• • Java

    One of the main languages used in the degree was Java, which covered the use of the language, OOO and more advanced topics such as the garbage collector and stack frames and how to use them to optimise code.

  • Databases

    The databases course introduced the concept of relational databases and how SQL is used to control them. We also learnt about what is involved in scaling up the size of a database.

  • Distributed Systems

    Distributed systems introduced the concepts required to create applications and databases which run over a number of different machines.

  • Algorithms

    This course introduced the concepts of algorithms, and what to look out for when creating or choosing an algorithm to solve a specific task. It also introduced a number of useful algorithms.

• • Software Engineering

    Software Enginnering covered the different models for the SDLC, such as the iterative and waterfall models, as well as introducing formal methods for proving the validity of an implementation.

  • AI

    The artifical intelligence work covered the basic concepts of different types of AI, such as decision trees, path finding algorithms and neural nets.

  • Concurrent Systems

    This course built upon the threading introduced in the Java work to go through the concepts of concurrency and the implemetation and use of the methods for providing synchronisation.

  • Data Structures

    In a similar fashion to the algorithms course, this introduced the standard and advanced data structures and what factors to look out for when choosing one to solve a particular problem.

• • Logic And Proof

    The logic & proof couse provided the fundamentals for performing mathematical proofs and creating advanced logic statements.

  • ML

    The use of ML provided an introduction to functional programming and how recursion can be used in practical applications.

  • HCI

    Human Computer interaction focused on the design of user interfaces, specifically the best pratices for a variety of different users and environments.

  • Graphics

    This course covered the algorithms and techniques used to display and improve the graphics on screens, and the algorithms involved in computer vision.

• • Physics

    The Computer Science Tripos involved taking part of the Natural Sciences Tripos, of which I choose Physics.

  • Maths

    The maths parts covered the maths required for the Natural Sciences tripos, as well as discrete mathematics used in formal proofs and probability.

  • Hardware

    The hardware courses covered electronic circuits and the various logical components used to design them, as well as writing Verilog code to program FPGA chips.

  • Security

    The security course introduced a number of the factors involved in creating secure systems and the dangers of providing insufficient security.

• • Unix

    We were given an introduction to the Unix operating system, and the differences with Windows which was used for the majority of the degree.

  • Operating Systems

    The operating systems course introduced the concepts of the various operating systems, such as the CPU scheduling and memory management algorithms.

  • Group Project

    The group project involved designing and creating a hearts game. I was voted in as lead programmer, giving me the responsibility of writing the game engine in Java and co-ordinating the integration of the other parts of the game such as the AI and graphics.

  • Dissertation

    My dissertation involved creating a traffic simulation in Java Swing. The purpose of the simulation was to demonstrate how the vehicles behaved in different traffic conditions, which was implemented using decision tree AI. This was expanded to include a learning algorithm which allowed the simulation to learn how vehicles could change lanes safely. This proved successful, as the testing demonstrated that as the simulation ran, the number of unsuccessful lane changes decreased as the data set used to create the decision tree expanded.

• • GCSEs

    Biology - A*

    
    

    Business Studies - A

    
    

    Chemistry - A

    
    

    Maths - A

    
    

    Electronics - A

    
    

    English Language - A

    
    

    English Literature - B

    
    

    German - C

    
    

    History - A

    
    

    Physics - A*

  • A-Levels

    
    

    Computing - A

    
    

    Economics - A

    
    

    Maths - A

    
    

    Physics - B

PST has developed an electronic performance and tracking system (EPTS) which is used to monitor athletes during training and competition. The data read back from the athletes is analysed and presented to the atheltes or their sports science staff, with the intention of improving the athletes performance and minimising the risks of injury.

The Precision-SSS system consists of a unit attached to each player which contains a GPS device and set of acceleronmeters which can precisely record the movements of the athlete. This data is transmited to a reciever connected to the tablet allowing it to be read by the app and displayed to the user in real time. The data presented is converted by the app into specific sports science metrics and combined with data read back from the PrecisionNet cloud service to provide a comprehensive and targeted summary of the athelte(s) performance during the recording period.

• • C# .Net

    I have personally performed all engine development so far, which has been written in C# .Net. This engine takes advantange of a number of features of the language, including multithreading and networking.

