Current engagements
- , Web Software Engineer
(Slovakia, UK, Netherlands)
- , (own businesses) Unilexicon Taxonomy Suite used by worlds top universities and private taxonomists, Blocl local community resources, Unilexicon for Medicines NHS dictionary of medicines and devices data browser
- Page personal take at static content generation CMS and e-commerce
- Consultancy projects specialising in upgrades and hygiene of websites and Python apps
Work experience
- (Roche) Designed a provisioning database for ERP Platform team to help looking after a fleet consisting of over a thousand various database and application servers. MVP Landscape manager for SAP systems providing views of the server fleet of managed systems, hosts and instances withing the business. Designed using FastAPI and SQLModel allowing to browse generated HTML with taxonomy based filters and navigation as well as use API to filter and access different groups of instances to be further used in Ansible playbooks to carry out work required to manage the platform. Included an agent to collect fresh data
- (Linius) Produced an MVP. Designed Taskflow, a task based workflow pipeline for video processing at scale using a fork of Celery Director, FFmpeg, Amazon Transcribe and open source Python libraries with tasks such as audio extraction, audio transcription, video character recognition, face, current speaker and object recognition and bundling the data with its video chunks for search. Product is designed for use with recorded Zoom meetings to let organisations tap into their videos.
- , Software Engineer, Python
at CF Partners, London
- Upgraded backend services from Python 2 to Python 3 such as pricing server and risk server written in Tornado, refactored entire ETL pipeline written in ancient Python and optimised trading database with API in Django REST framework using Postgres, while adding tests, documentation, migrating to latest packages, cleaning up using static code analysis (Prospector, PyFlakes), refactoring and making things look great. Migrated code repositories from Mercurial to Git. Provided personal training to all team members on configuring and using SSH and administration of Linux servers. Fixed business critical performance issues in trading Database and tuned for amazing performance. Created a custom scheduler with web GUI in Django for all ETL jobs. Trained a consulted all programmers on site in using Python providing instant support. Upgraded the fleet of Linux boxes from ancient Ubuntu 14.04 to 20.04 LTS, migrated sizeable ancient on premise Mongo DB to Mongo Atlas Cluster.
- Continuing with CF Partners' Brook Green Supply energy trading part of the business I wrote a power generation asset manager able to dispatch power or request recharge of batteries and gas peakers at times of optimal prices using web GUI with auditable user, power asset and energy dispatch management and charts for state of charge and other metrics such as grid frequency, active power and other asset telemetry. Wrote software for submission of schedules for power assets to the National Grid Balancing Mechanism via EDT. Consulted creation of Python and Django based software for automated short term power trading utilising proprietary ML models moving away from Pandas based research prototypes to Postgres SQL and Django based production service with weather and price data and ability to use and post power trade orders. Ended provision of service due to late invoice settlement.
- (Billinge History Society, own project) Extensive resource on history of Billinge my long time home village in Lancashire
- (Unilexicon and Fashion Sourcing) Bespoke taxonomy design and ontology described models with client API a UI integration prototypes
- , Principal Software Engineer
at GLG, London
- Investigating how better knowledge representation can be implemented in GLG to deliver great matches of consultants to different knowledge needs of GLG clients by interviewing stakeholders, user testing and assessing current technology; de-duplicating a very sizable database of user profiles and leads and proposing restructure for better information management, compliance, duplicate and fraud detection; creating UI for analysis and data cleaning; advising on GDPR adherence, SEO/findability; mastering GLG's technology stack, MSSQL server advanced queries, rewriting large stored procedures
- (Planixs) Creating a transactional bank data generator to generate realistic transactions, balances, ledger and balance messages aimed at testing intraday liquidity and reconciliation solutions monitoring nostro accounts. Modeling of existing data and flows (CSV, DB, JSON) using Python, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL/Timescale DB and Python Mixer
- (Etc Media Group, own business) Conversion of a group of websites (>600,000 content nodes) to leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) resulting in 85% increase in mobile traffic
- (MyOptiqueGroup.com) Created a GDPR API using Django REST framework with front-end integration allowing multiple websites and call centre to manage consent to contact handling >£150,000 in daily orders
- (Patient.info) SEO analysis and large scale correction of over 50,000 broken high-profile links lost to continuous redesigns using Webmaster Tools, Python and Lucene Search API
- , Lead Python Backend developer
at Tictrac, London
- creating Sport Relief 2018 fundraising app backend APIs to count a billion steps a day across the nation while supporting half a million plus clients using Python, Django, REST framework, JS, PostgreSQL, Celery and RabbitMQ; backend APIs (deployed to AWS using Docker and Kubernetes) serve independently developed iOS, web and Android front-end clients
