I’m Dan, I live on the south coast of the UK. I work at SH:24 as VP of Engineering - we’re a health-tech company with a mission to improve access to Sexual and Reproductive Health for all.
I have a passion for bringing people together to achieve a common purpose and produce high quality products that we can be proud of. I have over 7 years of leading and growing software teams to solve real business problems.
I have extensive experience as a software engineer, with 15 years experience working with the Ruby on Rails framework. I also have an interest in cloud native and devops tooling, developing production ready solutions with Kubernetes, terraform, and AWS. Although my main focus is on leadership I still make the time to be involved in engineering work on a regular basis.
Through experience and innovative thinking it is possile to build a strategy to realise immediate impact while enabling long-term success.
Experience
As experienced software engineer and technology leader. I’ve brought my expertise to a wide variety of industries including health-tech, e-commerce, devops tooling, IPTV, in both B2B and B2C contexts.
VP of Engineering, SH:24, 2021 - Present
Health-tech company specialising in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH). Responsible for all in-house developed technology (logistics, order managenent, clinical records) and integration with third party systems (manufacturing, CRM, laboratory, pharmacy).
- Reporting to the CEO. Regularly providing board level updates, guiding product and technology strategy, and engaging with the whole executive team.
- Built relationships with key external partners to facilitate deeper links between organisations and leverage integrations to benefit all parties.
- Led a team of over 20 engineers, analysis, and testers. Put in place a a regime of regular team reviews, professional development, and performance management programs.
- Achieved extremely low turnover of well performing team members.
- Developed close relationships with Head of Product and Head of Design to ensure fast, effective solutions to business and market problems.
- Configured teams and processes to maximise productivity and flow without requiring large scale hiring.
- Established a data team and associated technologies including data warehousing and machine learning tools. Automated all invoicing and reporting company-wide. Delivered an organisational shift to be data led in decision making.
- Led a transition form an antiquated hosting solution to a high availability, cloud native, scalable solution using Terraform, AWS services, and Kubernetes.
- Established the use of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for hiring and advertised directly for candidates in addition to working with selected recruiters.
Senior Software Engineer, SH:24, 2019 - 2021
Health-tech company specialising in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH). Member of the service development team responsible for designing and implementing new features and pathways.
- Developed back-office systems and clinical pathways using Ruby on Rails in co-ordination with product and design teams.
- Built easy-to-use consumer facing progressive web apps using Javascript, React, Ionic, and Ruby on Rails.
- Written and optimised database performance in PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.
- Deployment tooling and Linux systems administration.
SaaS company in the developer tools space. Responsible for maintenance and development of several SaaS applications (project management, deployment, CRM).
- Reporting to Managing Director and Technical Director.
- Acted as a product lead for 3 well established SaaS applications. Performed market research with new and existing customers and synthesised a product roadmap for each.
- Substantially grew revenues of selected SaaS products while overseeing managed decline of others.
- Line manager for a small team of web and mobile developers.
- Led the design and build of industring leading features in deployment and continuous integration services.
- Responsible for sourcing and hiring new engineers into the team. Bringing new expertise into the team where required.
- Built and maintained a developer relations programme and represented the company at various shows and conferences across the UK.
- As part of the DevRel strategy invovled in planning and running of re:develop software conference in Bournemouth.
SaaS company in the developer tools space. Developing features for a variety of applications.
- Developing applications primarily in Ruby on Rails.
- Scaling applications to support tens-of-thousands of concurrent users.
- Introduced real-time functionality for a modern, responsive experience.
- Building rich front-end features in React where appropriate.
- Server and systems administration including hardware provisioning and maintenance.
Contractor, Adrian Tession Associates, 2008 - 2010
Part-time contractor around university studies. Software house providing a variety of services including an expertise in multivalue databases and e-commerce systems.
Junior Software Engineer, Tripleplay Services, 2007 - 2008
Year in industry as part of degree. Developed pioneering IPTV and Video on Demand services.
Computing BSc (Hons), Bournemouth University, 2006 - 2010
1st BSc (Hons) in Computing. Specialised in Advanced Networking, Advanced Development, Software Quality and Testing.
If you’d like to get in touch with me you can do so via a variety of channels.