Experienced software engineer, with nearly 30 years in the industry; broad experience with many technologies, across different industries - utilities, telcos, local government, and financial services. Wide-ranging interests, non-conventional background. Curious, persistent, and detail focused.

Download resume

Principal Software Engineer

• Coding Java, Python, Javascript. Simple, strong patterns, reusability. Huge fan of Advent of Code.
• Data SQL (PostgreSQL + others); NoSQL (DynamoDB + others); Graph (Neptune, Neo4J)
• Cloud Native Experienced AWS developer. Close links to AWS NZ, evaluation of beta products.
• Automation Infrastructure as code - Terraform/OpenTofu, CloudFormation.
• Visualisation Pictures tell a thousand words. Excel, GraphViz, Processing. Lucid for diagrams. New Relic and Grafana for monitoring and observability.
• Soft skills Outstanding analysis, documentation and communication skills. Investigations and incident management. Observability.

Corporate Clients and Employers

CLEAR / TelstraClear / Vodafone, Telecom NZ and Chorus (telcos); Vector, United Networks, TrustPower, Horizon (electricity); Auckland City Council; Fiserve (mobile banking); Dexibit (analytics); the University of Auckland.

Recent roles

My story

A lead / principal software engineer, I work in a wide range of technologies, in a diverse set of companies and industries, particularly building cloud native solutions with AWS and open source software.

My current role is Principal Engineer with Vector Technology Solutions, which includes a strategic alliance with AWS. We are building a new data and analytics platform, streaming data in close to real-time from millions of gas & electricity meters, looking to support industry efficiency and innovation. Entirely Cloud Native and serverless, we’re using both existing AWS technology and custom technology developed by AWS specifically for our projects. We have three systems already deployed to Production in Australia and New Zealand, and we're doing some very interesting things, at very interesting scales.

Prior to that, I worked two Senior Java Developer contracts : one with MessageMedia, building microservices for their communications platform; and before that, at the University of Auckland, building integrations between systems in AWS with Spring Boot and Kafka, and an API in NodeJS Lambdas and RDS & DynamoDB databases for the new student guide.

Previous projects have covered a lot of ground : I spent around 15 years building spatial systems, primarily with Smallworld, but also bespoke mobile solutions; and a career high-point project was NAE, the Network Allocation Engine used by TelstraClear / Vodafone to support automatic provision of voice and broadband services on the newly unbundled copper and fibre networks.

Side projects include a student database for my old Kung Fu school, developing both front-end and back-end; and some explorations of game simulations : my investigation of poker is complete, my chess engine is mostly finished, and I've got pieces of a Scrabble simulation ready. I'm always interested in visualisations and ways of communicating information effectively; and currently I'm 'programming' music with both Sonic Pi and a digital modular synthesizer VCV. I've also tinker with Raspberry PIs, Arduinos and doing some IoT projects - however, during lockdown I became slightly obsessed with Factorio, a most detailed and absorbing engineering game : I think every software engineer should be playing this.

Personal

Born in Kenya, raised internationally in the UK, Malawi, Tanzania, have lived in Nepal and studied in Wales and California, now settled in New Zealand with British and New Zealand citizenship. Married with 3 awesome grown-up kids (two engineers, and a builder : so when the zombie apocalypse comes, we'll be looking for medical and farming skills to complete the set). For fun I train in Kung Fu and potter around with music, playing both piano and (virtual) modular synthesizers; I have some software and hardware projects on the go; and I have a cat and a tank full of tropical fish. The lockdown fish babies are growing up nicely, but my beloved dog passed away at the end of 2020, and is sorely missed.