Reporting to the Head of Software Development my role included development, consultancy and knowledge transfer in multi-tier software development (Java, SQL, Spring, Postgres), continuous integration & test (Jenkins, TeamCity), cloud architecture and deployment (AWS CloudFormation) and software lifecycle management. I was also responsible for the development of an embedded controller for one of UTEL’s optical switch products (Linux, Bash, Python).
At HTK I led a team of 8 in-house developers and a varying number of offshore contractors with responsibility for the development and support of HTK Horizon, a multi-tier web-based loyalty platform. As well as day-to-day responsibility for managing staff and running our delivery processes (daily scrums, task assignment, release reviews and so on) I led a number of technical improvements including refactoring a monolithic legacy codebase into a series of more loosely coupled services, and introducing an automated build/test/deployment pipeline. The core technology was the Java stack, with additional tools including Spring, Tomcat, SQL Server, MongoDB, Apache Kafka, Apache Storm, AWS Redshift and more. The production and development environments were entirely hosted in AWS.
In September 2004 I moved into BT as a Principal Consultant in the OpenAccess division, a new venture under BT Retail involved in both document management and legislative compliance. My first role was to manage the design and deployment of an FoI case management solution for Perth & Kinross Council, using products and consultants from three different companies. I later worked as Design Authority for Essex County Council's Electronic Document & Record Management System project, and led the technical workstream on a project to improve the on-line service request system for Essex County Council. I then spent two years leading Hothouses, intensive 3-day team competitions to develop prototype solutions that initiate 90-day work programmes. From 2007-9 I worked in the Office of the Chief Architect, where I have managed the delivery of the BT Forum system forums.intra.bt.com. I now work in the Wholesale Delivery Hub in BTID, with responsibility for non-functionals across Global Platforms including outage reduction, the Availability To Trade programe, and alignment with BT Operate.
In April 2000 I joined Internet Designers Limited (then a majority-owned BT subsidiary, later an independent limited company) as a Senior Software Specialist, where my first assignments included the design and development of PC and Macintosh software for accessing BT's Internet services, as well as some development work on BTopenworld's Vignette content management system. I also became an IDL technical mentor, and I have mentored over 20 IDL employees and contractors. In 2001 I took the opportunity of moving into a business development role, but continued to maintain my technical skills by developing intranet sites in ASP.NET and C# to support IDL's business operations, and in 2003 I undertook a performance analysis of the www.dotmusic.com web site, a Microsoft-based platform built on a load-balanced configuration of Windows 2000 servers running IIS5. I also worked for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on their Electronic Document & Record Management System (EDRMS) project, working both on Business Analysis and on the design and implementation of document templates to assist with the capture and validation of metadata.
Development of client packs for distribution to customers of BT's Internet products such as BT Internet and BT Click, including virtual service providers and partners such as Tesco, Barclays, Bank of Scotland, Dell, Natwest, MSN and Yahoo. My role was to provide custom components for Microsoft's Internet Explorer Administration Kit, and to overhaul and support BT's dial-up networking client application, adding international language support for release in several European countries. Windows development was in Microsoft Visual C++ 6 and Macintosh development was in Metrowerks C++ with the PowerPlant class library.
Buffin Learning are an established consultancy who provide personal development and training services to clients in industry. Although not involved in the software business, they identified a need for a specialist database system to implement some of their original ideas for recording employees' performance over time and using the results to balance team structures, measure the effectiveness of training investment etc. An initial development by another company had already failed, and I was charged with designing and implementing a multi-user client-server database system that would not only meet their specifications but would help to recover client relationships that had been damaged by their earlier problems. The target environment was SQL Server 7 (or the Microsoft Data Engine for small installations) with a Visual Basic 6 front-end. The system is currently being deployed in British Bakeries, and there is strong interest from Whitbread Breweries, Thames Valley Police and a number of other organisations.
HiTeKnowledge (HTK) are a small company specialising in speech technology. As well as hosting and managing interactive telephony services for a number of clients, they market their own speech platform and have agreements with BT for downstreaming recognition and synthesis technologies. As a showcase for the Laureate speech synthesiser I developed the Laureate Workshop application, which allows a user to experiment with the various facilities of the synthesiser and develop databases of announcements.
At this time BT had a rapidly growing involvement in Internet services, and I worked in a consultative and development capacity on:
This was my second contract with BT's Service Creation Tools team, developing the Visage suite of applications for the design and deployment of interactive speech services. This was the toolset used to develop the BT CallMinder service. My own tasks included:
The Automated Testing Team at BT Labs are responsible for developing automatic methods of performing conformance tests on new releases of software for System X telephone exchanges. This was a 10-week contract to develop a means of identifying recorded announcements based on speech coding and correlation techniques. The development was in Borland C++ under MS-DOS running on a 486 PC.
The Service Creation Tools team at BT Labs is responsible for a suite of programs that assist in the automatic generation of speech-interactive services. Their toolset includes a graphical dialogue design tool written in Visual Basic which generates a textual definition of a service; this service may be simulated using an interpreter or passed to a C++ code translator which generates C++ application code for one of a number of target platforms. My responsibilities included:
BT are involved in the development of a number of automatic speech-recognition based network services, and one of their development platforms incorporated a rack of single-card PCs connected by Novell Netware. Duties included:
I was approached for this contract by the manager of Apple's European Database project (for whom I had worked previously) who offered me a post back in Paris working in the support group for the Apple Database system (ADB). My work involved maintenance and development of Ingres software in C, SQL and 4GL, and providing administrative and user support for the European forecasting system. I also provided occasional weekend cover for the Database Administrator (DBA).
At Cambridge Online I worked on a warehouse stock control, delivery and invoicing system for the haulage company Christian Salvesen. The system was implemented under VAX/VMS using Ingres V6.3 and 4GL. I left Cambridge Online after 3 months to pursue another opportunity with Apple.
As a contractor for the management consultants KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock I worked on the development of a database system for Apple's European headquarters in Paris. The system was implemented under VAX/VMS using Ingres V6.3 and C with embedded SQL, and the user interface was based on 4GL forms. My involvement was in writing ESQL programs to supply data to front-end systems running on the Apple Macintosh (written in 4th Dimension), and extracting financial reporting data for use in decision support sub-systems (System W and MacDSS). My work therefore included programming in C with embedded SQL, writing scripts for the Ingres Report Writer, and writing ABF programs in the 4GL forms language. Project control was implemented using the SSADM methodology. I also coded the Standard Margin Analysis module and wrote an accompanying Hypercard on-line help system.
Work on various aspects of speech systems, most recently on dialogue design and implementation for voice-based interactive telephone services such as the Royal Bank of Scotland's "Phoneline", running on a network of single-card PCs communicating via Novell Netware. My 5 years at BT gave me a good grounding in software design and implementation for PCs under MS-DOS and QNX (similar to Unix), as my work covered real-time and systems programming in C and assembler, and application programming in C and Modula-2. I also had the task of writing of a user guide and reference manual for a PC speech recognition card and software library, which were marketed nationwide within BT. At BT I also gained experience in Macintosh programming, MS-Windows programming, OS/2 programming and using SQL under OS/2 with Presentation Manager. I also used Oracle on PCs. I left BT to start working as a contractor.
Electronic Engineering degree, including courses on real-time systems and operating systems, frequent use of Pascal under Unix, and use of various assemblers.
Miscellaneous duties, including writing an accounting package in VAX Pascal under VMS, and several months in the Automatic Test Equipment group.