// The journey so far

• IOHK

  Head of Web Development

  May 2021 - Present

  At IOHK, a leading blockchain technology company, I have taken on the responsibility of rebuilding and leading the web development team, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality web solutions to support the the wide range of products and events that IOHK are involved in.

  • Revitalising the web development team by recruiting top talent, fostering a positive, collaborative environment, and providing mentorship and technical guidance to enhance overall team culture and performance.
  • Implementing modern tooling, best practices, and cutting-edge technologies to elevate the quality and efficiency of the team's output.
  • Streamlining processes and workflows to improve collaboration and communication among team members, ultimately increasing productivity.
  • Collaborating with stakeholders to define the strategic direction for web development initiatives, ensuring alignment with company objectives and industry trends.
  • Guiding the team through the development and deployment of scalable, secure, and high-performance web solutions, both for internal and external use cases.
  • Continuously fostering a positive culture of collaboration and growth, providing constructive feedback, and facilitating professional growth opportunities to nurture an exceptional engineering team.
  • Staying current with the latest advancements in web technologies, actively exploring opportunities to utilise cutting-edge tech in creative ways that differentiate our web solutions and establish our team as industry leaders.
  • Conceptualising and building EssentialCardano.io, a comprehensive and accessible resource for anyone interested in learning about the Cardano ecosystem. By innovatively utilising GitHub as a content management tool, the platform empowers non-technical users to contribute to open-source projects and familiarises them with the process, further strengthening the Cardano community.

  > learn more at IOHK

• Adarga.ai

  Technical Lead & Development Manager

  March 2020 - May 2021

  Having, up until this point in my career, worked mostly within bootstrapped start ups I decided that I wanted to test myself within a larger organisation. I was immediately drawn to Adarga, as it offered an excellent environment in which to test my technical skills and gain exposure to  cutting edge technical disciplines like machine learning and AI. At Adarga we're working with a wide variety of technologies. Our front end is built in React and tested with react testing library and cypress. We use a micro service architecture comprising of various server side languages including Go, Python, Typescript and Java which are orchestrated by Kubernetes, Kafka and Kong gateway API.

  • Providing technical leadership for a cross fuctional, agile product delivery team comprising of front end, back end, data science and QA engineers.
  • Making criticial architechtural decisions and leading a complete re architecture of the monolithic React front end. Exploring micro front end architecture to allow product delivery teams to take ownership of entire parts of the product.
  • Line management of front end engineers across the entire organisation.
  • Taking ownership of various internal process and their improvement.
  • Rapid prototyping of experimental new functionality.
  • Maintaining and developing our React front end application and component library.
  • Mentorship of junior developers and code reviews.
  • Working closely with QA to improve our front end automated testing strategies / standards.
  • Defining a set of standards and best practices for end to end testing using cypress

  > learn more at Adarga.ai

• Omstars.com

  Technical Director

  June 2017 - March 2020

  After a year long career break, which included six months of silent retreat, I took a varied and engaging remote position as Technical Director for the online Yoga education platform Omstars.com. When I first joined Omstars, they had recently completed version 1 of their yoga on demand streaming service which was funded by a successful crowdfunding campaign. The application, whilst functional as an MVP, had a number of architechtural challenges and I spent the next 3 years maturing the platform, helping Omstars grow in to a major player in the online Yoga and wellness space.

  • Responsible for techncial strategy and mission critical architechtural decisions.
  • Led re-architechture of the Omstars front end codebase using Isomorphic React, NextJS & Redux.
  • Built the Omstars remote techincal team.
  • Worked closely with UI/UX to implement new designs and rapidly iterate on existing functionality.
  • Created and maintained various NodeJS micro services.
  • Worked closely with marketing to analyse customer feedback and metrics.
  • Planning, coordinating and executing product roadmap and feature development
  • Creating processes, practices and infrastructure for remote collaboration, communication and organisation
  • Creating best practices and code standards for development, testing and deployment.
  • Mentoring and supporting internal technical team.
  • Close collaboration with CEO and other stakeholders.

  “ As Technical Direcor at Omstars, Martin helped us build the entire technical foundation of our business. Martin took on every initiative with his whole heart and soul and it was his overarching commitment to the task at hand and his positive attitude that brought creative solutions in and helped us succeed.”

  > learn more at Omstars.com

• Hawaii VA Loans / Vamba

  Lead Developer

  AUGUST 2010 - FEBRUARY 2016

  After running my own business for 2 years, I was offered a full time, remote, high responsibility position by an existing client with whom I greatly enjoyed working and I jumped at the opportunity. As well as building and maintaining a number of client facing websites for various arms of the Hawaii VA Loans business I was responsible for building a B2B SaaS application for the mortgage lending industry from the ground up using PHP and the codeigniter framework. Whilst I'm sure the technology has moved on since then, Vamba is still in business today and doing better than ever!

  • Built and managed multiple complex projects, including a PHP based B2B SAAS platform as well as a number of customer facing websites.
  • Built and managed a remote team designers and engineers.
  • Contributed to business and product strategy.
  • Oversaw the day to day operation of hawaiivaloans.com and significantly increased leads by utilising new lead generation strategies and creating targeted micro sites.
  • Project managed and developed all technical infrastructure for the Hawaii VA Games a nationally televised crossfit competition. The technical offering included live leaderboards, sponsorship, ticket sales and marketing efforts.

  > learn more at Hawaii VA Loans / Vamba

• Self Employed

  Freelance Web Developer

  JULY 2008 - AUGUST 2010

  I was fortunate enough to find my calling early and by the time I had left secondary school I was already starting to take odd jobs for family friends. By 2008 I was confident in calling myself a freelance web developer and over the next few years worked on a wide variety of technical projects. From building an Magento powered fashion ecommerce applicaiton to leading the web efforts for an inivative technology startup backed by Swindon Borough Council.

  • Cultivated strong communication skills and the ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders in a clear and relatable way.
  • Implemented "pixel perfect" ie6 compatible UI designs (dues paid in full 😉).
  • Wordpress development.
  • E-commerce development with Magento / Shopify
  • Started to build my knowledge of Javascript (and distaste for jQuery).
  • Web application development with PHP and Codeigniter.