Personal Details
Email:
john [at] johnmain.co.uk
Date of Birth:
12/03/1981
Location:
Banff, Aberdeenshire, UK
Employment History
Engineering Manager, Health and Cyber – Citation
September 2023 – Present
Note: QUIQSOLUTIONS Ltd was acquired by Citation in September 2023 so all responsibilities within the QUIQSOLUTIONS section below are still within my remit
- Leading the technical teams responsible for heath and cyber platforms
- Introduction of new processes and tools, such as Scrum, Jira and NewRelic
- Designing and implementing tech strategy to meet the needs and targets of the company
- Leading development and architecture strategy and defining tech roadmap
- Leading infrastructure projects to containerise the applications using Amazon ECS, Docker, code pipelines, and CI.
- Liaising with other teams, sharing responsibilities and insight to increase efficiency
- Managing budgets and recruitment
- Speaking for the team in senior management meetings and workshops
- A/B testing and statistical analysis
Chief Technical Officer, QUIQSOLUTIONS Ltd
March 2017 – Present
- Overview and management of all technical concerns
- Leading software development
- Designing, building and maintaining server architecture with AWS
- Staff supervision
- Building advanced reporting, trend analysis and graphing tools
- Data-warehousing tasks, including integration with PowerBI
- Documenting processes, resiliance planning
- Bespoke solution design
- Implementation of BDD and TDD
- Development primarily in Laravel 7-10, jQuery, Bootstrap 4/5
- Cyber Essentials compliance, penetration testing and remediation
Engineering Manager, Croud Ltd
September 2015 – March 2017
- Helping to lead the development team, building the tech that drives a multinational business
- Supervising staff, identifying personal development goals and ensuring required support and training is given
- Work primarily in Laravel 5/6 with some Zend
- Managing large-scale migration of data to new systems
- Designing new solutions and architecture to meet high demand across a wide geographical area
- System administration with Apache and Nginx
- Building and maintaining worldwide server infrastructures
- Google Analytics integration and reporting
Research and Development Director, Nexus Point
September 2014 – September 2015
- Managing the day-to-day operation of the development team
- Supervising staff, identifying personal development goals and ensuring required support and training is given
- Providing technical direction to the company
- Finding and implementing new technologies to ensure that work is as optimised and efficient as possible
- Liaison with clients and third-party contractors
- Project specification and management
- Building powerful bespoke content management solutions
- Building custom tools and integrations, primarily for the automotive sector
- Heavy emphasis on efficient data processing caching and warehousing
- Specifying, implementing and maintaining powerful Linux server architectures
- Work primarily in Laravel 4.2/5 plus good experience of Expression Engine and CodeIgniter
Specialist Applications Developer, Assurant Solutions Europe
August 2013 – August 2014
- Delivering specialist applications to support business operations
- Extensive use of MVC PHP frameworks such as Laravel and Magento
- Installation and configuration of live application servers
- Scripting deployment tools with Capistrano (Ruby on Rails)
- Virtual machine build automation with Vagrant and Chef (Ruby on Rails)
Lead Developer, 11 Out Of 10
Nov 2012 – August 2013
- Technical lead for development of puregym.co.uk
- Managing the day-to-day operation of the development team
- Supervising staff, identifying personal development goals and ensuring required support and training is given
- Providing technical direction to the company
- Finding and implementing new technologies to ensure that work is as optimised and efficient as possible
- Liaison with clients and third-party contractors
- Project specification and management
Freelance Web/Application Design
March 2003 – Present
Full Time Aug 2011 – Oct 2012
Full Time Aug 2011 – Oct 2012
- Full stack web development implementing modern tools
- Mobile application development using Cortana and JQuery Mobile
- Integration of third party tools such as JQuery, JQuery UI, JPGraph and Highcharts
- Design of sites based on third party frameworks including Laravel, Joomla, WordPress and OpenCart
- Use of Google Analytics, Adwords and Adsense
- Development of e-commmerce and Paypal integration libraries
- Design of reporting and statistical analysis tools
- Clients include the BBC, Astra Zeneca, LeisureMost and QuiqSolutions
Senior Communications Engineer
BBC Manchester June 2008 – Nov 2011
BBC Media City June 2012 – Oct 2012
BBC Media City June 2012 – Oct 2012
- Occasional cover in Central Technical Area (full time June 2012 – Oct 2012)
- Support and maintenance of transmission equipment
- Liaising with other communications centres, network booking centres and hubs
- Transmitter control and line-up
- Broadcast monitoring, circuit switching, opt control and other broadcast duties
Technical Director, Lost Ferret
March 2010 – Aug 2011
- Providing technical direction to the development team
- Web development implementing PHP5, MySQL, Javascript, CSS, AJAX
- Development of payment provider integration libraries including 3D Secure
- Use of JQuery (Javascript) and Zend (PHP) frameworks.
