I am a Full Stack developer, looking for new opportunities to continue to learn, challenge myself, and work with great people to build amazing things.

I trained at Makers Academy (London's leading programming bootcamp), to learn best practices, tools and methodologies, which led me to my Full Stack position at AppScore Technology Ltd.

A summary of the best projects I've worked on. All developed with Test Driven Development, Object Oriented Principles, and XP/Agile methodology. A full summary of all my projects is available here.

At AppScore I championed the use of agile methodologies. Previously the team had little structure in place in terms of creating tickets and planning developments. I introduced more stringent requirements for tickets to be considered ready for development and completed. This has led to an improvement in our ability to estimate work and affect positive development workflow changes in response to retrospective sessions.

The team is only as strong as its members. I mentor a junior developer through group planning sessions, pairing on tickets, and code review. As part of the agile methodology described above, we mob on problems to unblock team members as quickly as possible.

When communicating with non-technical stakeholders, I translate technical details to and from less technical terms easily. Additionally, I have successfully used my ability to communicate, and my experience of good UX/UI design, to persuade clients away from features that would annoy users.

I believe the best way to know if you truly understand something is to communicate it clearly to someone else. With that in mind I maintain a Medium blog of things I learn and want to share my understanding of.

I have worked with a variety of languages, technologies and softwares.

Full Stack Developer (July 2020 to Present)

• Introduced agile methodologies, previously the team had little structure in place in terms of planning and code review
• Identified and have begun to remediate technical debt, replacing poorly abstracted and low level imperative code with an object oriented design
• Mentored a junior developer, offering advice, and guidance through pairing and code review

Digital Communication and Website Manager (Nov 2017 to July 2020)

• Developed thenurserytheatre.com in WordPress, using HTML/CSS/JS/PHP.
• Maintain technical documents to assist users in updating content.
• Renovated Google Ads campaigns, leading to an increase in click through rate.

Freelancer (Aug 2017 to Present)

Generally my work has focused on front-end systems. I have gained good experience of HTML5, CSS3, and preprocessors such as SASS.

• I have implemented UI's in line with customer's brand guidelines, while maintaining a good user experience.
• Improvements I have made have contributed to the growth of in sales of classes and corporate workshops for both The Nursery Theatre and Hoopla Impro.
• Some examples:
  • Heather Urquhart personal website - WordPress
  • Hoopla Impro corporate section - WordPress
  • Gamez Improv - WordPress
  • Front end of Improv Guide - SCSS/Bootstrap/Python/Django
• As part of developing these sites I created graphics using GIMP2/Photopea, and prototyped using Figma.

Marketing and Project Manager (Nov 2015 to Jul 2017)

• This role was to ensure partner/client had all marketing materials and reports provided and their services ran to schedule.
• I set up automated tools for creating white label marketing assets for customers.
• To speed up gathering product data from supplier's online catalogues I developed web-scraping tools in VisualBasic .
• I assisted with development of the proprietary internal portal systems, focusing on UI, UX and QA.

(Feb 2020 to Jun 2020)

• A 16 week intensive programming bootcamp.
• The training is primarily self-led, encouraging students to develop solutions to problems by themselves, in pairs, and in teams.
• Makers champions Agile/XP methodologies and practices, such as pair programming, TDD and OOD.
• I have become familiar with remote working, as the course pivoted to remote work during the COVID-19 lockdown.

(2018 - Present)

• Responsive Web Design Certification - HTML5/CSS3.
• Working towards the Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification - Javascript/ES6.
• FreeCodeCamp profile.

(2018)

• Google Ads search and display networks certifications.

(Sep 2011 to Jun 2015)

• MSci Life Sciences, Graduated with a 2:1
• Specialised in human genetics, with my final year dissertation and project investigating the efficacy of Haplotype Fusion PCR as an assay to detect allele specific copy number variation in the human amylase gene cluster.
• Studies required a methodical approach both in lectures and practical labs.
• Statistics modules involved data processing with R.

(Sep 2006 - Aug 2011)

• A levels - 2 A*s: Psychology, Biology - 2 A's: Chemistry, Physics

• Improvised theatre and comedy - I perform improvised shows with my group, live on stage with no script, based on audience suggestion. Skills from improv have great applications in the workplace too, such as active listening, generating ideas, building trust within teams, and working out of joy instead of fear.

  One of my projects involves improvising with an AI trained on movie scripts!

• Cycling - I enjoy cycling, especially e-bikes.

• Running - I run to keep fit, and sometimes I enjoy it.