CV: Chris Reynolds

Urban Zoo is a sports technology company that provides the Gamechanger platform for App / Web / CMS & Single Sign-On for sports clubs. The platform runs on a serverless stack using AWS services, and nuxtjs provides the basis of the dynamic structure required for the frontend, and the CMS is a vuejs app.

As a Senior Developer I am responsible for;

• Ensuring the development of platform features across Web / CMS / SSO is well defined and delivered to a high standard.
• Managing ongoing support across multiple clubs and areas of their platform.
• Documenting new and existing features
• Keeping other team members on track and providing input when required.
• Suggesting areas of improvement and working pro-actively to deliver these improvements.
• Ensuring best practices are adhered to for our chosen frontend technologies (vue / nuxt / aws) as well as ensuring all API integrations (internal and third party) are performant and stable.

I also assisted the business by using past experience as a Project Manager to define a robust delivery process for onboarding new clubs which enabled a full Gamechanger delivery (including any required partner integrations) in 3 months, from Project Start up to Go Live. As a small organisation with a large client base and reach we had a responsibility to do more than our defined roles for the client and the business, to ensure that delivery of projects and features runs smoothly.

During my previous role I had decided that I wanted to change my career from Project Management to Web Development. I had a large network of previous colleagues that would be able to assist me in deciding where to focus my education, and as a freelancer I was able to structure my workload so that I was also able to take on personal projects and take online courses to help me make the transition. I did continue with some Project Management work to provide an additional income stream while I was finding my feet. This has given me an opportunity to work on a wide variety of different projects and sites including -

• Building a simple website from scratch for a new Psychiatry clinic that is currently at start-up phase
• Assisting the same business with using Microsoft O365 for secure email and data storage, and guiding them through the online services that they require for the new clinic
• Styling a subscription service for a Marketing Agency
• Project Management and Wordpress build for a Charity website rebrand and rebuild
• Contract Wordpress build for a new website for the Anglican church in Liverpool
• Creating Project Management processes and advice for young businesses that are growing and need to manage their workload, capacity and delivery as smoothly and clearly as possible.

I have had help from one of my former colleagues, both with finding work, and receiving training while I have contracted for him, which has got me up to speed with version control in git (Github), css preprocessors (SASS), writing structured CSS with BEM, and php templating and components within the wordpress development environment.

Public Health England ICT department is responsible for a wide variety of infrastructure requirements including the hosting of business critical services and systems, a high performance computing service for rapid response analysts and genome sequencing, and providing the hardware and account management to a varied workforce of ~6000 scientists and civil servants. Responsibilities

• Managing all sizes of ICT project
• Managing project delivery teams - internal and external
• Scheduling work according to departmental priorities & Public Health England strategy
• Agile and Prince2 Practitioner
• Ensuring project documentation is kept up to date and to the department standard
• Regular communication with key stakeholders and project boards
• Setting project scope with other Public Health England departments
• Managing client expectations within an organisation that has a diverse workforce