About Me
Hi, my name’s Sam and I’m working as a backend software engineer at Sky, building Scala microservices for content discovery recommenders. The tech I’m primarily working with at the moment is: Kubernetes, Kafka and Cassandra.
I am a firm believer in using technology to foster positive social change. Currently, my focus lies in honing my technical skills and expanding my knowledge. With a solid foundation in software engineering across the stack, I am well-equipped to contribute to the ongoing transformation of the industry.
My most recent personal projects include a BeautifulSoup powered web-scraping price checker / notifier and an upcoming privacy focused anti-stylometry library.
Experience
As below and…
- Migrating Akka microservices to the Cats Typelevel stack
- Migrating Kamon metrics and tracing to OpenTelemetry / otel4s
- Upgrading services from Scala 2 to Scala 3
Develop and maintain Scala microservices for content discovery recommenders:
- Deploy in Kubernetes on GCP and AWS
- Set up and maintain Jenkins and ArgoCD CI/CD pipelines
- Scala microservices read/write from/to Kafka and Cassandra
- Global high traffic scaling under strict performance constraints
- Test-driven development
Full stack application development in Java, JavaScript and React:
- Java (Springboot) and Node / Express backends
- Javascript / React frontends
- Testing with Junit5, Mockito, Jest and Cypress
- MariaDB/MySQL databases
- Jenkins/Concourse deployment pipelines
- And more to come…
Took a sabbatical for medical reasons from which I fully recovered. During this time I took the opportunity to drill down on technical learning and projects, including: Programming in Python, data structures and algorithms, object-orientated design patterns, Django website development (click the links to see the associated repo) and more:
- Unit/integration testing
- Penetration-testing/cyber security:
- OWASP Top Ten
- HackTheBox / TryHackMe / Metasploitable
- Kali Linux / ParrotOS
- Linux desktop/server administration
- GNU Core Utilities
- Git
- Open source software contributions
- LeetCode / Codewars programming challenges (click links for site profiles).
Managed the development and ongoing maintenance of over 100 websites. Responsible for co-ordinating a team of developers, designers and PPC executives to produce bespoke websites based on client requirements using Jira.
Monitored the business’s web/email server admin panel e.g. ensuring server load balancing was adjusted as necessary, managed DNS (domain transfer and ongoing admin) for all websites, performed web application security testing of digital properties and servers.
- Became a proficient Jira administrator, employing agile project management methods to save management time and meet strict project deadlines.
- Automated several processes for Jira project management, requirements gathering and client feedback.
- Ensured web usability/accessibility standards and brand design guidelines were adhered to.
- Produced copy for and set-up email marketing campaigns run through Infusionsoft CRM software.
Projects
Periodically check your public Amazon wishlist for price reductions.
I started this project to learn more about web scraping with Python and BeautifulSoupwhile also getting some experience with the Python packaging ecosystem… and perhaps to find a few bargains in the process.
It has good test coverage with pytest. Typed and checked with mypy. All code is concisely documented with Google style docstrings.
It’s doesn’t feel as good to make something people won’t use, so I put a fair amount of time into the readme and installation flow.
A project exploring the feasibility of an automated and extensible anti-stylometry tool written in Python.
Privacy is an increasingly urgent concern with worrying implications for society1. Thankfully, awareness is growing and more people are taking steps to preserve their digital privacy as evidenced by the rising popularity of VPN software or the introduction of the recent GDPR regulations.
This project is a response to the apparent scarcity of actively developed tools aimed at protecting against an individual’s writing style betraying their identity.
“The loss of an expectation of privacy can result in a chilling effect where individuals are too afraid to draw attention to a problem, because they fear being discovered and punished for their actions.” – Kacmarcik, G., & Gamon, M. (2006, July)
Education
Portsmouth University
BSc Psychology
2009 - 2012
During my time studying psychology at Portsmouth I spent a lot of time analysing humans and quantifying their behaviours for statistical analysis, gaining useful insights on how people interact with systems. Usability of software systems is particularly critical considering how tightly integrated humans and software are in modern life.
My dissertation was a study exploring differences in communication efficiency between face-to-face and virtual (think webcam-to-webcam meetings) information sharing.
A Little More About Me
Some of my interests and hobbies outside of cyberspace are:
- Getting out into nature
- Gaming
- Audio hardware
- Reading Sci-fi/Fantasy books
Some Recommended Books:
- Malazan Book of the Fallen (!)
- Neuromancer
- World War Z
- Dune
- The AI Does Not Hate You: Superintelligence, Rationality and the Race to Save the World