Mark Paxton

| Wednesday, February 19th, 2020

Experienced full stack software engineer, extensive knowledge in web application architecture and development and a proven track record within the private and public sector. Passionate about making simple, well engineered technology that makes a difference to its users.
• Over 10 years experience working with Java, C# .NET, Javascript and HTML/CSS.
• Recent experience with Angular 8, Node, functional programming with Scala, Play Framework
• Integrational knowledge of Perl, C, Go and highly adaptable to programming languages
• Knowledge of REST, Microservices, Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD tools and Linux servers
I have worked in a variety of roles, and with small and large teams and throughout the product life cycle. I am can work independently to solve key problems and collaborate with my team to share and improve understanding. I have in depth insight into the use of agile methods and have mentored colleagues and taken the lead in agile transformations when necessary.

Client summary: ShellNATO Information and Communications Agency (Consulting via IBM)Home Office (Consulting via BJSS)HMCTS, Ministry of Justice (Consulting via Wisereach)Valuation Office AgencyHMRC (Consulting via Equal Experts)Verisk Wood MackenzieKaarbontech LtdHoliday-Weather.comHorsebridge LtdSearoc LtdAccentureOrdnance SurveyInnaxys LtdNodal NetworksResearch Fellow (Java, Javascript, Android, PHP): Horizon Digital Economy Research, University of Nottingham

Experience:

Shell (August 2019 - January 2020)

• Working on a C# .NET application for geological modelling and simulation to reduce environmental impact of the petrochemical industry
• The work includes turning high level requirements from e and technical architects into smaller implementable features to deliver within each sprint
• This has included extensive application design work using CQRS services, generic components and an MVVM approach to create encapsulated reusable UI and API
• I was also instrumental in delivering unit and integration tests and ensuring that our work was properly tested in CI

NATO Information and Communications Agency (Consulting via IBM) (October 2018 - June 2019)

• In this role I led the redesign of a web application using Angular, Typescript/Javascript, .NET MVC and WebAPI
• I was application architect, designing a service-oriented architecture to move to the OData standard and put in place distributed authentication/API services
• I put in place a design o support automated build, testing and deployment on Azure DevOps, and incrementally delivered features and product improvements on a tight schedule
• I led the design an Angular 7 based front-end, guiding the Mark Paxton, markpaxton3@gmail.com, +31 61116 7578 +44 7967 227353 1/7 architecture and design for 2 new team members
• I have been involved in managing contributions from an outsourced team and in setting out a technical vision to senior stakeholders

Home Office (Consulting via BJSS) (March 2018 - September 2018)

• In this role I was leading the delivery of a key feature of the Home Office’s online “right to work” verification service
• I took the proof of concept project through the evaluation, production microservice design and testing stage and soon to go live
• I produced and refined the service architecture, defined the key APIs and engaged with team members and stakeholders when appropriate in a very busy and time constrained environment
• I have also led on defining logging and testing standards for our team and mentoring other in this area
• I used my experience and judgement to anticipate the needs of users, the business and the technical requirements, plan for these and prepare thoroughly, with clear and specific communication and deliverables, this has let other members of the team to focus on high priority live issues and other features and the team to deliver at a rapid pace
• I have been building and deploying containerised microservices using Docker and Kubernetes
• This has included providing environment specific configurations for internal and external dependencies, Feign Client design for service interoperability and distributed session management

HMCTS, Ministry of Justice (Consulting via Wisereach) (June 2017 - February 2018)

• With a strict timescale to deliver results on a wide-ranging set of services, I used my experience to simplify and rebuild a service to apply for grants of probate (the legal permission for an executor of a deceased person's will to manage their estate)
• I provided key input to project planning and estimation, then developed the MVP concept and functional prototype in a short period of time
• This enabled us to double the number of iterations per sprint and save time and resources on the usability testing where we have a limited number of participants to call on
• I identified bottlenecks in key dependencies, and raised these within program management, where I then focussed on delivering a core case management platform that the team were relying on
• This allowed the key technical risks to be reduced, as well as addressing user experience/design risks by improving communication between the design team and supporting service
• I configured and ran multiple Docker containers, creating and maintaining docker-compose configurations for different test scenarios
• This required extensive work to identify and configure dependencies or stubs within ~20 services to allow for rapid testing with minimal resources