- , Lead Python/JS Fullstack Developer
at Commscope, Bodelwyddan
- developing a custom waterfall project management, portfolio and resource planning system for a large cabling enterprise (Python, Django, JS/HTML5/CSS) while coaching programmers on site Python and software engineering best practices
- , Technical Lead, Automation Engineer
at Barclays, Knutsford
- Automating adoption of agile development tools such as Git (Bitbucket Server), JIRA, Confluence, Jenkins etc
- Fullstack web development (Python, Django, JS/HTML5/CSS, MySQL), accessibility and security issue resolution, REST API development
- Entrusted with group wide access to all of Barclays Git repositories, knowledge bases and JIRA projects
- Small team leadership, code stewardship, project architecture, gate-keeping, coaching permanent and offshore programmers ready to take over after project completion
- , CTO, co-founder at
Flatmate Rooms, Cheshire
- Agile setup: two directors, handwritten software, half a million registered users
- Technology: Python, Django, HTML5/CSS/JS, MySQL
- DevOps: Git, TDD(unittest), Travis CI, Ubuntu, Upstart, Nginx, Gunicorn, replication
- Search and analysis (GeoDjango, NumPy, MySQL Spatial, GDAL), SEO/SEM, sales automation, SMS/GSM, large scale email marketing, lead generation, interface design, user testing, custom card processing, PCI-DSS compliance, IP issue resolution, trademark, legal and licensing, open-source, research and development tax relief
- , Information Architect at the Department for Education
busy with private & public projects involving government data
from the DFE
(School etc.) and NHS
(Medicine Dictionary)
- Hands-on work and leadership by example.
- Development of a web application suite for visual management
of semantic metadata across large amount of content nodes,
porting legacy desktop software toolset
(J*ava, S*pring Framework)
into modern loosely coupled web application suite
using mainly HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 on the client side &
a Python server (see project Unilexicon)
- Web based toolset for management and creation of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies using technologies such as SKOS, Zthes, JSON, Canvas based data visualisation, Django, Python XML and HTML parsers, custom-built search technology
- Tools for contextual tagging of content using controlled vocabularies - Chrome browser extension written in JavaScript using browser APIs for frontend, Django and various XML based APIs and formats in the backend: SRU(CQL), SWORD, SKOS
- Content analysis and auditing tools (various Python, CLI PHP and shell scripts)
- , SEO & Information Architecture Consultant at
I-COM, Manchester
- Leaving for a career change and potential advancement
- Responsibilities matching those at Latitude (see below), growing clients in the legal sector
- Completed several redesigns and SEO campaigns for SMEs creating extraordinary amount of business leads using well written code and proven SEO strategies
- , Search Engine Optimisation Executive at
Latitude, Warrington
- Led the SEO campaign that resulted into superbly valuable acquisition and transformation of FastTrackCruise to Virgin Holiday Cruises. Overseen and completed the redesign and rebranding hands-on providing developers with leadership, optimised HTML/CSS/JS templates, advice and training.
- Website information architecture, taxonomy, web content naming and SEO
- SEO consultancy, ROI driven search engine optimisation consultancy
- Evangelising web developers, internal SEOs, marketing managers and clients on SEO, accessibility and web standards
- Analysis of traffic data and performance reporting to clients and management
- Implementation of user friendly, accessible content management systems
- XHTML, CSS, unobtrusive JavaScript, Apache/MySQL/PHP hand coding prototypes for accessible and search engine friendly front-ends for clients such as Virgin Holiday Cruises, Haven Holidays, Pontins, RRG Group and others
- Display campaign design for clients such as Spice Girls
- Link building and web copy-writing advice
- , Web & Graphic Designer at Grafika—Vladimír Šimík, Považská Bystrica, Slovakia; Building websites, Vector graphic design, Flash based interfaces, animation – work order based
Full stack software development
- Scalable information system architecture, design and development for optimal user experience, accessibility and maintenance
- Backend server side programming in Python and JavaScript, Django web framework, Flask/FastAPI, Gunicorn, Apache and Nginx servers, MySQL database including database design and administration, Multiple Linux Server Setup and deployment, Ubuntu, OS X, CMS development, Ecommerce, content management & web services integration, open source research, source control management
- Front-end interface design using HTML5, CSS(SASS), JS and SVG graphics
- DevOps: cloud computing, Git and Jenkins pipelines (dev, staging, hot push to live), Travis CI (Continuous integration), Docker, unittest, PyPI packaging, SystemD, Ubuntu/Linux, AWS/Linode automatic deployment setup; AWS using EC2, Amazon S3 and RDS
- Semantic analysis of large PDF datasets (MongoDB, transcript)
- SMS/GSM tied web service design, PCI DSS compliant payment integrations, network security compliance (hands-on and advisory)
- Cloud automation engineering at Interoute (London, Canary Wharf) building infrastructure as a service (IaaS) products using Python, Docker, MS SQL, Apache Cloudstack and RabbitMQ.
