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CodewarsI want to build cool things, solve challenging problems and one day mentor and help people in an industry I love!
Why me?
I'm ready to jump into any challenge. Learning and growing is the aim of the game so that I can one day help others learn and grow.
Prior to being a graduate from the Makers Software Development bootcamp, I was a customer support specialist working in a wide variety of fields from retail to client facing roles in tech and tech education.
Having spent all this time in tech and having previous interest outside of my employment in tech has only ever drawn me closer into wanting to learn how to build and develop these technologies and the idea that I can be a part of building something that someone might use and love is something that excites me greatly.
I'm extremely keen to bring my widespread knowledge of different technologies and client facing experience into tech that will undoubtedly help shape how I build and develop new software.
Taking this a step further, a goal of mine would be to look into mentoring and helping others. Having previously worked in Japan, teaching English as a foreign language has driven me to want to learn more and eventually grow into a developer that can mentor and support other developers in their journey.
| Project | Description | Technologies |
|---|---|---|
| Spotivibes | Our Makers final project. Built to help you find music that matches your mood, we incorporated keyword sentiment analysis and image recognition to help you find a song that matches your mood. You can find the project deployed here. |
NodeJS, ExpressJS, React, HTML, CSS, Spotify Web API, Google Natural Language Sentiment API and Google Cloud Vision API |
| Acebook | During this group project, we were asked to create a Facebook clone. During this project we focused on agile working styles and how they fit into our teams as well as understanding how to build our first Ruby on Rails project. | Ruby on Rails, HTML and SCSS, Bootstrap, Travis CI, RSpec and Capybara |
| Bank Tech Test | This was a practice tech test during Week 10 of the Makers course where we had to create a virtual bank. A key focus during this project was to work on my planning and documentation of the project. |
Ruby, HTML |
During my time at both Makers and Buzz Radar, I spent extensive time testing and troubleshooting hardware. That allowed me to learn more about technology I was using but also meant that I would be able to aid with any other issues like this in the future. In the past, I attended CES in Las Vegas to provide both hardware and software troubleshooting support to the team and with my understanding of code, I was able to troubleshoot more software related issues onsite and provide tangible and concise information back to the developers back in the UK so that they could repair the issue remotely.
My experience here dates back as far as 2010 when I worked in retail at O2 Telefonica advising customers for new tech and mobiles of the time. Since then I have gone on (post university graduation) to work in Japan teaching English as a foreign language. This supported my teaching style which carried over into my next role working with clients such as STA Travel, Ogilvy and Mindshare.
These roles combined required product knowledge and public speaking skills that allowed me to lead regular training sessions with clients where technical expertise and explanations were required.
Using the skills and knowledge I acquired in my years of customer support and previous teaching experience has allowed me to pick up mentoring skills. I would like to see this continue to grow deep into my software development career.
Learning how to apply industry-standard best practices to write clean code to solve problems
- Applying industry-standard practices:
- OOP, TDD and BDD, with testing frameworks: RSpec, Jasmine, Jest
- Learning skills to become programming language agnostic using: Ruby, Rails, Javascript, NodeJS, Express, React, HTML5/CSS
- User Stories, Domain Modeling: CRC, UML, Wireframes diagrams
- Linting, code quality, test coverage with rubocop, eslint, simplecov
- CI/CD pipeline with TravisCI, CircleCI and Heroku
- Agile (~2 week) group projects: Trello, MVP, pairing in 2-day sprints, stand-ups, mood check-ins and retros
C#, C++, Java, Javascript, MatLab, .net Framework Software development with some Computer Science fundamentals: PC Architecture, Operating Systems, OOP, Networking
The degree also consisted of:
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Product/User design and development
- Product/Market research, user modeling and storyboarding
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Film and TV production
- Sound and psychoacoustics, broadcast media and webcasting
I was also part of the video games and animation Society during this time.
Customer support associate for all initial enquiries through phone, email or office visits.
- Supporting existing students through face-to-face interaction or through support related channels such as Slack.
- Creating, editing and managing front end support videos and written content.
- Responsible for rebuilding and facilitating the event streaming and recording infrastructure for the marketing team (and wider business) which is then broadcasted at a wide scale using Facebook Live.
- Supporting team members for company wide events that are held both internally & externally.
- Aiding the Marketing team with ideas and plans for customer interaction through channels such as social and blogs.
- Using tools such as Hubspot, Groove and Google Business Suite to streamline customer and student communication.
Makers Environment and Support
Customer support manager and support lead for all bespoke Buzz Radar related properties both SaaS and hardware related support.
- CRM lead & primary support for existing customers running 24/7 SaaS system integrations in both office spaces as well as end customer facing stores and outlets.
- CRM and knowledge base management for all processes and support for bespoke Buzz Radar platform.
- Implemented, tested and managed live chat system with integrated bot and knowledge base.
- Supporting the internal development team with bug fixes as well as suggesting design elements ideas that suit the needs of the customers.
- Supporting the development team with testing of new products and features during design and development phase of the SaaS products.
A brief introduction into Buzz Radar
- ⌨ Building custom things: I have a deep rooted love for building custom PCs and have recently forayed into building mechanical keyboards
- 💻 Tech: I have a general interest in modern trends in Tech (Mobile devices, Computers, Software) and have been lucky enough to attend the largest tech show in the world, CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.
✈️ Traveling & Languages: I have a general love of traveling and have gained my Japanese language skills during my 1.5 years working in Japan.- 🎲 Games: Love all things games! Board-, card-, and video-.
- 🎮 Esports: Whilst I'm not the most athletic person, I have a huge love for esports and competitive gaming. Especially games like League of Legends and Rainbow Six Siege.