Experience
2018
REVL
Lead iOS Developer
Taking on an large existing codebase can be challenging, however, initially, the main struggle here was that there no process from design to development, after speaking with the founder, we created a number of procedures which helped myself and another developer focus on the actual development and allowed the founder to know exactly where we were on each feature. In addition we became more engaged in the design phase which allowed us to suggest best practice and often quicker and more intuitive solutions.
2017
HELIX
Lead iOS Developer
Working directly with clinicians and designers we created an in house (St Mary's Hospital) app for facilitating the clinicians and patients with Asthma communicate via an engaging and fun to use app. I was absolutely fundamental in the UX for this app and as this was initially an MVP I took every step possible to get a first version in users hands as quickly as possible, iterating on that feedback we refined the UX and I went further into the development process refining and refactoring. This was an especially enjoyable role, as the client was getting massive value from me as I was able to guide the team into easy win solutions, rather than have a fragmented design and development situation.
2016
Buddi
Lead iOS Developer
It was literally an honour to work with Sara Murray (OBE) on this suite of apps! The requirement was to create an app, called Nudge, that interfaced with a wearable bluetooth wristband that has an emergency button that can enact certain actions within the app. There was a rough UX for this but I went ahead and created a full set of wireframes that showed all action paths through the app, we were then able to iron out any problems at this early stage. The development of this app was really enjoyable as other than the bluetooth and communications to a server, the app was quite simple, but we made up for it with a beautiful interface to entice users back into the app. In addition to the Nudge app, I created two other apps which worked together to create a Contact and Connect combination for monitoring elderly relatives.
2015
Disciple Media
iOS Developer
Developed from scratch by myself and one other iOS developer we used strict TDD to create this app for a well funded startup. The app is a white-labeled social media app, now used by acts such as The Rolling Stones, Rudimental and loads more! Great to work with such a high calibre team on a fantastic product.
2014-2015
HUAWEI
Research and Development for Indoor Location (iOS)
Working in the Research and Development office in Cork, Ireland and in conjunction with Vodafone and Bloomberg creating an indoor location solution, wow this contract ticked all the boxes! Id worked on location services on TomTom and the Miltrack apps, but this solution was to track users through airports, buildings and shops using bluetooth beacons using proprietary algorithms. I was the sole MVP developer here, the goal was to create and innovate solutions for the tracking of the users creating a ‘unique algorithm’ and, as importantly create a toolset for technicians to be able to deploy the beacons in site. I was in my element here completely overseeing the entire software effort.
2014
NFL
iOS Developer
I have worked on many polished apps but the NFL Connect app beats all other hands down in terms of design and finish, an absolutely beautiful app. It is a game to play along while watching an NFL game whereby you try and predict certain events happening within a game. A series of interesting solutions to standard problems including using Cocoa Pods to manage internal dependencies (I would have preferred git submodules) and a very distributed uncommunicative team over many time zones really made this a challenging app to work on, however we got the app out ready for the superbowl! A fantastic achievement for all the team given that the codebase was also used over many SKUs to support different sports.
2014
Immerse Learning
Lead iOS Developer
The purpose of the app when I arrived was to help teachers teach to students that were in a remote location, but to be able to cooperate in a virtual world, such as an oil rig to give guided tours and to give safety meetings in other languages etc As I entered service here there was already a unity app that housed the 3d environment, I created an iOS app that housed and communicated with the unity component, for the iOS app I also created a chat client and other periphery displays that sat around and interacted with the main unity component to create a cohesive solution.
2013-2014
Hotels.com
iOS Developer
A recruiter approached me with trepidation suggesting that I apply for what is considered by many as the most difficult job interview in town! I could not possibly decline this challenge, I really enjoyed the technical challenges and talking about my strategies and success stories I bonded immediately with this team of the utmost geeky yet fun people. Rather like myself. My first concern here was that although they believed they had been implementing TDD, in reality the team had just been creating unit tests after writing code, this is not TDD and doesn't really help create more reliable or refactorable code so I took my TDD experience and suggested practices whereby we spec tests at the ticket level, and develop the test prior to creating the feature code. Another concern that I had was that we had no user interaction testing. Within a week I had integrated and automated the KIF testing framework to do a simple sweep over the app, most importantly to test the user interface for every territory / language. We found that in many configurations the app wasn't displaying any hotels and crashing in certain situations. As well as the test work I spent the rest of my extended contract developing new features for the app, a fantastic team to work with and I learned a lot.