- Content findability, WCAG compliance consulting and search engine optimisation
- Business communication, presentation, intellectual property
- Big data, crawling and indexing, lead generation and sales pipeline automation
- Web technologies, web based database driven applications, linked-data
- Client side hand-coding of responsive, standard compliant HTML5, CSS and JavaScript
- Server side programming. I actively develop object-oriented (OOP), test-driven (TDD) Python applications for many years. I also worked on component development, front-end or information architecture consultancy for projects using most common backend stacks ( R*oR, P*HP, J*ava, .N*ET) Designer Pages, Virgin holidays Cruises, etc.
- Client/server interaction - JavaScript (Angular, AJAX/DOM)
- Deep knowledge of relational database architecture and administration, SQL
- Nginx and Apache server configuration and performance tuning, regular expressions
- Source Control: GIT (Hg, SVN), bug tracking, code review and QA, deployment, CI automation
- Deep understanding of open-source content management systems (CMS) Drupal, Wordpress etc
- Proficient in cross-browser device independent client coding and debugging
- Content Management/CRM Systems - Programming, Integration, Deployment, Administration. Wrote several custom CMSs from scratch in PHP and Python MVC framework Django including retail and wholesale e-commerce systems, CRM and a multi-lingual CMS.
- Security: PCI-DSS compliance, cryptography, SSL/TLS, Letsencrypt, SSH client/server, access control, authorisation
- DevOps, remote server sysadmin - thousands of hours on ssh, working experience with various Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian), Solaris and different cloud hosting companies: Amazon (EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS), Linode, Google Cloud Compute
- Google XML/JSON API integrations (Maps, Authentication, Products)
- Graphics: vector SVG hand-coding, Adobe Photoshop, CSS/JS data visualisation
- Trained eye to work with colour schemes, white space, grids and visual hierarchy
Usability and Accessibility
- Rapid prototyping in live work sessions, live usability testing
- Classic and user-generated taxonomy information architecture, findable naming and meta data
- WCAG, Discrimination Disabilities Act conformance, user agent independent and blind friendly web design and consultancy
- Browser rendering optimisation, caching, server & database optimisation,
Instant is fast enough.
Business and Strategy
- Developing user experiences that make customers happy
- Agile software development methods
- Constant integration of users' feedback in the evolving product
- Developed and deployed custom software for targeted SMS alerts and email marketing
- Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing (SEO, SEM), general web marketing
focused on Google and Bing organic results. Techniques I use to deliver results:
- Solid information architecture (IA) supporting findable content, on-site and off-site SEO
- All-round SEO strategy, competitive and keyword analysis, client oriented reporting
- Search engine friendly web architecture, content optimisation
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Web Standards compliant design
- Tracking and analysis of incoming traffic and subsequent leads/conversions using off the shelf tracking tools; authored custom traffic, phone and affiliate tracking solutions.
- Brand management in online search, negative SEO and penalty recovery
- Consultancy, templates and business data for link-builders to deliver successful campaigns
Education
- , Honorary Fellowship at Bauman Moscow State Technical University (EUCYS)
- , Multimedia Communication at University of Žilina
- , College - Gymnázium Považská Bystrica, Slovakia
- A level equivalents in Chemistry, Physics and Biology
- Language courses: Slovak, English & German language
- Business course: marketing, finance, marketplace, business correspondence
Awards
- , Featured application developer on data.gov.uk
- , Member of award-winning teams at Latitude Group & I-COM International
- , Participant of the 17th European Union Contest for Young Scientists - Moscow, Russia
- Project Breathing under water, "How to remove gases from water - and use them to breathe while diving", EUCYS Moscow 2005
- Honorary member of the Russian Youth Scientific (Polytechnic) Society - Moscow, Russia, record № 2 dated
- , 1st prize winner of the 17th European Union Contest for Young Scientists - Bratislava, Slovakia
- 2004, Mathematics & physics contest special prize winner of a national level award
- , Local & regional college contest awards in mathematics, physics, biology
Work samples
Projects, code, IA consultancy and security advisory reports.
Language skills
Slovak (native speaker), fluent speaker with excellent writing in English and Czech, intermediate Polish and German