I am a proactive, hard-working and ambitious Makers Academy graduate with a background in science and marketing, looking for my first role as a software developer. I'm a great problem solver and experienced at communicating ideas to stakeholders and end users. I'm a fast learner and passionate about developing my existing skills and learning new ones. I'm currently enjoying working with React and NextJS, as well as learning testing frameworks like Enzyme. I've loved tech since a young age and I'm pursuing a new challenge as a developer as I wanted to join a rapidly changing, fast-paced industry, which gives me the chance to solve interesting problems on a daily basis.

• JavaScript (React, NextJS, Node.js, Express, Enzyme)
• Ruby (Rails, Sinatra, RSpec, Capybara)
• HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Tailwind, Material-UI
• SQL (PostgreSQL, TablePlus)
• Github, CircleCI, Heroku, Vercel

• Deployment currently uses Heroku's ephemeral filesystem so images are not retained when dynos are replaced approximately once a day as part of normal dyno management. Plan to move file storage to an AWS S3 bucket.

You interpret test failures and errors really well and are able to glean the important information from the backtrace such as where the error occurred and what the difference is between the expected result and the actual result of your tests and did not spend too much time debugging.

I completed Makers Academy whilst continuing to work part-time running my small consulting business. This required me to be highly efficient at managing my time, in order to fulfil my responsibilities to clients whilst also completing the full-time bootcamp program.

The Makers bootcamp was a fast-paced learning experience, requiring the ability to pick up and implement new concepts and skills quickly. As one example, during one of our software engineering projects, we were given an additional challenge to develop a React frontend for our Ruby on Rails project. Having spent some time during the week completing the React intro course, I was able to turnaround a basic implementation overnight that fetched data from an API and displayed the data in a presentable fashion in React.

I come from a strong scientific background with two Masters degrees from Imperial College London. This time at Imperial laid a strong foundation for my analytical skills, requiring methodical recording and interpretation of gathered data to come to a factual conclusion. This is something I took into a more commercial environment as part of my marketing job, where looking at traffic, sales and revenue data became crucial to proving our worth, backing up our conclusions and planning future campaigns with clients.

During my career in marketing, I've spent a lot of time working in client-facing roles, requiring me to communicate frequently, effectively and concisely, providing impactful reports & analysis, technical explanations, presenting new strategies, and (less frequently!) discussing why things haven't gone to plan and how we're going to get back on track.

You sounded out your logic and process so that it was easy to follow you during this review. It was particularly great to hear you reference the RGR cycle while coding, this was a great way to explain your process.

Makers Academy (August - December 2021)

Makers Academy is a 16-week intensive coding bootcamp focused on teaching the fundamentals of software engineering with JavaScript & Ruby Whilst at Makers, I learned:

• The principles of object-oriented design & test-driven development
• How to write clean, reliable and maintainable code
• How to pair-program in the driver-navigator style to problem solve effectively
• Collaboration on GitHub projects using continuous integration & automated deployment
• How to debug effectively
• Skills to help me be confident in learning new technologies
• Working in an agile development team using XP values

Self-Employed (May 2018 to Current)

For the last 3.5 years, I have run my own small business providing marketing consultancy and campaign execution services for several established marketing agencies & some small DTC brands

• Strategic guidance, search engine optimisation and paid advertising channels
• Worked from Asia for 3 years becoming confident with remote working, communication and collaboration across multiple timezones

Key work:

• Worked with an established social agency to grow their Google Ads team, provide training and increase managed spend from £7,000 per quarter to over £100,000 per quarter
• Managed React SEO project to help security tech firm increase their search visibility and resolve Google crawl issues, using React-Helmet and pre-rendering.

Code Your Future (Jan. 2018 to Aug. 2021)
Marketing Specialist

CodeYourFuture is a UK based non-profit organisation that trains some of the most deprived members of society to become web developers and helps them to find work in the tech industry

• I started volunteering with CYF in 2018. I have since worked on student recruitment, running campaigns on Google & Facebook to sign up potential students.

Illuminate Agency (September 2014 to May 2018)
Account Director (Oct. 2014 - Sept. 2015 as Digital Marketing Analyst, Sept. 2015 - May 2016 as Digital Marketing Manager)

• Experienced in paid search advertising, paid social media advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Strategic lead and point of contact for key accounts including Castore Sportswear and Bremont Watches
• Developed client acquisition strategies and new business pitches
• Recruited, trained and managed a team of analysts and account managers
• Created and executed digital advertising campaigns across a range of paid marketing channels
• Developed and executed SEO strategies & campaigns, and consulted on website platform migrations (incl. Drupal to Shopify, Magento to Shopify)

• MRes in Bioimaging Sciences
  • Grade Obtained: Distinction
  • Dissertation: Cancer imaging using carbon-11 PET
  • Awarded a fully funded scholarship from Medical Research Council
  • Additional modules in Russian
  • Won prize for best final presentation from Institute of Chemical Biology

• MSci in Chemistry
  • Grade Obtained: 2:1
  • Dissertation: Novel chelators for PET Imaging using gallium-68
  • Additional modules in Spanish
  • Awarded Royal College of Science Full Colours for contributions to the Faculty of Science
  • Chemistry Society Webmaster (2011/2012)
  • Member of IC Men's Football Committee and 7th XI Captain

Datacamp - Intro to SQL - Link

• Travelling (visited 57 countries and completed the Mongol Rally)
• Learning languages (half-decent Spanish, enough Russian to survive Kyrgyz traffic police, basic French to allow me to buy a metro ticket and the perfect amount of Mandarin learned while living in Taiwan to order an iced brown sugar matcha coffee latte with oat milk)
• Reading
• Walking my rescue Taiwanese Mountain dog, Dudu
• Trying my hand at DIY with my new drill