An avid technologist, I thrive in leadership positions and have worked on a variety of projects with a diverse range of people, crossing technologies, languages, and continents. As a speaker of five languages and counting, I've been told I'm a great communicator and motivating to work with.
In my recent role as a Software Development Manager at Zapp, I led the consumer facing core team in developing and maintaing the native mobile application used by thousands of customers everyday.
My main focus as an engineering manager is to support and coach engineers both in my immediate team and across the domain through participatory leadership, liasing with business stakeholders as well as product and XD teams to map requirements into scalable and maintainable technical solutions. Bridging the gap between tech teams and non-technical stakeholders is a challenge I relish. Additionally I advocate for engineers and a tech-first, agile practices approach within the business.
To reinforce my leadership and management experience, in 2020 I completed Oxford University's Executive Leadership Programme through the Oxford Saïd Business School.
I'm also passionate about giving back to the wider developer community, have been the co-organiser of the JavaScript London meetup group since 2016. In addition I've presented tech talks and workshops at events across Europe such as React Summit. I've contributed extensively over the past years to JavaScript and React educational content on both Medium and the RGA blog in my spare time, and continue to run community workshops and events.
I'm always open to new opportunities in which I can harness my skills in managing and scaling tech teams that underpin businesses, while further developing new leadership and tech skills. I love being challenged by and learning from supportive, collaborative teammates in a friendly, creative, and ambitious organisation.
I greatly enjoy exploring potential solutions to problems by breaking them down into their simplest form and iteratively building the most succinct solution using LEAN methodologies.
- As a logical, calm thinker, when multiple, potentially interesting options are available, I am able to assess their suitability in solving the initial problem. This allows me to choose the best tools for the job.
- I am persistent when facing adversity. Working across time zones and languages, as well as managing teams working remotely, requires considerable flexibility and persistence. I have found this mind-set very applicable to both coding and team management.
- When facing a new problem, my first step and strongest ability is research. I especially excel at working with agile teams to come up with creative solutions and ideas. Over my past experience including in SEO and marketing, I have developed excellent Google Foo -- proficiency with Googling specific technical issues and implementing solutions.
- Solving a problem, especially if I am able to help someone else along the way, can be even more satisfying than everything working right the first time!
My experience has equipped me with a working knowledge of best practices in modern software development.
- Software development is not a solitary activity, but a team effort. I am a big fan of pair programming, something I fully embrace, encouraging pairing with multiple team members (including developers, UX and product) during any given day. This has helped me further develop strong teamworking, communication and interpersonal skills in the context of coding and leadership.
- I am constantly looking to expand my technical knowledge, I'm a keen advocate of Functional Programming as a basis for software products, breaking down code into well-defined, performant and testable units. I'm also keen on a dev ops first approach, builing infrafstruture as code and harnessing CI/CD to deliver incremental value into production at pace.
- I believe that development should be seen as a craft. Using the red-green-refactor model as a guide, working code is just the first step. Refactoring for simplicity and to allow other developers to understand and extend code without resorting to modification is also a key consideration. Well-tested code is something I believe to be crucial in a production application with unit tests => integration tests => end-to-end tests implemented in all applications.
- Most crucially, I have a great curiosity and passion for technology. I enjoy independent and exploratory learning as well as experimenting with new ideas and technologies as they arise in order to expand my skill set. Recently I have been focused on further expanding my knowledge of functional programming and its practical implementations in JS applications, I've also been learning ReasonML and looking into Rust with an eye on the future as it has a complile story to WebAssembly.
PowerModeAI is an AI assisted idea and pitch deck generator, the product is being developed more broadly to address the problem space of helping with structuring the story and message in a presentation in addition to delivery and confidence.
Core technologies: React, TypeScript, Firebase, Google cloud platform, OpenAI API and prompt engineering.
Leading the implementation of the front end solution.
Core technologies: React, Gatsby
Leading the consumer facing core team in developing and maintaing the primary native mobile application.
Core technologies: Typescript, React Native, GraphQL, Firebase, GCP
Leading the shared services team in delivering an event based micro services architecture that supports downstream tech teams in accessing data within the commercial domain. I currently manage a team of 8, consisting of React/Node developers supported by dev ops and SDET colleagues.
