 64-bit ready

Skills

  • C++, STL, MFC, Boost, COM, C#
  • SQL Server 2008 R2, T-SQL
  • Subversion, Jira

Software Developer (Junior-Senior) - DriveSentry Inc.

August 2005 – November 2009

DriveSentry was a personal data protection company whose main products were anti-virus, anti-rootkit and data encryption software.

DriveSentry was a startup company and I was one of the first employees. It was a great achievement to take a design and see it on the shelves in PC world and on a magazine cover disk.

Achievements & Responsibilities

  • Responsible for UI in C# and C++ for both generations of the product
  • Worked on rules library (allow deny rules for reads and writes)
  • Worked on advisor database, which stored and returned community information about the writing program
  • Managing traffic spikes when product appeared in PC World and cover of PC Pro
  • Early pioneers of whitelisting technology
  • Worked on database that handled tens of thousands of transactions per day

Skills

  • C++, STL, MFC, SOAP, XML
  • C#, SQL Server, IIS, SQL, XHTML, CSS
  • Perforce, Source Safe, Mantis

Junior Software Developer - Bitarts

December 2004 – July 2005

Bitarts was a software security firm, specialising in copy protection, DRM and anti-piracy software wrappers.

Achievements & Responsibilities

  • Created a new web frontend to administer online software activation

Skills

  • PHP 5, Apache, Oracle, C++, Perforce, Solaris, SQL

Earlier Programming Work

Small websites for companies. I wrote a couple of games using C++ and DirectX.

Self employment

I am running and selling a product online to help people create and visualise interactive stories or choose your own adventure games. This can be found at www.crumblyheadgames.co.uk.

I'm responsible for the entire design, coding, marketing, sales and customer satisfaction. I have learned a lot in this process, mostly about the commercial side of a business which I now appreciate a lot more. The next evolution of this product is to take it from the desktop to online.

The product uses the latest features of C++, MFC, Boost, GraphViz and Crypto++.

Education

Nottingham Trent University 2001-2003

BSC Computer Science (2:2)
Final Year Dissertation: Simulating Genetic Inheritance

West Nottinghamshire College 1999-2001

HND Computer Studies (MERIT)

The Manor Comprehensive School 1992-1999

Four A-Levels (Maths, Biology, Physics, General Studies)

Nine GCSEs