- Use of Google Analytics, Adwords and Adsense
- Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) cloud network specification
Senior Software Developer, Setfire Media
March 2008 – Jan 2010
- Technical lead for development of onthebeach.co.uk
- Development of e-commerce systems
- Web development implementing Ruby on Rails, Perl, MySQL, ERB, HAML, Javascript, CSS, AJAX
- Object oriented design in Ruby on Rails and Perl
- Use of Javascript frameworks including Prototype and JQuery
- Customer liaison, identifying business requirements and implementing development model
- Following iterative development cycles in line with Scrum methodology
- Collaborative work with third party data suppliers including XML integration libraries
- Use of safe code release technologies such as Capistrano
Senior Web Developer, IRIS
Aug 2007 – March 2008
- Development of an online behaviour management system used by over fifty schools nationwide
- Web development implementing PHP5, MySQL, Javascript, CSS, AJAX
- Creation of standalone Java applications
- Object oriented design in PHP5 and Java
- Design and implementation of secure data transfer systems
- Design and development of a fully MVC compliant PHP5 web application framework
- Design of reporting and statistical analysis tools
All Above Web Design Roles Have Featured
- Project management and development in a live server environment
- Customer liaison, identifying business requirements and implementing development model
- Presenting new systems to clients and providing training
- Creating documentation and training material
- Team working, task delegation and supervision
- Search engine optimisation including correct metadata implementation
- Following accessibility and standards compliance guidelines
- Data security implementation and PCI compliance
- Data warehousing
- Unit, integration and system testing
- Working to tight deadlines
- Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (5-8) system administration
- Use of version control and collaborative development technologies
Communications Engineer, Monitoring and Information Centre, BBC Birmingham
Sept 2004 – Aug 2007
- Design and implementation of several nationally used web systems on the BBC Intranet
- Systems relating to online data management, learning, accountancy and health and safety management
- Languages used include PHP, VBScript, MySQL, SQL Server, Javascript, CSS
- Support and maintenance of transmission equipment
- National digital TV support, remote operation and monitoring
- Liaising with other communications centres, network booking centres and hubs
- Transmitter control and line-up
- National contribution circuit switching and line-up
- Out of hours technical support for all areas of BBC Birmingham
Trainee Broadcast Engineer, Broadcast Engineering, BBC Northern Ireland
Sept 2002 – Sept 2004
- Design and implementation of content management systems on the BBC Intranet
- Languages used include PHP, MySQL, Javascript, CSS
- Full BBC graduate training progression
- Maintenance of all broadcast systems across the site
- Workshop safety procedures
- Fault finding, test equipment and circuit level maintenance
- Outside broadcast rigging and satellite/terrestrial link line-up
- Radio camera operations
- Sound/vision desk driving, camera operation, playout systems
Voluntary Work
Special Constable – West Mercia Police Force
Aug 2013 – Mar 2016
- Intensive training regarding all aspects of the law
- Operational safety and self-defence
- Crime prevention, conflict de-escalation, support for vulnerable people
- Liaison with other emergency services
- Duties including patrol, traffic operations, neighbourhood policing and statement taking
Senior Systems Engineer – Radio Lollipop (Hospital Radio) National Support Team
2005 – 2012
- Support and maintenance of international sustaining service
- Maintenance of Windows Media Server
- Web and email based server and client monitoring system
- Statistical analysis, filtering and graphing
- Languages used include HTML, VBScript, MySQL, Javascript, CSS
- Design and implementation of Linux template for client machines
Education
University of Birmingham
2:1 BSc (hons) Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science
Sept 1999 – June 2002
Parrs Wood High School / Parrs Wood Sixth Form Centre (Manchester)
A Levels: Physics (B) Chemistry (B) Mathematics (C) General Studies (C) GCSEs: 10 A-C
Sept 1992 – June 1999
Training Courses
First Aid at Work (Requalification)
October 2016
Java SE 7 Programming (QA / Oracle)
March 2014
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation Certificate
February 2014
First Aid Skills Police
November 2013
First Aid at Work (Requalification)
September 2009
First Aid at Work (St John Ambulance)
September 2006
BBC Safe Driver Training Programme (BBC)
July 2006
Safari Field Guide Course in South Africa (Ecotraining)
April/May 2006
- Training to Ecotraining Level 1 and qualification
- Animal tracking
- Approaching dangerous game
- Flora and Fauna identification
- Reserve management and conservation
- Safari vehicle driving
- Weapons handling
Design Principles for the Web (BBC)
February 2006
Big Ted3 Administrator Training (BBC)
January 2006
ENPS, MOS and Broadcast Integration (BBC)
September 2005
BNCS Maintenance (BBC)
February 2005
AutoCAD 1&2 (BBC)
April 2003
BBC Graduate Engineers Progression
Sept 2002 – July 2004
- Electronic Graduates Induction
- Broadcast Engineering Foundation 1,2 & 3
- Broadcast Engineering Consolidation 1&2
- Progression Safety Module
- Internet Engineering
- Broadcast Engineering Advanced