Valuation Office Agency (January 2017 - April 2017)

• Working with HMRC’s award winning digital tax platform using the Scala Play Framework to develop the VOA's check and challenge portal for business tax rates
• I identified key team bottlenecks and improved performance and test processes for two key microservices to considerably reduce manual testing time and pass performance thresholds in the required release date
• This required an in-depth understanding of Play 2.5, ScalaTest, Mockito and ScalaCheck as well as a strong understanding of asynchronous functional programming
• In this role I had responsibility for running automated build and deployments for development and test environments in the cloud infrastructure, which required an understanding of storage persistence and multi-active database initialisation

HMRC (Consulting via Equal Experts) (May 2016 - January 2017)

• Working on the HMRC digital tax platform, I quickly moved from front end development (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Twirl templates) to full stack microservice development using the Scala Play Framework
• Following strict GOV.UK design guidelines I redesigned page flows and RESTful APIs on a progressively enhanced accessible basis
• The team developed a service to allow people arrange to pay self- assessment tax returns in monthly instalments online, saving users and the business time and money and improving the experience
• I collaborated with UX specialists and skilled content designers to ensure the service was easy to use and met people's needs in time for the January tax payment deadline, and designed and implemented the Google Analytics data model to allow service performance to be monitored
• I extensively worked with Play form validation API to build a customised validation framework to aid in one-step form validation as and give users specific feedback about how to enter the details required, allowing the majority of users to succeed first time
• I also provided health-check API endpoints to allow the virtualisation stack to monitor performance of each service

Verisk Wood Mackenzie (October 2015 - May 2016)

• I designed and developed both products and platform infrastructure within the GIS team
• I led the design of the next generation products and platform with the emphasis in data integration, long term evolution and ongoing delivery of value
• I worked with ESRI APIs and a .NET application environment to build an agile software development architecture
• I designed the AWS server architecture for the new geospatial data platform as well as delivering 'quick wins' with existing products (bug fixing, performance improvements)
• I defined the roadmap toward integration of the new platform. Key to this was an awareness of wider business requirements (Information Governance, Entitlements Management, Enterprise Architecture Management) with the functional requirements (Agile development, testability) – this required both technical competence and vision but also a business perspective to identify value and risks
• I specified and designed the AWS configuration for the GIS platform services, including building machine images, specifying machine sizes and configuring load balancing and shared storage and configuration repositories
• I worked with devops colleagues to ensure they had a clear understanding of the Security Zones within the platform, such as ports, protocols and IP addresses for interaction between internal services and externally
• I assisted in the documentation of capital and operation expenditure for the platform provision

Kaarbontech Ltd (July 2015 - October 2015)

• Specialising in OpenLayers and the use of Ordnance Survey mapping data integrated into a PhoneGap (Cordova) based mobile app and desktop suite
• The project required intensive debugging of existing Javascript code as well as integrating new functionality
• The project used Backbone, Underscore, JQuery and JQuery Mobile libraries, and RESTful interfaces to the back end

Holiday-Weather.com (July 2015 - July 2015)

• In this position I worked on a referral driven website providing information on worldwide holiday destinations
• The site has a Google Maps based UI (embedded within HTML/CSS content), with a PHP/Zend backend and Node.js and JQuery front end
• I have been debugging live code as well as working with a Ruby, Vagrant, Grunt and Capistrano within the development environment
• I continued to use JIRA Agile for management

Horsebridge Ltd (September 2014 - July 2015)

