When the New World Trading Company pitched their idea to me as "A bit like the sorting hat from Harry Potter," I was in. Realizing that this meant connecting to an HR API, building an admin dashboard, and exporting everything daily to a third party made me a bit more hesitant!

The most important part of the project was helping to strip back the requirements to create a foundation that covered what the client really needed, leaving plenty of room for future additions. I chose Firebase as the backend, allowing me to quickly create and push features. For the front-end, I utilized a React, TypeScript, and Styled Components template I had created for exactly this purpose.

The hardest part of the project was working with live data that needed to be updated and manipulated daily. The key to tackling this was creating logs of performed operations and regular backups for the worst-case scenario. Writing about this project without using more Harry Potter puns was the real challenge.

As employee number one I created the frontend from scratch working with stakeholders to quickly iterate on the product whilst maintaining a solid technical foundation.

• I was in charge of the architecture and implementation for all front end projects.
• Onboarded and mentored new developers
• Created a design system and component library to easily integrate with the design team
• Created am editor to allow the rest of the team to quickly and easily iterate on our bespoke schema system

When a friend bought his first 3D printer, it sparked his ambition to turn it into a business. He wanted to share the wonder of rapid prototyping with people who didn't have the space, money, or inclination to buy their own printer. When he asked me if I would be interested in helping him build a website to facilitate this, I jumped at the chance, because I had a laundry list of things I wanted to print myself but no means to do it.

We used React and Firebase to create a production app allowing people to upload and view their 3D models, select options, and order prints. Stripe integration facilitated purchases and hooked in with a bespoke backend to help manage orders and print queues. The website was a success, seeing many return customers, and the app facilitated many orders until the business was sadly shuttered for personal reasons.

This project helped me step back and understand the multifaceted benefits of software. The web app had completely different criteria and use cases than the backend tools, but both had to seamlessly work together to support the process from start to finish.

Analytics, hosting, and testing were key areas to get right in a production system to allow us to iterate quickly and safely. I'm proud to say the system supported all its transactions with no major outages or issues. I attribute this to the robustness of the tools we used and the care we took in testing the system in a specific non-production environment.

This is a product I used myself many times and still have the chopping board holder, plant pots, and frog models to prove it.

I worked at Goodlord for 6 months as a senior frontend developer. Although I learned a lot from my experience, I ultimately realized it wasn't the right fit for me. Capable of the work, I didn’t feel either party was getting the most out of the relationship.

My responsibilities included:

• Updating legacy jQuery code to modern standards.
• Incident triage and support.
• Maintaining and improving the build process.
• Building out the self-verification process, including integrating Onfido to identify users.

This was my first official role as a senior developer, and it is where I realized how much I enjoyed mentoring and helping others. During my employment, I focused on building genuine rapport with junior developers, helping to build their confidence, providing pragmatic advice and support, as well as advocating on their behalf in senior meetings.

Responsible for upkeep and implementation of new features for the webapp from ideation to implementation.

• Introduced and implemented React hooks across the product.
• set up Cypress.JS as part of Gitlab pipeline to run automated E2E tests

I created and gave a talk about the future of AI in business to over 400 people on the main stage at the IAFN conference. At the time, most people's experience with AI was hugely limited compared to the GPT-powered world of today. Instead of diving into the technical aspects, I focused on presenting an approachable look at how we have historically interacted with technology and worked symbiotically, instead of destructively, with it. The idea was that no one is scared of Excel, but they are glad they don't need to do as many manual tedious calculations as before and can instead focus on the bigger picture.

Using humour and lots of visuals, I guided people through a brief history of technology's innovative relationship with business and how the company of tomorrow should welcome the chance to supercharge their workforce. I ended the session with a live example and demo of tools I had made to help demonstrate these ideas and that I had implemented at my workplace.

The talk was well received, and I was invited to give it at other conferences too.

As the sole representative of the innovation lab, I created software to demonstrate and explore new technologies. From VR to AI I had to assess a technology, build a proof of concept, prove a business case and present to clients.

• I represented the company giving talks to over 400 members of the IAFN and FLA.
• Created a Virtual Reality showroom for use at events and conferences.
• Built an AI powered chatbot development suite to allow clients to easily create their own chatbots.