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Intro

I’m a UK based full-stack software engineer and a tech lead with over 20 years of industry experience. I worked in tiny startups, scale up consultancies, and massive worldwide corporations. My first programming language was Borland Pascal on a DOS machine. Let’s talk.

Tech skills

Programming languages and stacks

Hands-on:

  • TypeScript / JS / Node.js / Deno
  • Python
  • Ruby

Aspirational:

  • Rust
  • Kotlin
  • C / C++

Frameworks

  • React
  • FastAPI / Pydantic

API interfaces

  • REST
  • GraphQL + Apollo client / server

Cloud providers and app hosting

  • GCP
  • AWS
  • Kubernetes

Persistence layer

  • SQL databases, PostgreSQL
  • Graph databases, Neo4j
  • NoSQL databases, MongoDB
  • Queues: GCP PubSub, Apache Kafka, BullJS, Celery

Current project

I’m a senior full-stack engineer and tech lead at Ki Insurance - an algorithmic specialty insurance provider operating on Lloyds market.

Bulb Energy - London - 2017 to 2020

Joined as a founding engineer very early on. Bulb was an energy provider trying to differentiate from the rest of the competition by investing into its digital products. To help realise this mission from the beginning I was involved in all key products, external and internal. Worked with both frontend and backend using Node.js / TypeScript, as well as GCP hosted Kubernetes. Invested in microservice architecture and implemented GraphQL interfaces for our frontend apps, with Apollo stack.

Leadership

In addition to a senior dev role, I also tech-led teams of various sizes, up to 10 developers at some point. This involved me helping across teams with technical blockers, working with product managers, data science and design to shape products and delivery, writing performance reviews and organising 1-1 catch-ups. I was also in charge of running all agile rituals - daily standups, sprint refinements, retrospectives and sprint plannings.

Project example

I’ve been in charge of technical delivery on Revenue Assurance and Debt Recovery project for the second half of my tenure. This involved shipping multiple automated backend solutions for detecting cash flow related issues, and applying a series of actions to recover lost revenue.

On a practical side, this meant designing and deploying several cloud services and cronjobs, running daily, processing huge amounts of data and dispatching emails, SMS:s, pre-recorded voice calls and actual printed letters (which we rendered using React).

This project involved dealing with the highly sensitive subject of financials, so I had to develop and apply a set of good practices around code quality and QA.

Shadow testing

Pioneered shadow testing techniques for safe production releases in Revenue Assurance project. There’s also a nice write up on this initiative.

Hiring

Performed hundreds of on-site tech interviews and actively developed our tech hiring process.

Red Badger digital consultancy - London - 2014 to 2017

A digital consultancy with an emphasis on modernising tech offerings of its numerous clients. Some of the notable projects I worked on while at Red Badger include:

Tesco

One of the senior devs on the project to deliver brand new online grocery experience across 7 countries on both mobile and desktop.

I and my team brought React and Node.js, implemented an isomorphic React app that worked with and without JavaScript support (good for feature phones), enabling a continuous integration pipeline and eventually ability to deploy to live multiple times on the same day.

ASOS

https://asos.com

Did a bit of frontend development for the brand new ASOS online shopping experience. React, Node, ES6 and FlowType. Lots of unit tests.

Fortnum & Mason

https://www.fortnumandmason.com/

I was involved as one of the Ruby on Rails devs for the initial implementation of the brand new online experience.

Nokia Mobile Phones - Finland - 2003-2011

Embedded software engineer, involved in building a product platform called Series 60 - based on Symbian OS. Experience with programming in a heavily limited hardware environment using Symbian C++, Qt C++ and later QML. The first product I was involved with was Nokia 7650 - building General Settings app - and the final one was Nokia N8, where I was one of the devs on Camera app.

I still love a good hardware project, maybe that’s why I’m totally into restoring retro computers.

Other notable achievements

React London

Started React London meetup back in 2014 - https://meetup.react.london/ and presented on several occasions at the beginning of the meetup when it was still a small gathering of friends in the basement of our Old Street office. Later helped to organise the React London conference in 2017.

Education

Computer science bachelor’s degree from Oulu Polytechnic university in Finland, 2003.

Work preferences

Permanent roles, remote friendly or hybrid

Contact

Email me at hello@alexsavin.me or drop a message on LinkedIn. And please please no phone calls, unless we have agreed on it first.