Employment History
Sept 2001 - Present Orange (Leeds) - Team Leader / Principal Developer
Leading UK ISP and Mobile Phone company. Large scale J2EE platform developers, vast and diverse legacy systems.
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The last 6 years at Orange have been spent working on very large scale Enterprise Java applications.
Projects Undertaken :
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Design and Implementation of a 'multiplatform' REST integration layer which exposes Orange data directly to customers over the open internet
This is a cutting edge Spring MVC based REST application featuring distributed caching.
Primarilly this application is used to implement features for the IPHONE but the REST api's can be called by any client in the same way (hence it's being termed 'multiplatform')
This application is developed and maintained using cutting edge agile tools and methodologies and has massively increased the ability of Orange to expose new features to customers with speed.
The entire application can be developed and tested within a virtual machine which can be distributed to any number of developers. Everything required to run up the application (including extensive webservices stubs and a full Oracle database) is contained within the VM
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Design and Implementation of online Self-Care, allowing customers to retrieve passwords, view statements, change their billing methods/details, and other utilities
This is a struts/spring based application utilising an EJB2 middleware layer via RMI and WebServices.
This application is built using agile methodology and modern J2EE design principles.
- Design and Implementation for migration of legacy self-care systems to J2EE n-tier platforms
- List of work carried out in 8 years too long to list.
Reason for leaving :
Orange helped me to buy a house and raise children. They've paid me well and given me an opportunity to work at the highest level. I have a very strong commitment to them.
But my desire to drive incessently up the beaurocratic waterfall in order to spawn the tiniest innovation has dried up.
2000 - Sept 2001 FLG21 (Leeds) - Software Developer
Software House and Consultancy. General IT work, mainly web programming. PR Consultancy.
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Projects Undertaken :
Reason for leaving :
Company sold, made redundant.
2000 - Short Period of Self Employment
Self Employment. Order tracking tools, client side shopping cart, e-commerce shop selling workwear, IT consultancy.
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Reason for leaving :
Got the experience necessary to get a job.
Oct 1997 - Supervisory and Industrial Control Systems Ltd (Bradford) - Engineer
Engineering Process Control 'systems house' and Consultancy. Water treatment, Aluminium production, food and beverages.
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Projects Undertaken :
- Undertook Upgrade of MMI/SCADA systems and software (including design and implementation of software) on location in Dubai.
- Undertook almost entire project to create a PLC5/PanelView system for water Pumping station.
- PLC5/PanelView system for Fume Treatment Plant (including PICS plant simulation)
- Designed and implemented a Modbus Telemetry system for pumping station.
- Re-engineering of Dexterity-Ingress system into Adroit-MSSQL system for Y2K Compliance. On site, Imperial Tobacco Nottingham.
- Creation of PICS Plant Simulation of Sausage production plant, borehole abstraction plant and fume treatment plant.
- Wrote ActiveX Components for access to HDA compliant Database system using DCOM (Visual Basic).
- Excel VBA Tools for Data Conversion/Manipulation.
- Development of a demonstration system (for SIPC to show to customers) using Siemens PCS 7.
- Sections of major work for Scottish Courage using Rockwell Process Pak
- Much on site PLC code debugging and plant commissioning in various locations in the UK
- General Database/SQL Work.
- General Systems Design and documentation
- General Y2K work.
- Technical Document Writing
- Became champion in push for 'Tick-IT' approval and ISO 9001 certification, created ISO9000 quality manual
Reason for leaving :
The Internet, wow!
Feb 1997 - Oct 1997 Dickinson Control Systems Ltd. (Manchester) - Engineer
Engineering Process Control 'systems house' and Consultancy. Food and Beverages, Water Treatment, Baggage Handling.
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Projects Undertaken :
- Designed, Developed, on site commissioned an InTouch SCADA system supervising a batch cotton bleaching process.
- Designed and Developed a FIX SCADA system supervising a margarine production process.
- Designed and Developed a PLC5-PanelView system controlling and monitoring a water treatment works.
- Created Excel VBA Tools suite for complex user data manipulation.
- Created an SQL link to 3rd party remote database from InTouch SCADA Package.
- Lots of Technical Document writing
Reason for leaving :
Commute became too difficult, also got better job offer.
July 1996 - Jan 1997 Motron Dynamics Ltd. (Barnsley) - Engineer
Engineering Robotics, Automation, pneumatic control, Embedded and turnkey systems design and development
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Projects Undertaken :
- Adapted off the shelf axis control systems to work with pneumatic motors
- Designed built and demonstrated a multi-axis pick and place robot using off the shelf motion control systems.
- Designed built and commissioned an automated machine (Mitsubishi FX0 PLC) to package zip drive shutters into trays as they left the multi-stage press
- Designed and had manufactured a multilayer PCB signal conditioning device
- Designed, built, Installed and semi-commissioned a pick and place robot to create carpet sample 'deck boards'
- Fault fixed a pick and place robot used to palletize tins of paint at Cuprinol.
- Wrote embedded C software code for several turnkey pick and place robots.
Reason for leaving :
Company went out of business
1986-1991 Pre-University
The first part of my working life was spent in the manufacturing industry as a Welder/Fitter/Machinist etc.