• Horsebridge provide network management service to telecoms providers such as Virgin Media and Cellnet
• I was working full-stack on a MySQL, Java and Javascript/HTML5 based application to manage network devices via SNMP
• I planned, designed and integrated several foundational full-stack components using design patterns (including Factory/Builder, JS Modules and Prototypes, Dependency Inversion, MVC and MVVM)
• As lead developer on their next generation project was responsible for redesigning unit testing framework for front and (jasmine) and back end (JUnit, Mockito) testing
• Prototyping a Node.js/Grunt environment for build and testing (using Mocha and Blanket)
• Complete refactoring of front-end project including upgrade to Ext5 and migrating from MVC to the MVVM framework
• High level component design of key data-intensive components using including file parsing, database access objects, web controllers with REST APIs
• Designing architectures for client/server integration using Websockets, AJAX, RESTful APIs

Searoc Ltd (March 2014 - September 2014)

• I was responsible for the complete “version 2” redesign of a marine operation management application as part of a larger integrated portal
• This application provides mapping on at-sea construction sites and live tracking of vessels and staff around that site
• Originally starting on a front-end project, I identified the opportunity for the business to simplify, automate and streamline their entire geospatial data pipeline, from 3rd party data ETL, storage, versioning, testing and deployment
• I proposed changes to the key business stakeholders, developed and executed a roadmap that met short term user needs (deploy bug fixes and feature improvements) as well as delivering key elements of the new system – this included build pipeline changes to improve reliability and consistency across deployments, as well as test automation
• The work also involved significant debugging of browser-based javascript and UI design on order to locate, mitigate and then remove major bugs

Accenture (November 2013 - February 2014)

• I was Front End Javascript developer working on a PhoneGap/iPad point of sales application for two large international mobile technology retailers
• The application linked to a complex system of mobile phone contract sales and connections to provides a search and comparison interface for on the shop floor
• It used Apache Solr search indexes, Backbone, ThymeLeaf and Handlebars libraries
• Created a documented application development environment (software, versions, install procedure)
• Document the application build/update procedures and create automation scripts
• Review and document “legacy” js application to update and generalise code
• Customise native iOS PhoneGap code to handle warn about SSL security exceptions

Ordnance Survey (May 2013 - November 2013)

• OS are the British National mapping agency, renowned for the quality and detail of their maps
• I was lead javascript developer for the OpenSpace API, taking on a much-neglected codebase
• Complete overhaul of development environment, reducing dev-build time from 20 minutes to real time
• Line by line review of javascript code identifying bugs, inefficient code and obsolete/deprecated features
• Contributing of bug fixes to OpenLayers open source project
• Development of new “Search Box” control for OpenLayers complete with pluggable search module API
• Overhaul of ant/python build process to reduce external dependencies/complexity of project
• Wrote unit testing suite for OpenSpace Javascript API
• Evaluated and reported on OS Labs products for potential production usage

Innaxys Ltd (March 2012 - April 2013)

• Innaxys provides command and control and geospatial intelligence software to the UK police and fire services
• As lead software developer I developed secure web applications for the Metropolitan Police and built key enterprise infrastructure including Virtual Machine servers and CI pipelines
• I was using Spring MVC, Spring Security and Spring Roo
• I added key functionality with OpenLayers mapping API and new open source functionality to create multi-layer PDFs

Nodal Networks (February 2012 - November 2012)

• I worked full stack on a cross-platform social networking app, setting up technical project management/collaboration tools, e.g. Git SCM and Eclipse build environment
• I designed and implemented AWS architecture as well as PhoneGap/Cordova application development

Research Fellow (Java, Javascript, Android, PHP): Horizon Digital Economy Research, University of Nottingham (October 2010 - February 2012)

• I was technical lead, coordinating work of the programming team in the design of web service components and user interface for the web and mobile application Placebooks
• I integrated diverse web APIs to link with external organisations, significantly increasing the project’s impact and sustainability

Qualifications

• Shaping up with Angular.js
• PhD in Computer Science, Mixed Reality Lab (MRL), University of Nottingham
• Master of Engineering with Honours, University of Nottingham