Hi! I'm James. Nice to meet you! I live in Manchester (UK) currently working for AND Digital as a Tech Principal.
I took a keen interest in computers from a young age. I built my first computer aged 14 and my passion really grew from there.
The expiremental nature of tinkering with electronics I fell in love with; some of my favourite hacks being to overclock a
Celeron processor with a pencil and baking a graphics card in an oven to re-solder the PCB - crazy times.
After graduating from Manchester University in Computer Science my mission was to work in the software industry
with some of the top companies in the UK where I could learn from the best talent and pickup some of the top
practices in the industry, experiencing it all... I finally found my home consulting at AND Digital where I enjoy working with
C-Suite at some of the largest companies in the UK. I love roles where I feel like I'm being challenged with the
opportunity to make a big impact.
In my spare time I have an eclectic taste of hobbies. I played Chess for England as a teenager and was one of the top rated in
my age group. I one day still hope to become a titled chess player achieving FIDE Master or an International Master title.
My other hobbies include collecting Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar, whether that's painting, playing or the lore. I also
can be found regularly exercising and running. Health is important to me as it helps me maintain a health body and mind.
Experience
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AND Digital
Tech Principal AND Aspiring Chessmaster
As a Tech Principal with AND Digital, I am responsible for building engineering culture and the technical delivery of projects on such major clients as The Very Group and Jaguar Land Rover. At The Very Group my acting role was in an Engineering Manager capacity, working across 5 teams spanning the majority of the Financial Services engineering function. We delivered a £100m revenue project and pulled the delivery of the project in by 9 months ensuring a successful and well executed delivery for the client.
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Devangst Enterprises Ltd
Founder
I have operated Devangst as a business since 2016. As a Director, I have managed the day-to-day running of the business (including accounting) as well as using it as a vehicle for consulting services and I have even sought out freelance opportunities. Through my independent consultancy I worked with the likes of HMRC, Vodafone, Coop Digital and Bosch Automotive. Roles ranged from building and architecting microservice middleware in Scala to working on UK Government websites in Scala as well as writing applications in Python and Django for Coop Digital on their Funeral proposition. I am polyglot by nature and relish the opportunity to work with different languages and stacks.
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Booking.com
Engineering Manager
As one of the founding engineers, I helped build the Booking Rides (Rideways) website eventually progressing to an Engineering Manager and scaling out the Booking Rides department from 5 engineers to 30 engineers. I was responsible for the Core Platform team responsible for a team of 7 engineers. In addition I worked with a remote team out of India to onboard multiple Taxi suppliers.
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BBC
Senior Software Engineer
Whilst at the BBC, I was part of two award winning teams. In BBC Childrens we launched the BBC Connected Friends feature, which was the BBCs first attempt at online multiplayer games for children. For that project we were awarded the BBC Future Media Excellence Award. I moved on to join BBC Sport launching BBC Live as one of the Senior Software Engineers. The service delivered near real-time updates for Sports such as the Winter Sochi Olympics, Music, TV Shows, News and other such events across the BBC Website. We were awarded both the Digital Platform of the Year Award at the BT Sport Industry Awards and the BBC Future Media Excellence Award.
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Autotrader
Software Engineer
At Autotrader as a Java Engineer, I worked on the Online Ads Platform as well as migrating away from the old ads platform to the new ads platform.
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The Hut Group
Software Engineer
During my time with The Hut Group I worked on launching the new Warehouse Management System, integrating it with a warehouse packing system called Snapfulfil. We successfully launched the Warehouse Management System on time. The Hut Group was one of the UKs very few recent unicorns, when it IPO'd for £5.4bn on the stock market in 2020.