2013
UBS
iOS Developer
The app was already half functioning as is often the case when brought into a digital agency. iPad support was required by UBS with a new set of designs, given that the code design was rather non modular this required quite large scale refactoring, by first preparing a set of UI tests and expected results, the job was made easier and a whole more confident when handing over to UBS.
2013
LShift
iOS Developer
Used by investment bankers paying a very high subscription fee this app was built to the utterly highest standards using strict TDD and UI testing. It is quite rare to have such detailed UX designs and complete assets from a design agency but given that was the case here made our (three developer's) life a lot easier, and enabled us to concentrate on creating a product as close to the design as possible. Most interesting on this project was the communications protocol that we created which included a git-like-rollback mechanism for transaction like updates of the back end.
2012
JP Morgan
iOS Developer
Working on site at the Glasgow Technology Centre I was given three independent projects to oversee. We purchased existing apps, and bolted a login onto the user interface and added changed the app to be able to pass penetration testing etc. The three apps were quite diverse yet formed to create a set of useful tools for professional bankers. 1) A map zooming animation tool for the iPad for the company to use in meetings. 2) An iPad screen sharing app using an iPad hosted http server and gamekit to show the finger positions of the host. 3) A to do list app specific to the needs of bankers. I started this role by taking other apps that had login added and began to extract that code into a fully reusable component (amazingly it already was not) and used a git submodule that the other apps could build from. From there it became a far simpler process to add the login component when more apps were purchased by the company.
2012
Vyclone
iOS Developer
By stitching together videos shot by multiple users, the is the ideal tool for producing shareable content during live events like concerts, weddings and family gatherings. Ahead of its time and used by artists such as Ed Sheeran to create a viral buzz for events.
2012
Samsung 2012 Olympic Games Team
Lead iOS Developer
This was a deadline that wasn't going to be moved and we only had a couple of months to get this finished. Working as lead developer for iOS with a project manager, Android and server developers, this was a small team with a lot of drive and excitement. The app was an absolute joy to code and use, it allowed the user to create avatars by taking a masked out picture of the user's face, the back end then created a video to post on facebook where you appeared with David Beckham, Victoria Pendleton and Jamie Oliver in the video. The guts of the app was a gps tracking running app whereby for every mile the user runs they raise a pound for charity. Your friends could see you real time and send you audio messages that were played as you ran. This was just the app for me given my participation in Ironman and having worked on two very large GPS apps prior to this. Complexities here included a sliding window cheat detection algorithm and handling offline states and interrupting the audio queue while the app was in the background.
2011
Vouchercloud
Lead iOS Developer
The company already had an MVP in existance, by myself and later working with a co developer we bought the app into a stable 2 million download app, and within 6 months the company was bought out by Vodafone for £12million. The app has a fantastic simple interface and deals with issues such as deailign with limited redemption codes hwe offline etc, which can be quite troublesome.
2009 - 2010
TomTom
iOS Developer
Developing the main TomTom app for the iPhone with 3 other teammates. My role was focussed on the user interface. The software used a really unique technical solution. A virtual symbian operating system in c++ running in the background inside the iPhone. This is to run the mapping code that is standard across all clients. The iPhone user interface code interacts with the c++ code, via an abstraction layer. I really enjoyed working on this app and it did set me up for an awesome career in iOS development as I touched many areas of the SDK including audio, threading, quartz graphics, Location, and a complex google places integration.
Education
2000
Staffordshire University
MSc Software Engineering
I studied part time to gain my MSc in Software Engineering over 5 years.