About me

I'm a software engineer based in the UK with a focus on the web. I've been developing for the web since the early 2000s with extensive experience in PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and related technologies. I'm a Zend Certified Engineer, and graduated from the University of Kent in 2013 with a degree in Information Technology (including a year in industry).

My main area of work sees me involved with and responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of the back-end systems of high traffic, business critical web applications. These have included financial software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems, payment processing platforms, internal business intelligence tools and monitoring systems.

I have an interest and growing experience with the supporting infrastructure and services of the modern Internet, ranging from network and server hardware to high-availability systems, databases and caching layers. I've been involved with designing and implementing networks ranging from small/medium sized offices to secure data centre networks. I also have extensive knowledge of many of the protocols underpinning applications such as DNS, HTTP and SMTP and how to operate them securely.

I enjoy keeping up with the forever increasing pace of technology, and widening my knowledge where possible into practices such as test driven development (TDD), professionalism, agile processes, automated testing and recently functional programming (Scala). I try to write on my blog about new things I learn in order to help others with similar interests, and have begun contributing things to the open source community where I think they will be useful.