Work Experience | Education | Self Study | Experience

Working as part of an agile team at SHIFT Commerce I have built, operated, maintained and optimised an enterprise level Headless Ecommerce platform for one of the UK’s largest retailers. Since inception as a single tenanted Ruby On Rails Monolith it has transitioned to a multi-tenanted system consisting of a microservices architecture using Kafka as a messaging system. All of this was delivered using continuous integration along with automated testing.

I’ve also been a part of integrating the platform with various different services from payment gateways, order management systems and email providers to name a few. All of these integrations have been built using the serverless framework to deploy resources to AWS including lambda, SQS, SNS, API Gateway and SSM.

Whilst working at SHIFT Commerce the company has undergone a transition to encourage more agility. Initially following a traditional Kanban process until moving to use Scrum over the last 18 months. During this process I have worked as both a scrum team member and scrum master, gaining professional qualifications in both.

I'm passionate about collaboratively writing high quality software and I'm looking to continue to grow and be challenged as part of a team while adding real value to users. I’m looking for a company with like-minded individuals who embody modern practices and will support my passion for solving real world problems by building scalable, maintainable services.

• Built an in store application for one of the UK's leading retailers using Ruby on Rails and working with 3rd party payment provider red ant.
• Built Serverless fault tolerant integrations using the latest technologies available on AWS.
• Worked with Heroku platform API’s to maintain and develop a simple solution for clients to create apps on Heroku.
• Built, maintained and thorouoghly test JSON API compliant Ruby API’s.
• Worked as part of a team to optimise an ecommerce platform by minimising database transactions.
• Worked with a 3rd party native app company to deliver a hybrid app for one of the largest retailers in the UK.
• Worked as part of a team to introduce a multi-tenanted database to an enterprise ready headless ecommerce platform.
• Optimised an ecommerce platform test suite, reducing it's run time by 25% using rspec, capybara and various other testing frameworks. -I've written internal and external API documentation.
• Applied clean code practices and design patterns to develop readable, maintainable, simple and scalable software.
• Improved existing code using SOLID design principles.
• Ensured quality with unit, integration tests, applying TDD and BDD.
• Prepared platform release notes for clients.

• Ruby on Rails
• Node
• TypeScript
• AWS
• React
• PostgreSQL
• Kafka
• Github
• Cypress
• Terraform

• Worked as part of a self organising cross functional development team to deliver a multi-tenanted Ecommerce platform.
• Pair programming and Agile methodologies started Makers Academy continued at Shift Commerce.
• Strong communication skills both with technical and non-technical staff.
• Worked as part of a Scrum team eventually moving to Scrum Master.

• OOP, TDD, SOLID, MVC, DDD.
• Software Craftsmanship.
• Ruby, Rails, Javascript, Node.js.
• Rspec, Jasmine, Mocha.

• Applied Biology (BSc hons), PGCE (secondary Biology)

• Professional Scrum Master (Scrum.org) - Feb 2020.
• Scrum Team Member (Scrum inc) - May 2019.
• edX Verified Certificate for Cyberwar, Surveillance and Security - AdelaideX - Cyber101x.
• Introduction to Biology - The Secret of life - MITx.
• Mentor Training - University of Leeds - Becoming an Effective Mentor.
• British Weightlifting Level one Coach.

• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz.
• The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Second Edition.
• What The Flexbox - Wes Bos course.
• Go: The Complete Developers Guide.
• Attended - 4 Dimensions and 12 Aspects of Business Agility – A Structured Approach To Help Teams Succeed Webinar.
• Studing towards my AWS Certified Developer – Associate qualification using A Cloud Guru.

• Shift Commerce (February 2020 to present) - Scrum Master & Software Engineer
• Shift Commerce (August 2016 to February 2020) - Software Engineer
• The Rodillian Academy (September 2013 to April 2016) - Assistant Head of Science
• Benton Park School (September 2012 to September 2013) - Teacher of Science
• Gosforth East Middle School (September 2010 to September 2012) - Teacher of Science

• Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - British No-Gi Champion
• Olympic Weightlifting - 3rd place in the English Northern Open

• LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/richard-watkins-2016