Josh Blumberg

Projects | Skills | Education | Work Experience | Hobbies and Interests

I am a curious and ambitious full stack developer looking for a full-time role in London.

After graduating from Western University in Canada with a degree in Psychology, I spent two years working in account management in a digital marketing agency. I started teaching myself how to code when I had the opportunity to automate some of the more repetitive parts of my role, and I've just finished training full time at Makers Academy, a 16 week software development bootcamp. You can find out more about my career-changing journey in my blog post about it, here.

What excites me about software is that it can bring innovation to any industry it's applied to. It has the power to reduce friction in difficult processes, connect disparate information sources, and automate away mundane or repetitive tasks. I believe in its power to be a positive agent of change for the world, and I'm looking forward to working for a company where I can be a part of that change.

For a complete list, see my GitHub repositories.

Technologies - More experience listed first:

• Languages & Frameworks: Ruby, JavaScript, Rails, React, Node.js, Express, HTML, CSS, SQL
• Testing: RSpec, Mocha, Chai, Jest, Enzyme
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQlite3
• CI & CD: TravisCI, Heroku, Netlify, AWS S3, CircleCI

I honed my communication skills while completing my thesis at university, which involved writing and defending a dissertation to a board of professors and Ph.D. candidates. I further developed these skills when I was working in a digital marketing agency where I presented quarterly business reviews to C-level stakeholders. In doing so, I synthesised complex technical information into a digestible but comprehensive story for the different levels of knowledge in the room. My communication skills have also often come in handy while training to be a developer. For example, I recently ran a session for my mentees, who have only been coding for a few weeks, on how to use mocks to improve unit test isolation. I received feedback that the session was well run and helped them understand this potentially confusing topic.

I am always analysing and looking for ways to improve. In my last job, I regularly digested large data sets and extracted meaningful and actionable insights for my client's businesses. About a year into the job, I also analysed my time sheets and found that I was spending a lot of time on a repetitive task, so I wrote code to automate it; code which is now used across the agency. At Makers, this looked like regularly analysing my growth to keep myself accountable. I did this by attending process workshops to hone my TDD and debugging skills, and by checking my knowledge with coaches.

When I agree to partake in something, I care about how it goes and I try to leave things better than I found them. For instance, I found that many people in the agency I used to work at were complaining about their jobs, but we didn't have a mechanism for anonymously feeding back to management. In my free time, I spoke to many people across the business, did research about different options, and eventually found a suitable employee engagement platform. I successfully pitched a case to the leadership team and secured funding from our finance department. We on-boarded the platform and began to improve employee satisfaction and engagement.

• Languages: Basic Spanish
• Storytelling: See my blog for examples

A 16-week intensive development bootcamp, focusing on:

• Object-oriented design
• Agile methodologies
• Test driven development
• Pair programming

• B.Sc. (Hons) Psychology, with a Specialisation in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience -- achieved a 1st (3.7 GPA)
• Completed modules in Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology and Neuroscience, as well as an analytical dissertation on the effect of adversity on impulsivity in Syrian refugee children in Canada
• Awards: Western Scholarship of Excellence, Chinese Language Prize for highest achievement in the study of Mandarin
• Organisational and tutor volunteer for Frontier College, tutoring mature students for their high-school-equivalency exams

• Cumulative GPA: 3.8 (out of 4.0)
• Math Honors Society and National Honors Society member
• Swimming team captain and state finalist

NMPi (Jan '18 - Dec '19) Account Executive (10 mo), Senior Account Executive (14 mo)

• Audited accounts, designed and executed product and strategy roadmaps, and forecasted and reported on key KPIs
• Mentored and trained new joiners, including a junior account executive who formed my team
• Contributed to company culture through extra-role projects such as championing the employee engagement initiative

Energy House Digital (Sep '17 - Dec '17) Digital Marketing Intern

• Learned the fundamentals of paid search, paid social, and organic digital marketing
• Gained experience with stand-ups and retrospectives

• Cooking: I love to cook. There's no dish too daring, no sweet kitchen kit I'd say no to. Some favourites, which I make often, are Thai red curry and olive bread.
• Chess: The competitor in me loves a chess match, though I'm not an expert!
• Travelling: Sometimes you can even catch me combining two of my hobbies, doing cooking classes on my travels. Favourite place on earth: Algonquin Park, Canada.