i suppose we should talk about this bit. it might sound a little more professional.
(spoiler: it doesn't.)
11
years shipping
5
employers
1
contracting stint
12+
technologies
∞
meetings about meetings
CURRENT · 001may 2023 — present
MONZO.
senior staff software engineer (director)
Monzo have dived head-first into the world of Borrowing with their Overdraft, Loans, and Flex products,
and the Borrowing collective has been growing at pace. I was brought in to primarily look after the Flex
product team, being a Staff Engineer to help continue rolling out new capabilities and tackle the
engineering challenges associated with providing a best-in-class product.
As a long-time user of Monzo (even paying for the Premium account!) I could not be happier to join the team;
terrified, but excited! With an incredibly talented team, very ambitious targets, and an unwillingness to
settle for anything except that brilliant "Monzo Magic", the future of Flex is looking amazing.
Going from 6 engineers in Care to over 18 has necessitated the Care team grow, split, and redefine its
priorities across these new teams. During my time at Deliveroo I ended up being "Mr Agent Tooling", which I
probably owe to my DVELP experience as well as just loving the problem space in general.
Having impact within and without the Care Applications team became more of my responsibility each day,
and being promoted to Staff Engineer is Deliveroo's way of recognising this — as well as letting me concentrate
on larger problems than the nitty-gritty of getting stuck in at the coal-face. Anyone who's worked with me knows
how much I love communicating, planning, and seeing a project through from its first steps to full graduation.
Deliveroo have many facets to their operation, and one that's not immediately obvious to outsiders is
"Care" — what happens after you place your order. It's an integral part of a great customer experience,
and one that Deliveroo takes incredibly seriously.
I was part of the Care Engineering team, looking after various microservices (both frontend and backend)
across various languages, keeping up with the latest technology as a company at the scale of Deliveroo must do,
while creating advancements at the break-neck speed that an industry leader and disruptor demands.
#typescript#react#scala#go#aws#graphql#kafka
004jun 2019 — nov 2020
DVELP.
senior software engineer · acting head of eng (last 6m)
DVELP was a company obsessed with creating real change in the communications space, especially around
contact centres. To this end, they used Twilio and Google AI capabilities to create amazing experiences,
both for contact centre agents and customers alike.
I was a full-stack Senior Software Engineer, helping deliver client solutions through our professional
services offering. I was also InfoSec Officer (lots of fun forms!), and for the last 6 months
effectively acting Head of Engineering for the DVELP practice within Sabio — involved in all facets of
delivery including sales, support, hiring, scoping, client communications, technical direction, and
actually engineering solutions.
I decided to make the move into contracting and started working through my dad's company, offering
in-house design and development services to his existing client-base, as well as updating the main website.
Lots of JAMstack, Prismic-powered "hand it over and they can edit content" work — perfect for clients
who need a modern site without needing to touch code.
First proper full-time gig out of uni. Moved into the Vegas product after two years, got promoted to Senior,
and started doing more planning and decision-making for new features (slots, live casino, and whatever the
company built next).
Learned more here than I can sensibly fit into a paragraph — automated deploys, on-call discipline, talking
to product, talking to designers, why "it works on my machine" isn't a defence. Bleeding-edge React with
TypeScript, Jenkins CI, moving from Chef/on-prem docker to AWS docker.
★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·★ JAMESKING.DEV — A ZINE·RIPIXEL LTD — A SMALL LABEL FOR SOFTWARE THAT'S PROPERLY FINISHED·★ ESTABLISHED 2024 · NOTTINGHAM, UK·