Dan Edwards

Course of (professional) life

About

Dan has been writing JavaScript for decades now (1.5 decades), and though he'd never like to admit he's any good or knows very much, he is always told by his colleagues that he's done a good job and that they like him. Dan doesn't mind which programming language he uses, but JavaScript has been the main constant in his life, much like English, or The Queen.

He's in it for the code, it doesn't matter if the code is in the browser or on a server. Dan has been responsible for delivering multiple production applications from frontend to backend and everything in between, for many corporate and public companies, as well as the government.

Experience

Ernst & Young, London

Multinational professional services partnership

Manager (Senior Web Developer) | July 2022 - Present

Part of an aquisition, Dan and the team was brought into EY to consult and work on EY's new tech capability. Acting as tech lead for public sector contracts, and providing mentoring, support, and training for EY's tech graduates.

Project's have mostly consisted of government contracts, the most recent of which is joining the Department of Work and Penstion's (DWP) engineering practice. Dan helps lead the design and development of Express-based applications that implement governemt initiatives. Applications are deployed to DWP's extensive AWS infrastructure.

Digital Detox, London

Humanity-led digital product agency

Senior Web Developer | January 2018 - July 2022

Major clients of this agency included Vodafone, BMI, Unum, and Oxford University Presss. Contracts were as diverse as the clients and would involve projects such as entire site-replatforms (headless CMSs with Node backends and React frontends), native app development, design systems, and custom web applications. Most dev work would revolve around full stack Type/JavaScript but would include everything from designs to production deployment. Dan was a key part of developing and launching many digital products whilst at Digital Detox (DD).

A more senior role was achieved at DD, which involved more management aspects and becoming more involved with the planning side of projects, as well as managing other developers and being the technical representation in pitches for new clients.

Freelance Work

Royal Air Force Museum | 6 week contract, November 2017

The task was to build an application which would enable volunteers to transcribe around 30,000 WWI documents. The transcribed data would then be available to the rest of the public to search. The project was built with October CMS (Laravel) to allow for site management by museum staff. A well thought out approach to server and data management was particularly important due to the large amounts of data and the labour that it represents.

For the People | 6 week contract, May 2016

Hired to build out a pilot application in Express that allows companies to run campaigns encouraging their staff to make promises/goals or donate to charity. A complex application with many features including social interaction and payment meant attention to detail and good self-management was crucial.

Publicis Pusher | 2 week contract, March 2016

A quick and high-pressure job to implement accessibility amends across the official website for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Just Group | 8 week contract, January 2016

Brought in to finish off an internal responsive email builder tool. Initially built with simple PHP programming patterns, the code base was modularised for use across all Just Group brands. Several third party APIs were also implemented that streamlined the entire process and together saved huge amounts of time for all email campaigning at Just Group.

Loud & Clear | 4 week contract, November 2015

Developed a marketing tool for Telstra using Google Cardboard and Three.js. An in depth knowledge of JavaScript and the ability to get up to speed quickly with a new JS library was vital in getting this web-based virtual reality project completed on time for a Telstra conference.

National Maritime Museum, London

One of the world's largest maritime museums

Web Developer | October 2013 - January 2015

Sole full-stack developer for all of the museum's new and experimental web-technology projects as well as responsibility for their cloud servers and blogs. Major projects included: Development of their photo competition application used for the world famous "Astronomy Photographer of the Year" award. Built with the CakePHP framework, the application handled user photo submissions and the official judging process. The front end is JavaScript heavy and utilises the Flickr API. Coding a complete responsive redesign of all WordPress blogs using latest CSS3 properties and progressive enhancement methodologies. Migration of all web assets to new Rackspace cloud servers and implementing GitHub version control as well as an update of all outdated CMS installs and Linux OS utilities. Development of a search engine for over 300,000 digitised crew list records. Built on the Laravel framework with a heavy database management aspect.

Syncapse

Small startup providing a social media analytics and publishing platform

Software Development Engineer | November 2010 - July 2013

Varied role involving all aspects of the web development process. Ultimately became part of a core team responsible for delivering new application features on tight deadlines for large and demanding clients such as Coca-Cola and Unilever.

Technical Skills

This is not an exhaustive list but this is the stuff I work with every day or have years of experience working with in the past:

HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, PHP, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Git, CI/CD, Testing, Apache, Linux.

Education

2006-2010 University of Westminster, London

BSc Computer Science (First Class Honours) Specialising in Web Development Technologies.

2000-2005 Thirsk Secondary School and Sixth Form College

3 A-Levels in Biology, Physics and Maths 9 GCSEs including Maths, Sciences, English and English Literature.