Sam Rowe

Technologies used: Rust, Kubernetes, Argo CD, GitHub Actions, TypeScript, GraphQL, MQTT, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, FFmpeg, NGINX.

• Developed and deployed a sophisticated platform for remotely controlling and live-streaming video from DJI drones for Skybound Rescuer. This included exploration and testing of different combinations of video streaming technologies (such as HLS and HTTP-FLV) and server configurations to achieve the best possible latency and video quality in an economical way. The technology used for this complex platform included Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Redis, MySQL, WebSockets, MQTT, Nginx and FFmpeg.
• Led a team to develop from scratch a career and events platform for military veterans. We were able to ship this project in just a few months and it is currently accessible at Troopr.co.uk. This platform was created using Next.js, Typescript, Postgres and integrated with Stripe for secure payments.
• Resolved major performance issues with The Racing Manager’s website and React Native mobile apps through a combination of profiling, improving SQL queries to fetch data in batches and avoid the N+1 query problem, GraphQL query improvements, and caching. This massively improved the user experience for large teams on key screens from several minutes of load time to under 10-15 seconds.
• Provided technical leadership for The Racing Manager on a roadmap for developing the next major iteration of the platform to help open it up to a wider audience. This was simultaneously balanced with necessary improvements and fixes to the existing platform.
• Led the development of multiple sites for SilverRail (such as Train over Plane) and the successful migration of their existing Wordpress website to a much more reliable React-based site using Sanity CMS as the backend. This helped dramatically improve site reliability, lowered maintenance costs and improved the authoring experience for new site content.
• Oversaw the integration of Freshsales CRM and Mews hospitality management system for Desert Springs to improve and simplify their existing business processes. This integration was built using TypeScript and AWS DynamoDB.
• I proactively identified current and future skills gaps in our team and addressed them by mentoring developers to improve their skills and experience, and additionally worked with upper management to hire new team members.

Red Badger

Senior Software Engineer

Feb 2020 – Sept 2022

Software Engineer (Mid II)

March 2019 – Jan 2020

Technologies used: Rust, Kubernetes, Argo CD, Terraform, GitHub Actions, React, TypeScript, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Jenkins, Istio, Prometheus, Go, Redis, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure.

Client projects:

• Levi’s
  • Developed an internal tool for Levi’s merchants to develop and collaborate on product lines throughout the various stages of the product season
  • As the feature team lead for our “brief” feature, I:
    • Collaborated with stakeholders to gather requirements and decide which features would best fit user needs during the “brief stage” of product line development
    • Led a spike exploring different free and paid data grid libraries to determine which would best fit user needs, and then we presented this information back to the client and discussed which tool we would use going forward
    • Participated in user engagement sessions to hear first-hand from users what the pain points of their current process are
    • Collaborated with UX and UI designers to break down work into user stories and tickets with clear acceptance criteria, with a focus on providing value to users
  • Demoed new features to users to increase adoption of the tool and gather feedback on what we could improve
  • Interviewed senior and mid-level engineering candidates
• Nando’s
  • Collaborated closely with other teams as we transitioned identity provider to improve uptime and security of the Nando’s app and websites
  • Developed a GraphQL API in Rust for other Nando’s apps and services to consume
  • Mentored more junior developers on how to work with the Nando’s mono-repo and Kubernetes platform
• MHRA
  • Helped create an internal micro-services platform using Kubernetes with Istio as the service mesh, ArgoCD for continuous deployment and Terraform for provisioning infrastructure. The code for this project is open source and available at github.com/MHRA/products
  • Set up monitoring and alerting using Prometheus and Azure monitor, along with documentation on how this set up worked
  • Created continuous integration and deployment pipelines for multiple Rust micro-services

Entale

Full Stack Engineer

Oct 2017 – Feb 2019

Technologies used: React, React Native, ElasticSearch, Flow, Terraform, AWS, DynamoDB, Redis, Circle CI, Python, REST API.

• Rapidly built upon the pre-existing prototype to create a high quality iOS podcast app and publishing platform.
• Developed various backend services that interact with Redis, AWS DynamoDB and Elasticsearch to support the diverse range of features offered by the Entale platform.
• Created and maintained several React web apps and a React Native mobile app which involved improving performance and fixing difficult to debug issues, such as failed podcast downloads, based upon user feedback.
• Pushed for higher quality in our products whilst still maintaining a high pace of development through automated testing, static type checking using Flow, code review, and continuous integration to ensure broken code was not released to users.
• Delivered a talk at elm-conf titled “Complex animations done well” (available at https://youtu.be/DBVHxkMBfF4).
• Engaged in regular retrospectives to improve our product development process where I suggested and implemented many improvements, such as a transition from two week to one week long sprints to reduce the amount of wasted planning effort we undertook.
• Made changes to our AWS infrastructure using Terraform and deployed services using Docker to ensure all of our environments and deployments were easily reproducible and version-controlled.
• Debugged and fixed production outages and various issues ranging from DynamoDB throttling to EC2 instances reaching CPU limits.
• Created a service to scrape the entire iTunes podcast directory & load it into ElasticSearch in a timely manner.

Technologies used: React, jQuery, Flow, Elm, CSS.

• Optimised sales on client websites through A/B testing and personalisation developed in Javascript using React and jQuery.
• Delivered training on React and also Elm to fellow engineers who may not have used either before.
• As part of our code review process, I provided constructive and friendly feedback to other engineers on the code they had written.
• Delivered training and support to clients via email and in-person to enable them to make the most effective use of our platform.
• Collaborated with designers, strategists and other developers to maximise the impact and effectiveness of the tests we produced.

Technologies used: C#, Python, Angular JS, HTML, CSS.

• Developed both the server-side and front-end code of the ePayfact2 payroll system which serves many commercial and public sector clients.
• Worked in a team to integrate a complex banking system using a mixture of technologies, such as message queues, web services and managed file transfers.
• Developed an insurance message processing web service written in Python, deployed it on Azure, and created a UI in Angular JS which consumed the web service’s api.
• Raised money for The Prince’s Trust as part of a team in the Million Makers competition.

Technologies used: C, Python.

• I completed a module on low-level programming in C.
• As part of my final year project supervised by BAE Systems, I created optical simulations written in Python.