Hi, I'm Thomas

I have 16 years commercial experience as a Software Engineer, Team Lead and Architect. During that time I have received consistently excellent feedback about my technical expertise, my pro-active approach and my clear and honest communication. I am especially passionate about clean code and applying tried and proven architectural patterns to solve real world problems.

Work Experiences

• McLaren Applied

  Snr SW Engineer (contract)

  2019 - 2020
  London/Woking

  Co-architected and co-developed multiple Angular+NodeJS+.NET Core applications.

  Frameworks/Languages: Angular (v9), NodeJS, .NET Core, SignalR, RxJS (Reactive extensions for JS), NgRx (State manager), NestJS (API Framework for Node), Angular Schematics, TypeScript, C#

  • I created a Template Web Application to Kick-Start customer projects. This consisted of a NodeJS backend handling security and administration and a frontend in Angular. This included CLI tooling to tailor the application to the project’s needs. The CLI was written in NodeJS using Angular Schematics.
  • Implemented 3D telemetry visualisation using ThreeJS and D3. The telemetry data was received from a .NET Core backend using SignalR. I’ve also worked on an Authentication layer in NodeJS against Auth0 using OpenID Connect.
  • Co-architected a new authentication layer for the Telemetry Analytics Platform (.NET Core)
  • Worked on the CICD build pipelines (Azure DevOps)

• Magnitude Internet GmbH

  Chief Architect, Co-Founder

  2014 - 2019
  Remote

  Designed and co-developed an E-Commerce Solution.

  Frameworks/Languages: Ms Azure Cloud, C#, ASP.NET MVC 5, ASP Web API 2, AngularJS

  • I came in as the Chief Architect for this German Start-up company.
  • Designed the cloud based architecture (MS Azure) for their multi-tiered product and mentored the team on the concepts used.
  • Worked together with the CTO on implementing the CICD pipeline in Atlassian Bamboo. (It was a pain, I’d use Azure DevOps going forward)

• Invenias

  Snr SW Engineer (contract)

  2018 - 2019
  Reading

  Re-implementation of Web-Based CMS in Angular 7.

  Frameworks/Languages: Angular (v7), RxJS (Reactive extensions for JS), NgRx (State manager), C#, Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio Code.

  This client was struggling with performance issues, maintainability and stability. I’ve taken the following steps to move them forward:

  • Start to re-implement the application using several new concepts in a side-by-side way, so the improvements can be seen immediately. Many new features were implemented along the way.
  • Introduce NgRx for client-side state management and caching.
  • Migrate from Angular 4 to Angular 7 to take advantage of out-of-the-box performance improvements.
  • Move them to the new Angular CLI build system. This took dev builds from 8 minutes down to 2.
  • Set up code linting to highlight anti-patterns and use of deprecated features.
  • Mentor the team on all the new concepts so that they can to move forward.

• Fiserv

  Snr SW Engineer (contract)

  2017 - 2018
  Slough

  Re-implementation of Risk Assessment Software in Angular 5.
  Tools/Languages: C#, WebAPI, Angular (v5), RxJS (Reactive extensions for JS), ngrx/store (State manager), Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio Code, MS SQL Server.
  The old version of the FCRM risk assessment software was implemented in Silverlight and had to be re-implemented in Angular. This included writing a REST API wrapper for the legacy server-side logic using WebAPI. The client-side application was then created from scratch using Angular. I did some work on the server-side back-end, but I mainly focused on the client-side Angular application and ended up writing about 80% of the app on my own. There was a heavy focus on observability (data changes in one part of the UI affecting other parts), so we heavily used the ngrx/store, ngrx/entities and ngrx/effects packages to manage and observe client-side state changes.

• Knight Frank

  Software Engineer (contract)

  2015 - 2017
  London

  Extending and updating Knight Frank's web presence.
  Tools/Languages: C#, ASP MVC, AngularJS, ASP WebApi, WebForms, Visual Studio 2015, MS SQL Server
  I have written multiple extensions and fixes to the current website. Noteworthy:

  • A new property search for the Knight Frank site, written in Angular: www.knightfrank.com
  • A UK stamp duty calculator (JavaScript/jQuery): www.knightfrank.co.uk/stamp-duty-calculator
  • A new office and people search plugin (AngularJS, WebAPI): www.knightfrank.com/contact

• Couchbase

  Software Trainer (contract)

  2015 - 2016
  London

  I have trained some of Couchbase's customers in the use of the Couchbase C SDK (libcouchbase). Tools/Languages: C++, Qt 5, libcouchbase, Qt Designer These are one-day trainings which I have prepared together with an employee of Couchbase and held on-site in various locations. So far I've given this training six times to consistently positive feedback.

