I'm an experienced software engineer with a wealth of experience across a variety of technologies and industries. I've built up a broad skill-set over the years with an emphasis on front-end development, a strong intuition for UX, and a good eye for design. The following is a brief overview of my journey so far. For more detail on my work history, please see my Résumé.

Career

I discovered programming in my early 20s via Flash and ActionScript and became fascinated and obsessed. It was easy to find work at a time when a little knowledge got you a long way, and I quickly found myself building components and microsites for one of the UK's largest high-street retailers.

After Steve Jobs killed Flash, I and started a company building iPhone apps that allowed users to find digital content in the real world. After 18 months of graft, we'd produced two iOS apps. The first for a record label, took users on a treasure hunt along East London's canals, unlocking video of live acoustic performances by visiting the outdoor locations where they had been recorded. The second was a play commissioned for the Brighton Festival, unlocked as the user walked around the city with their route defined by the play's narrative.

Although both were quietly successful, they were far from profitable and I decided to switch direction. I taught myself Rails and started picking up work as a contractor, working on a wide variety of projects, sometimes designing the UI as well as handling the build. Ruby helped consolidate the more disciplined programming style I'd learned building iOS apps, and although I'd often incorporate a little JavaScript to make things more interactive, I was mostly focussed on the back-end.

When React came along I was immediately hooked, and I pivoted to concentrating on the front-end again. React and the wider JavaScript ecosystem allowed me to combine my experience of styling and design with programming in a way I found interesting and very rewarding. I spent over two years contracting for an American company building a platform to facilitate drug trials, joining early and working on prototyping and building the front-end and seeing the success of the first public release.

For the last six years I worked for a Digital Health startup which treated sleep disorders through a web-app and a team of 'sleep coaches'. During my time there the company scaled up from five people to almost 100, and by the time I left we had treated over 100,000 patients, with the rate of new patients increasing 100 fold.

Personal projects

I've always worked on personal projects alongside programming work, often with an emphasis on design. I'm currently working a series of prints based on colour-analysis of the works of famous landscape painters, starting with Van Gogh and Hokusai. This builds on a previous project ‘Birdswatch’ where I created prints based on colour-analysis of the birds in the RSPB's bird build.

For the last fifteen years I've worked with critically acclaimed band Grasscut, art-directing and designing all their albums and releases, including creating a music video for their single Curlews and a series of stereoscopic images for their album 'Overwinter'.

Additionally I've released a number of open-source projects through my Github, including most recently a library for creating and warping complex grids in 2D space.

Personal Life

I always strive hard to keep a good work-life balance, and I fill my non-work time with a variety of interests.

I love the outdoors, especially long-distance hiking and camping in wild country. I've walked around the Annapurna and Manaslu massifs in the Nepalese Himalaya, walked almost 1000km along the Turkish coast, and this year I completed the Pennine Way from South to North in fifteen days.

When I'm not outdoors I love music, whether it's playing, listening, or watching it live. I play acoustic and electric guitar and I'm learning the bass.

Learning is a constant in my life, and I read/listen to a lot of books, particularly non-fiction with an emphasis on history and technology. I also regularly spend my spare time picking up new tech or taking courses on things that I'm interested in. At the moment I'm focussed on machine learning and Web 3, particularly Bitcoin.