Core technologies: Typescript, React, NestJS (Node), GraphQL, Postgres, MongoDB, AWS, Kafka
Collaborating across engineering teams to deliver tech-focused solutions to business problems, leading on front-end practices and architecture, hiring, mentoring, and coaching engineers, advocating agile practices, and helping develop and build Sainsbury's tech function. Harnessing my expertise in the React ecosystem, I was particularly focused on developing the capabilities of front end engineers in product teams across the domain and bringing senior engineers together to drive strategic tech initiatives.
Core technologies: Typescript, React, GraphQL, Node, Postgres, AWS, Kafka, Micro services
React GraphQL Academy was a leading provider of in person trainings for React and GraphQL in Europe.
Responsible for running the operation and business development of the academy, working collaboratively with the team to implement functional enhancements to the web user experience while expanding the offering to drive growth and market position. Over the course of my tenure, I managed and grew a coach team of 6, offering trainings in London, Amsterdam and Lisbon. In addition, the core LeanJS engineering team built and delivered an in-house learning platform that allowed coaches to self-organize courses and receive continuous feedback on student progress and satisfaction.
LeanJS enables product teams to innovate rapidly via one-week hands-on sprints across key technologies. Previously, LeanJS worked with top clients as a tech consultancy to both advise on and co-build React/Node and GraphQL projects. These ranged from building Agni Magazine's site, on which I was the lead developer and project manager, to consulting on numerous projects, for example FingoPay.
The core, cross-functional team consists of React/Node developers in addition to UX and product. Starting as a senior software engineer and hands-on manager of a growing dev team, I later became a partner, leading and implementing projects as well as contributing on business development and strategy.
Core technologies include: JavaScript, React, Node, GraphQL (client and server), MongoDB, GCP.
blue{shift} is West London’s premier coding school. Founded in 2013 with the aim of teaching children aged 5 to 15 a creative approach to coding. I developed and coached the JavaScript course at Seconday level and lead on the development of a new web experience and nascent learning platform.
Core technologies include: Python Flast, Python, JavaScript
Airsorted making hosting on Airbnb Hassle-free. They are an Airbnb management company using technology to create infrastructure for the fast-growing sharing community.
I worked primarily on maintaing and upgrading the public facing website(Flask), implementing UI changes and building out full e2e testing with selenium/pytest to ensure an effective user experience.
Core technologies include: Python Flask, Ruby on Rails, React-Redux
Rokk3r Labs teams up with aspiring entrepreneurs as a technology focussed business partner, in the process cobuilding incredible companies. The core technologies used are: Node.JS, PHP (laravel), React, Angular, Ionic, and React Native.
EnglishTutorsLive is an online English learning community that connects teachers and students looking for intensive and dynamic Skype English classes. Founder of the project, designed and implemented the web marketing plan based on knowledge of SEO copywriting and content optimization in addition to all technical tasks. I oversaw and managed the growth of the online community and business direction while in operation.
Website Growth is a full-service web design and digital marketing consultant company. They specialize in all aspects of online growth including web design for mobile and desktop client bases, utilizing content marketing, social media marketing, mobile apps, SEO and more.
Working remotely with a range of responsibilities:
- Wordpress web development
- SEO copywriting
- content optimization
- content marketing
- project lead (various)
- press release marketing
- website marketing, online branding.
- working with Joomla and Magento
- A refined understanding of leadership purpose and how to align it with organizational purpose
- Frameworks and leadership skills needed to overcome modern workplace challenges and manage teams effectively
- Strategies for driving change and preparing organisations for the future
- Guidance from leading industry experts and Oxford Saïd faculty
- Intensive 12-week course at Europe's leading Web Developer bootcamp
- Industry best practice, focus on agile, XP and TDD methodologies, working with OOP frameworks and languages.
- Weekly paired-programming project based curriculum with individual weekend challenges
- 5-year Masters degree in Political Science and Administration (in Spanish)
- University of Oslo (2010-2011) Erasmus exchange studying International Relations and Norwegian
- English (People say I'm a good public speaker)
- Spanish (Near Native proficiency, 5 years studying in Madrid)
- Portuguese (Working proficiency)
- Norwegian (Limited working proficiency, need to make more Norwegian friends!)
- French (Limited speaking but good comprehension)
- Italian (Similar to French but currently improving fast!)
- CELTA (Cambridge certificate in English Language Teaching)
- Multiple Cousera and other online course certificates (I'm a big fan of e-learning)
- RYA dingy instructor (Once upon a time, I taught sailing)