• Momentum Coach Hire

  Senior Software Engineer

  2011 - 2013
  White Waltham

  I have been working for Momentum Coach Hire, an ambitious little company in the Coach Hire and Event Organisation business. There, I have created a variety of new web sites and improved existing ones. I have also been promoted to IT Director and am responsible for the migration of the entire company (50 employees) onto Microsoft Office 365.

• Symantec

  Senior Software Engineer

  2010 - 2011
  Reading

  I have been working as a Senior Software Engineer for Symantec UK Ltd. I was in the Research and Development team for Symantec Enterprise Vault, an email archiving solution written in C# and C++. In my time there I have performed the following tasks:

  • Completed or am working on a number of small to medium projects including new features and architectural enhancements to improve resilience.
  • For these projects, I have created the functional specification and software design documents and have implemented them on my own or as part of a team.
  • Main tools/skills used: OOA OOD Database Design UML MS Visual Studio 2008 C# C++ XSLT SQL
  • Fixed many defects in different code streams as part of learning the project architecture
  • Received outstanding performance reviews for pro-actively driving architectural improvements and my excellent communication and team work

• Ingres Europe Ltd (now Actian)

  Consultant

  2008 - 2010
  Slough

  With Ingres I worked as a permanently employed Consultant. I was involved in the following customer projects:

  • Head Developer and Technical Team Lead for an open source project adding playback and recording capabilities to the Ingres database.
  • Using the following skills/tools:
    • Heavy NPTL multi-threading on UNIX using C (tested with 1000s of threads)
    • GCC, GNU Automake, Netbeans IDE
    • Lexical processing in C# running on .NET and Mono
    • Ported from Linux to Solaris, HPUX, AIX, Windows
    • Held a presentation about it at the 2009 UK Ingres User Association
  • Head Developer for porting the MS Excel based reporting for Newline Underwriting Ltd to Jasper Reports:
    • Working on site with the customer in an agile environment.
    • Talend Open Studio ETL, Jasper iReport
    • SQL Database Design and Implementation (Ingres Database)
    • SQL overnight number crunching scripts using BASH
    • Created a Data entry Website using Grails including user management and authentication
  • Developer in a C# project for the MET Police.
  • On site consulting at BNP Paribas

• HM Informatik AG

  Technical Team Lead

  2004 - 2008
  Ilmenau, Germany

  HM Informatik is a very agile company focused on small to medium size customer projects. There were many projects being worked on simultaneously and I have fulfilled varying roles within them, like:

  • Head Developer / Architect
  • Technical Team Lead
  • Project Manager
  • Trainer

  Within those roles, the following tasks are noteworthy:

  • I was responsible for the full project Life Cycle. Statement of Work, Analysis, Design, Implementation, Integration, Support for multiple projects.
  • Managed teams up to 5 people.
  • Was responsible for the in-house migration from MS Visual SourceSafe to Subversion
  • Managing according to the V-Model (German equivalent of PRINCE 2)
  • Have given a lot of successful technical trainings with up to 20 trainees
  • Given technical presentations at the CA Infoexchange 2004 and 2005 with audiences of 100+ people.

  Technical Achievements:

  • Lightweight open source ORM in C# using the .NET Reflection API
  • Head Developer, Team Leader and SQL Database Architect for a Logistics Module for a large European CD/DVD manufacturer written in OpenROAD interfacing SAP/R3 using C++, C# and SOAP web services with an Ingres Database back end.
  • I have been in the development team of the application for measuring and approval of ship licenses (MOT for ships if you like) for the German Central Ship Inspection Commission (ZSUK). This Application was originally written in C++ and later ported to Java.
  • As Head Developer and Team Leader for a Reporting tool for the German Armed Forces I created an interface to a live 3D simulation engine to gather statistics. C#, SQL Database Design.
  • I have written a reporting server daemon which enables applications to use Crystal Reports through a very easy database API. Thinking Instruments was licensing this tool to several customers. The server was written in C#.