Employment and work history

With over 20 years experience in software engineering, including extensive object-oriented analysis, design and programming skills at every stage of the project lifecycle, I have participated in and successfully delivered a large number of IT projects covering everything from Java enterprise systems and high volume web sites (IngentaConnect.com) to software development environments, productivity tools and computer games (see opposite). Flexible, highly motivated and innovative, my advanced technical, problem solving and interpersonal skills, along with my focus on quality and maintainability, give me the proven ability to produce robust, well documented software to a deadline.

I started my programming career in the mid-1980s writing computer games for on the Amstrad CPC platform in Z80 assembler, two of which (Yie Ar Kung-Fu and Green Beret) reached number one in the national charts. I soon moved into writing productivity and image processing software in C and 68000 before taking up a job near Bedford with development tools company HiSoft where I was responsible for developing the highly acclaimed integrated development environment (IDE) for DevPac 3, HighSpeed Pascal and HiSoft BASIC 2 on the Commodore Amiga, as well as being involved in a number of other high-profile projects, including a flight simulator and graphics processing software packages. In 1995, I moved to Exmouth to work for Digita International on an award winning range of productivity software, including Wordworth 3 and Digita Organiser for the Amiga and Windows platforms, the latter of which was written in C++ using entirely object-oriented techniques, and included an user interface layout engine that was able to scale visual elements to accommodate font and language changes ‘on the fly’ — a forerunner to Java’s Swing architecture. I was also heavily involved in systems analysis and project management for Taxability Pro version 3, one of the most popular systems for accountants who calculate personal tax liability, and one of the first to support electronic lodgement (ELS) and the Inland Revenue’s self-assessment system.

After taking a break from software development to study Music Technology at Kingston University, I was offered a job at MousePower, a company specialising in multimedia software and web site development, where I programmed the Wild About Woods interactive kiosk and CD-ROM for the Woodland Trust in Macromedia Director and QuickTime VR, along with several installations for the @Bristol exhibition incorporating the use of touch screen and video technology. In 2001, I moved to Ingenta plc, where I helped develop their electronic journal search and delivery platform, IngentaConnect.com, one of the foremost sources of scientific and academic journals. During this time I implemented a highly flexible web interface templating engine using Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) that has since been used to implement over a hundred different branded web portals for libraries, publishers and corporations worldwide, along with a distributed caching system using JBoss Cache that dramatically improved system performance for Ingenta customers.