Working with the Payouts Experience team to improve the payment experience for Restaurants on the Deliveroo platform.

In the summer of 2019 Cultivate was acquired by Deliveroo. We had been working with Deliveroo since 2016 to help them build a Payments team and extract payments related code from a Rails monolith into scalable microservices. Deliveroo recognised our hard work in getting them to where they were, along with the strategic importance of having an engineering team outside of London, and acquired the company. During this transition, I switched from the more management-focused role I had at Cultivate to this more team-lead-focussed role at Deliveroo.

As a Staff Engineer at Deliveroo, I am expected to have an impact at an organisational level, as well as on my team. This includes reviewing the design and architecture of upcoming services, guiding and mentoring other engineers and growing an inclusive culture within the organisation.

Main responsibilities:

• Helping the team to deliver scalable and robust services that provide a great payment experience for restaurants in a way that is auditable for Deliveroo
• Being accountable for team infrastructure, architecture and culture
• Working alongside the Engineering Manager and Product Manager to identify, estimate and prioritise the team’s work
• Mentoring and guiding a team of 6 engineers
• Helping to guide the evolution of the Deliveroo codebase as a member of the peer design review team
• Interviewing engineers at any level

Working as a manager and team lead on projects with Cultivate’s clients such as Deliveroo and 38 Degrees.

In 2017 I was promoted to Principal. The Principal role was a management one aimed at leading teams on projects, liaising with clients, contributing to business development and supporting individuals via regular 1-1s. This role also saw me joining the management team where I helped steer the company’s direction in terms of vision, values and culture.

Main responsibilities:

• Leading a team of up to 8 engineers on the larger projects that we had as a company
• Regular 1-1s with engineers
• Working with our clients to identify and prioritise work
• Fostering and encouraging timely, frequent and empathetic communication between the team and the client
• Helping to steer the company direction, values and culture
• Supporting business development in the finding and landing of client work
• Running discovery workshops with potential clients
• Interviewing candidates and involved in the creation and maintenance of the hiring process

In this role, I helped to identify problems and build solutions for clients such as the Money Advice Service and 38 Degrees.

Cultivate was an offshoot from Neo, where I had worked prior to taking a year out to participate in Code for Europe. I rejoined the team in 2015 and continued to contribute to the company’s consulting work in Lean UX and agile development.

Main responsibilities:

• Participating in and facilitating discovery workshops with clients to identify the problems that we were aiming to solve
• Identifying, estimating and prioritising work with clients
• Encouraging and mentoring others on the team in company practices such as pairing, TDD/BDD and software design
• Building solutions using the right language and framework for the task at hand
• Interviewing engineering candidates

I worked with Nesta to help the City of Edinburgh Council to open up their data to the public.

As part of the engagement, we also looked at ways to crowdsource the gathering of data not currently available to the Council that they would be best placed to gather and share. This led to the development of an application that enabled citizens to share their memories of the city. Those memories were added to the city archives and used as materials for reminiscence therapy.

I also advised the Council on their Open Data policy, helping them to put infrastructure in place that would enable them to engage more with local SMEs and startups.

Main responsibilities:

• Advising City of Edinburgh Council on their Open Data policy
• Collaborating on Open Data policies with Nesta, the Open Data Institute and various other Open Data organisations throughout Europe
• Liaising with the other technologists in residence engaged in the scheme to share knowledge and experience, including teams in Amsterdam, Berlin and Helsinki
• Building software that used or encouraged the gathering of Open Data

Full-stack Ruby on Rails and JavaScript development for a global software consultancy.

Neo were at the leading edge of the Lean Startup and Lean UX movements. Eric Reis (author of The Lean Startup) was on the board and Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden (authors of Lean UX) were senior consultants.

I was involved in rapidly prototyping and proving innovative new products using these methodologies for early stage startups and Fortune 500 companies.

Part of a small, fully distributed team of Ruby developers, working on a private, invite-only social networking site.

Building Java applications to support the company’s planning, procurement and document control software.

Planning and project managing onshore engineering and offshore construction work for a variety of North Sea oil platforms and vessels.

Desktop and application support, training and documentation.