Experience

Lead engineer on a multi-tier real-time .NET system for a public sector client: a WinForms operator client and middle-tier server driving a hall of networked conference hardware — registration, electronic voting, speaker queues, microphones and displays — during live, publicly observed sessions that cannot be re-run. A 15-year-old, 22-project codebase where reliability and carefully staged releases matter more than new features. Primary contributor (~70% of commits) in a distributed team of 5–6 engineers.

Led the replacement of the end-of-life conference hardware integration with a modern REST/event-driven one, from technical spike through on-site acceptance to production.

• Designed and built the Windows service and typed client library (~150 vendor endpoints and event types) that bridge the .NET Remoting tiers to the hardware's HTTP/REST API, including a long-polling notification pipeline with reconnect and state recovery
• Delivered smart-card delegate login over PC/SC readers, with the edge cases that come with real seats, units and cards
• Hardened the system for live operation: throttled device API calls under burst load (sized by a purpose-built load-testing harness), eliminated race conditions in microphone and speaker-list handling, and added structured logging and diagnostics
• Built a WireMock.Net-based API simulator reproducing the hardware platform, so the team could develop and test without the single licensed hardware unit
• Owned build and release: ~15 versioned releases, MSI installers (WixSharp and legacy setup projects), PowerShell release packaging, and the migration to .NET Framework 4.8 and SDK-style projects, alongside a systematic dead-code removal programme
• SQL Server schema and query work: versioned migration scripts per release, an SSDT project, LINQ to SQL query tuning and the master-data sync between the two systems
• Authored the system's technical documentation from scratch — architecture, glossary, build/deploy/operations, dependency inventory, sequence diagrams, onboarding — and introduced AI-assisted development conventions adopted by the team
• Worked directly with the client's IT and business users: requirement clarification, on-site installation, demos, acceptance and live-session incident triage; mentored developers and led code review
• Maintained and extended a legacy Lotus Notes / Domino application in parallel, adapting its web interface after a platform migration to Microsoft 365 and improving server-side search and document handling

Earlier in the same period, worked in healthcare on applications and services with high load and large user counts: developing and optimizing features against Oracle and MS SQL Server databases, building out Angular and React front ends, and covering the result with unit, SpecFlow and Cypress tests. Also improved the deployment and automated-testing infrastructure, and handled application deployment and server configuration on AWS.

Built API applications and server-side automation for advertising, integrating with online marketing platforms including the Facebook Marketing API and the Google Ads API.

• Designed the services that pulled, normalized and stored campaign data from several external APIs, each with its own rate limits and failure modes
• Used MongoDB for the high-volume, schema-varying parts of that data

Developed web and server applications for advertising over nearly nine years, following the stack from classic ASP.NET web forms through to modern .NET and JavaScript front ends.

• Built and maintained the internal tools and reporting applications the agency ran its campaigns on
• Integrated with the major online marketing platform APIs — Facebook, Google and Bing

Developed web applications used across the insurance business, working on both new development and the maintenance of existing systems.

Worked on web and desktop applications for a range of clients — building new features and supporting existing systems. This is where unit testing became a habit rather than an idea.

Administered a computer club: maintaining, installing and configuring software and hardware, and working directly with customers. The first job where things breaking was my problem to fix.