About

Since 2009 I have worked at Bristol-based web development / digital agency Wired Media both on placement as part of my degree and post-grad.

Gaining experience using

• PHP frameworks (Symfony & CakePHP) to build highly scalable websites and applications.
• Puppet for automating the provisioning, patching, and configuration of operating system and application components across infrastructure.
• Wired CMS and more recently WordPress for content management, ecommerce systems and brochure websites.
• Extending the in-house CMS as a wedding planning and management product.
• Linux & Windows server maintenance on local machines and the Rackspace Cloud.
• Integrating various systems with payment gateways including Google, PayPal, Sage and WorldPay.
• Working with numerous REST & SOAP API’s spanning from social media to integrations with till-checkout systems.

Leading strategies including

• Silex & Heroku for lightweight Facebook applications.
• Migration from Subversion to Git for source control.
• An improved deployment strategy using Capistrano.
• Titanium for iOS and Android development.

During my second year studying at UWE I ran weekly one hour sessions for first year students as part of the Peer Assisted Learning scheme. The sessions covered the basics of frontend development and PHP for database and API interactions.

The sessions I ran received praise from students, staff and peers alike, and through them my confidence was boosted and knowledge solidified.

As part of the scheme I was trained in the subject areas of:

• Body posture & voice training.
• Assertiveness.
• Engaging the audience.

The scheme helped me improve my communication and presentational skills- key ones, that have been useful on a daily basis in my professional career.

For more information check out the PAL website, my PAL session content and the subsequent years of PAL leadership that have led on from my original sessions: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.