  • Engine

    The engine provides the low level drivers for reading the data from the hardware, as well as the core processes for associating this data with the appropriate players and calculating the various sports science metrics. All of this has to be perfomed in real time and the data saved for future reference.

  • Cloud

    The PrecisionNet cloud platform collects all of the data recorded from athetes using the system and identifies trends and patterns. These are then communictaed with the software to provide appropriate feedback and comparisons for the individual athelte.

  • Management

    As Technical Director I am responsible for the delivery of all of the technology within PST. This includes the direct management of a number of overseas software developers who helped to create the interface for Precision-SSS.

• • WPF / XAML

    I have written the majority of the interface, in conjuction with some overseas contractors. The development has been performed in WPF XAML so that it is compatible with the c# engine and runs on Windows.

  • App

    The app is currently designed to run on a Windows 10 tablet, making use of libraries for communicating over USB and Bluetooth and for creating a real time visualisation of the data read from the hardware and PrecisionNet.

  • Hardware

    The hardware developed includes the unit for recording the information about the athlete and the receiver for collecting the data. I oversee the development of the hardware and its integration with the software.

  • Support

    I am responsible for providing the support to the users as required, either directly or through co-ordinating the support team. The support consists of fixing any issues which are found, or working with particular teams and athletes to develop new features which meet their demands.

I worked as a senior member of a large development team that was responsible for an award winning platform for optimising the storage of billions of pounds worth of shares and other financial derivatives throughout the company by identifying where the firm had both bought and sold shares, and only keeping the minimum trades necessary. This platform saved millions of pounds for the company a year and was released to different teams around the world.

I was also part of a global team which was responsible for a system for routing thousands of financial transactions a day. This was critical for the trading desks as the transactions were routed into the database allowing the desks to see their risk exposure immediately. My primary focus within the teams was to improve the resiliency of the systems through implementing a number of new release procedures and improving the testing frameworks which resulted in a significant reduction to the downtime and maintenance costs for both systems.

• • Slang

    The majority of the development was performed in Slang, which is an interpreted OOO based scripting language. Due to the high volume of transactions and processing and complecity of the code, the scripts required careful design and optimisation.

  • Global Team

    Being part of a global team required co-developing with people all over the world. This required extensive and clear documentation as well as regular meetings to ensure that all development remained co-ordinated and in sync.

  • Unix

    The servers which ran the code for distributing the transaction information ran on Unix, which required an appreciation of the OS and how to setup the processes.

  • Management

    As a senior member of the team, the role required a significant amount of management and leadership. This was particularly required when setting up the new release and testing procedures, as they increased the work required to make changes and so the significant advantages they introduced needed to be communicated and advocated.

• • SecDB

    All of the transactions created by the systems were stored in the database SecDB, which is a globally distributed relational database.

  • Release

    One of the major problems of the development was that the large global developer base meant that a vast number of changes were made daily, ofen without full testing. I implemented a number of new release procedures which allowed us to see all changes made to the relavent code for our systems and prevented these changes from going into production until we had performed all of our own tests and were satisfied that they would work. The release would then occur in a controlled way to minimise the chances of anything breaking.

  • Testing

    Before I arrived the testing of the system was performed in an incomplete and ad-hoc way. I pushed to increase the test coverage and also implemted new processes to make it much easier to run the tests. These were linked to the new release procedues to guarentee that full tests were run on all code released. I also designed and implemented automatic tests which compared the output of different versions of the code, which ensured that the only differences in the code released to that in production are expected.

  • Support

    The team was responsible for a number of existing systems which were actively used by the trasing desks and therefore had to be supported. The support ofent involved having to fix issues in unfamiliar code while ensuring the traders were prevented from getting upset, within very tight timescales due to the nature and speed of trading.

GIS has created a high performance industiral inkjet printing engine. This market leading engine was capable of converting any image or custom designed input into print data for a vast array of printheads in real time. This greatly exceeded any other product available and allowed previously impossible print runs to be performed, such as continuously printing tiles with a unique natural effect pattern on each one.

