I am a self motivated technical manager with extensive developmental experience in n-tier systems and the entire digital landscape. Equally comfortable being hands-on technical or more management focused working across an entire project’s lifespan from definition to implementation to success measurement.
Experience
Technical Director (Oct 2006 – Dec 2010)
Five by Five (Southampton & London)
I have worked at Lawton Communications Group as part of their Top 50 New Media Age digital agency Five by Five for just over 11 years, the most recent role being Technical Director.
As Technical Director I was responsible for a team of between 8 and 12 developers producing a wide variety of digital assets for global clients such as THQ, EA, Activision, GAP, Skandia, International Personal Finance and WKD.
As a team leader I have tried to lead by example and have been fortunate enough to hire and work with some of the best developers out there which has enabled the company to have a lot of success.
Day to day responsibilities included:-
- Digital strategy definition for both internal and external clients
- Project definition and solutions architect
- Direct line management of senior team members
- Supplier management across hosting, recruitment and outsourcing
- Full recruitment responsibility including candidate selection, interviewing and hiring
- Research and development of cutting edge technologies specifically in the key areas of social and web.
- Some hands-on development on an ad-hoc basis.
- Process definition and implementation.
- Crisis management.
- Performance reviews
- Team development and mentoring
- Internal systems administration of development environment
Lead Developer (Jun 2003 – Oct 2006)
Lawton eMarketing (Southampton)
As lead programmer I was responsible for a small development team of between 4 and 6 developers producing a range of dynamic CMS driven web sites for national and regional based clients. This role had both a development and management aspect.
During my time in this role I completely overhauled all aspects of the company’s developmental methodologies switching from a functional approach to an object-oriented MVC approach. I also pioneered the introduction of source control and deployment systems to improve quality assurance and risk management.
Developer/Snr Developer (Oct 1999 – Jun 2003)
Lawton Newmedia (Southampton)
Initially hired as the junior programmer I quickly progressed into the role of a senior developer and switched the primary focused development platform from the legacy Perl based system to a more robust and web friendly PHP/MySQL basis.
Technical Skills
- PHP: expert (10 Years)
- (X)HTML(5): expert (15 years)
- MySQL: advanced (10 years)
- JavaScript: advanced (10 years)
- Perl: intermediate (10 years)
- Linux System Administration: advanced (7 years)
- Apache: advanced (7 years)
- Bash Scripting: intermediate (4 years)
- Software installation/configuration: intermediate (4 years)
- Classic ASP: intermediate (5 years)
- Subversion: advanced (5 years)
- Open-source CMSes (wordpress, drupal, joomla): intermediate (5 years)
- MVC Frameworks (CakePHP, Zend, CodeIgniter): advanced (5 years)
Education
BSc (hons) Computer Science (1996 – 1999) – Exeter University
4 A-Levels &11 GSCES – Royal Latin Grammer School
Personal Details
Martial Status: Married
Driving License: Full UK (clean)
D.O.B.: 28/10/1977
Interests
I am a huge fan of practically any sport out there, not so much taking part these days but I avidly follow Rugby, Cricket, Football and F1and particularly enjoy bringing the geek out in me and following the stats side of each game. Living so close to the New Forest affords me the opportunity to take plenty of walks, I especially enjoy the circular walks which end at one of the many New Forest pubs.
The recent birth of my first son now takes up most of my spare time!