I am a senior agile full-stack developer, with 25 years of experience as a Senior Developer, Architect, Project Manager, Scrum Master, and Consultant. I am highly adaptable to meet the needs of the business as requirements change and evolve.
I have consulted for a number of global brands such as LEGO, Pottermore (Harry Potter) and Burberry, and also with smaller companies both in their start-up and expansion phases.
I take a broad view of development and beyond, with a keen insight into what’s required to get started and keep working, while managing dependencies and risk between streams of work. I focus on delivering a working and maintainable system to the customer, not just the software.
I have extensive experience in Java and Groovy with Spring on the back end, and React and other front-end frameworks. I am able to work across a range of systems and technologies.
I am an expert in Agile techniques, especially Extreme Programming within Scrum, particularly where it comes to the team rather than the individual. I believe strongly in being a hands-on developer and leading a team from the front. I’m a fan of pair programming, for both learning and quality.
I have always been client facing, dealing with both business and technical contacts. I have run courses for internal teams and external clients.
I am available now and looking for senior developer or team lead roles, and either contract or permanent opportunities.
I live in Brighton, within easy reach of London. I am happy working remotely.
Senior developer, agile, Java and SpringBoot, and React.
FundingXchange are a fintech startup matching funding providers to SMEs. They have a Java-based monolith implementation, and had started building microservices and a React front end. I provided expertise, training and guidance React development and acted as a senior developer, guiding on technology and agile process.
In their monolith, I pioneered a greater level of testing, where it had previously been seen as “too hard to test”. I introduced Power Mockito tests to break their monolith into testable components, and mentored the team on best practices.
We exposed APIs from the monolith, allowing functionality to be reused by their SpringBoot microservices. I then used these in developing the React front end for the mobile version of their main customer journey.
I implemented New Relic to ensure the services were fully monitored and observable. This quickly paid back allowing us to rapidly detect and fix production issues.
Senior developer, agile, Groovy and SpringBoot, training, scrum master.
Brought in to fulfil a need for an experienced agile developer, I worked on a high-frequency transactional platform driving multiple front ends. I principally worked on the back end, built on Spring Boot’s, including Spring Cloud. The development was in the Java-based Groovy language on top of SpringBoot, MySQL, REST. We built for a varied set of microservice consumers, with performance, caching and stability key concerns across HTTP, internal caches, database usage, and consuming third-party REST and WebSocket services.
I also worked on the AngularJS and Angular front ends, introducing to pair programming and TDD into the development process.
I had to rapidly embed myself with the existing team. The system grew quickly in load and features, requiring fast development and delivery, and a changing design for rapid growth.
I promoted a stronger TDD-based development approach, and created tools to ease system testing which supported this, which also recovered lost requirements.
The company pivoted, moving development offshore to Kiev. I took on the additional roles of Scrum Master and “Knowledge Transfer Manager”, in charge of bringing the Ukrainian team on board. I trained them in the business area, the technical stack and architecture, Scrum and agile process, and developments skills often through pair programming. I gave tutorials on areas such as Groovy and Spock, Scrum, British English language and humour, and the rules of cricket. I also created training documentation and system documentation, and managed the training plan and visits.
1st Project: Defining and implementing non-functional requirements for an existing project, and passing on to support team. I created the security model. Technologies: Java, Hibernate and Spring Boot, REST microservices. I also updated the build & deploy process: Groovy and Jenkins Pipelines.
2nd Project: A client on a tight deadline had failed to enter integration testing. I was technical representative on a SWAT team for process and strategy to bring the project back on track. New targets were set, the process defined, and trackable deliverables defined.
3rd Project: Implementing Oracle’s Endeca Experience Manager onto a client’s existing Endeca and Oracle Commerce/ATG implementation. Introduced BackstopJS testing to ensure no visible front-end regressions. Implementation was Java and JavaScript.
This was a hands-on development role, building the infrastructure and import mechanisms to load a variety of Harry Potter related data into Google’s BigQuery engine. We created a repeatable build & deploy system for BigQuery, with a TDD framework for loading and stored queries. The tooling was Groovy on Heroku. I worked with the knowledge-holders to define requirements and understand the data.
This was my second engagement as architect with LEGO’s on-line store, a flagship site supporting heavy traffic for a global audience. The role implemented LEGO’s first microservice architecture.
Starting as a consultancy role to specify LEGO’s strategic move to a microservices, I took part in workshops defining their global microservice architecture. We defined the company’s requirements for an API Gateway, deployment and rollout planning, and how standards could be achieved across varied systems. LEGO’s on-line shop was chosen as their initial project, and I pioneered that project.
With the role of Solution Architect, I specified a new implementation of their new system. The microservice back end was implemented in Java & Spring on top of an existing Oracle Commerce (aka ATG) store. The REST endpoints were exposed using an Apigee API gateway. The front end was isomorphic React hosted on AWS ElasticBeanstalk. OAuth2.0 secured the system at the API gateway, with traditional Java servlet session management to ATG behind. Both front end and APIs were heavily cached in Akamai. There were integrations to 40+ other systems. I worked to ensure a workable deliverable from a third-party designing a new look & feel.
As well as the design, technical direction and liaison, I worked defining work streams and deliverables. In specific areas, I also built test harnesses to enable TDD development with Akamai caching, Apigee API Gateway, Adobe Test & Target and analytics. With a rollout of so many new systems, I designed a staged go-live to ensure stability and continuity. The project was successfully delivered against the hard deadline of LEGO’s peak period.
The new site was built to run in parallel with the existing implementation, a site I had been architect for previously, and which had won Oracle ATG’s Implementation of the Year.
Part of a team initially brought on board to improve stability, I worked on integrating a new payment provider and handle requirements for Chinese ecommerce rollout. Built in Java on an existing Oracle Commerce/ATG system including CSC.
Particularly successful, I created a testing framework that allowed testing of the asynchronous queued fulfilment and payment modules; this allowed us to recreate the lost requirements through tests, and to ensure no regression during re-implementation.
Many roles, including:
I have worked in IT since graduating with a First in Computer Science (BSc) in 1993.
See LinkedIn for full details: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piran/