Having joined the company when it was a small start-up, I played a crucial role in it growing into an extremely successful and Queens award winning medium sized company, and as such my role constantly changed and grew. I initially joined the software team and soon became responsible for leading the architecture and development of the high performance core software system. Later on I became the Applications Manager, which still required me to work on the full development stack but also involved working on projects which could not be fulfilled by the standard software product.

• • C++ & MFC

    The core engine was developed in C++, with MFC for the simpler interfaces. Due to the complexity and scale of the architecture, extensive use of object orientation and software engineering principles were required to keep the code manageable.

  • Performance

    In order to provide real time printing at the maximum speed allowed by the printheads, the engine had to process and download Gigabytes of data per second. This required complex use of C++ to create highly parallelised and optimised code.

  • Full Stack

    For a long time I was the only software developer, and then led the architecture when the team expanded. Because of this it was necessary that I was significantly involved in all parts and stages of the development.

  • Agile

    The small development team and rapidly changing nature of the market and customer requirements meant that all development was performed in an agile fashion, to ensure that priorites could be changed quickly and releases were produced frequently.

• • C# WPF

    I wrote the more complicated interfaces in C# WPF in order to take advantage of a number of features in the language as well as the speed of development.

  • Release

    To ensure the release process was controllable, we introduced the Hudson (and later Jenkins) release management system as well as controls on the software versions. This provided us with an effecient method for controlling exactly what was run in production as well as making supporting legacy systems much easier.

  • QA

    In addition to my software roles, I was also the QA manager. This gave me the responsibility for setting the test standards, guiding where and how the testing was performed and writing or describing the test scripts procedures to be used in the testing.

  • Management

    Being the lead software architect and manager of special projects required a significant amount of leadership and management, as I needed to guide the architecture as well as tutor and motivate junior members of the team.

• • Python

    The QA test scripts and other utility scripts were written in Python. This allowed them to be developed and maintained quickly by a range of developers, which still ensuring they were complex enough to fully test the features in the software.

  • Special Projects

    My role as Applications Manager still required me to work on the core development stack but also involved working on projects which could not be fulfilled by the standard software product. This usually required me to develop specific and challenging software and algorithms often on my own and to strict time constraints.

  • TCP/IP

    The core application operated a remote client server architectiure,. This required me to implement and maintain a high performance and crucially a reliable TCP/IP infrastructure to allow the applications to communicate for the lifetime of the print run.

  • Support & Documentation

    I provided the technical lead for the customer support team, which involved a significant amount of customer interaction. I never lost focus on how important the support was to the continued success of the company and we earned a glowing reputation throughout the industry for the quality of our customer care. I also wrote a significant amount of technical documentation in order to reduce the workload of the support team.

During the summer I worked in the QA department of Rebellion Games testing the latest games in development. My tasks involved playing through the games looking for bugs, and testing particular sections or for specific problems.

• • Testing

    My primary focus was on testing the games in development. This included searching for ways to reproduce particular bugs seen in development, testing specific areas or free testing an entire game.

  • Bug Tracking

    Any bugs found had to be added to the bug tracking database. This required a clear description of the bug as well as precise instructions to repriduce them.

  • Reports

    In addition to testing for bugs, I was often asked to test finished games which were being evaluated by the publisher arm of the company. This involved writing a formal report of the game summarising the strengths and weaknesses, as well as a recommendation about whether the game was worth taking on.

  • Team

    Being part of the QA team meant that I had to work closely with the other members to ensure that all work was co-ordinated and completed, as well as following the instructions from the management to ensure my work was focussed and correct.

While on a STEP (Shell Technology Enterprise Programme) placement, I was responsible for improving and expanding the intranet web pages for the company’s QA team. As a result of the new pages developed, the efficiency and rate of bug finding of the QA team measureably increased significantly.

• • Perl

    The majority of the code was written in Perl. A significant number of new scripts had to be developed as well as maintanence of existing scripts.

  • SQL

    The main purpose of the pages were to read data from the internal databases and display it in a user friendly way. The database access was performed through SQL and integrated with the Perl code through DBI.

  • HTML

    The intranet web pages were developed in HTML, which integrated with the Perl code through CGI.

  • Requirements

    The role required me to consult the end users in the QA team to gather requirements, and then work by myself in turning the vague requirements into actual implementations.