Experienced Senior DevOps engineer looking for DevSecOps roles
Royal Holloway, University of London : MSc Cyber Security distance student Sept 2024 -> Present Distance learning student studying a 4 year low-intensity Masters degree in Cyber Security with academic direction from Royal Holloway, in the evenings via the University of London's Distance Learning platform.
Various : Principal Consulting Engineer Jan 2024 -> Oct 2024
- Worked for two major defence and government software consulting organisations (British Aerospace Intelligence Systems and CGI UK Ltd).
- Up-skilled in cloud and DevOps technologies, including studying for the AWS Architect Associate Certification.
- Decided that the atmosphere was not for me, and left to pursue other opportunities.
Sabbatical : Personal Projects Feb 2023 -> Jan 2024
- Beat cancer (full remission, cured)
- Worked on up-skilling on personal projects such as my home lab
- Worked on building out my VWorkbench project, a extensive Linux development environment
- Worked part-time in the music industry DJing on Twitch.tv, earning money every week and also raising a lot of money for charity from my home music studio
Kaboodle Ltd : Senior DevOps Automation Engineer Jan 2021 -> Jan 2023
- Working in the DevOps team, I used Docker, Docker Compose, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Cypress.io, Postman, Newman and Node.js to implement test automation and software development DevOps, with an objective of allowing the team to deliver faster and more accurately.
- I developed an extensive and advanced technical testing strategy for the entire organisation.
ITV Plc : QA Engineer October 2019 -> November 2020
- Working on exploratory testing and automated testing for the accounting system that pays the on-screen talent in ITV. I had exposure to: Java, Python, MicroServices, Docker, RabbitMQ, Cucumber, MySQL and some JavaScript.
Arm Ltd (now NVIDIA) : Senior DevOps/Test Engineer June 2017 -> October 2019
- A hands-on very technical software engineering role, combining DevOps and CI administration/management, as well as test automation and some elements of exploratory testing, for a High Performance Computing C++/Fortran compiler.
- I used Make, Jenkins, Bash, C++, Python, GoCD and the Robot framework.
BBC : Senior Software Engineer September 2010 -> June 2017
- I spent almost 7 years working at the BBC as a Senior Software Engineer. I worked in several teams. I took a Senior Engineer role in Hive CI, a continuous integration system to automate mobile and smart TV device testing. This involved development in Node.js and Ruby, on a virtualised Linux stack. Technologies used: Calabash, Appium, AWS, Android, iOS, Linux, Bash, Ruby.
- I spent a year working as a Test Manager and leading a team of 3 contractors, being responsible for their output. I worked as a Software Engineer on high volume Smart TV web applications using Java/Spring/Tomcat, using BDD with Ruby/Cucumber and TDD with JUnit and Mockito.
- I worked as a Software Reliability Engineer on the broadcast end of the BBC's architecture, maintaining and supporting the uptime of systems which served up content that is delivered on live BBC TV. I patched these systems in Java, Perl and MHEG, and did a lot of work reconfiguring and supporting these deployments.
Royal Holloway, University of London : MSc Cyber Security - 4 year low intensity distance learning 2024 -> Present
Point Blank Music School Online : Undergrad Modules in BA Sound Engineering & Music Production 2019 -> 2024
Open University : Undergrad Modules in Linux, Java and Maths for Science 2010 -> 2013
University of Sussex : BSc(Hons) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence 2001 -> 2005
CGI UK Ltd : Lloyd Swale / Software Engineer "David made an invaluable contribution to my start at CGI."
Kaboodle Ltd : Robert Godwin / QA Lead "David is a very knowledgeable Automation Engineer who strives to share and implement ideas to streamline process and QA through Automation. In relation to QA, David utilises his knowledge to apply discipline to support Development squads adhere to the Definition of Done and also provides coaching plus useful articles to assist fellow colleagues in upskilling. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend David."
ITV Ltd : Alexander Bramham / Software Engineer "Working with David on an award-winning project was a joy. He brings a professional experienced perspective and excellent attention to detail. I am happy to recommend David and wish him the best in his future career."
Arm Ltd : Caroline Concatto / Software Engineer "I met David when we worked together in the DevOps team. I had just joined the company, and I was assigned to join the DevOps team. The team was moving all its CI/CD to a new platform. It was good to work with David. I've learned about scripts, Makefiles, CMakes and hacks with him. We reviewed each other scripts, work and also discussed ideas. I used to help him at release time. We applied and collected the test results for the compiler releases. David was careful to analyse the compiler output results. He was the first in line to check and diagnose the compiler fault and with that information, he used to assign tasks to the compiler engineers. David was responsible to take care of the test plan for the compiler. He suggested and implemented new tests to improve the compiler quality and to avoid regressions. I could see him talking with compiler engineers, team leaders and managers to understand new features added to the compiler. When he left it took some time to replace David with a new DevOps person because the tasks that he was doing were complex and broad."
BBC : Angus Bisset / Broadcast Engineering Team Leader "David is a highly skilled software engineer, with a calm and considered demeanour, always able to tackle the most complicated engineering problems, even in high pressure situations. He's a pleasure to work with and a great asset to any team fortunate enough to have him."