My name is Jon, I live near Brighton and I am a self-taught, highly motivated full stack .Net developer and DEVOPS engineer with over 20 years experience, 11 of which are in a professional capacity.
I am extremely passionate about technology, spending my own time learning and researching the latest technologies.
I began learning to program at the age of 8 on the BBC Microcomputer and started building my own custom PC’s shortly after at the age of 10.
During my Secondary School years, I taught myself HTML and CSS, before moving onto learning PHP and MySql to create data driven websites. I then took up Computing at A Level during college, and was taught to build databases in Microsoft Access and to build Windows Applications using Visual Basic 6.
My first job saw me become a Junior IT Technician, working for an IT Events company that provided IT Infrastructure and hardware at IT Events around Europe and the UK, mostly for the Microsoft Events Team. This is where the base of my technical knowledge comes from as I was trained to build and manage Windows Servers, make and run network cables, manage network infrastructure and build client machines. During my time in this job, I moved roles into the in-house .Net Development Team developing custom web applications for the events industry. I learnt to develop using ASP and Visual Basic .Net and Microsoft SQL.
I then took the plunge, at a new company, initially as a Junior Software Developer, to move away from Visual Basic and learn C#. I spent 5 years at this company, and this is where my steepest learning curve to date occurred. I was working on a web application that provided recruitment companies to manage Timesheets for their candidates, and generating the Invoice and Remittence Advices as required. During this time I was able to work with some extremely talented developers and consulatants and learnt many Design Patterns, and gained a deep understanding of using Git. With a solid understanding of Server/PC Hardware, Server Configuration and Network Infrastructure, my role developed into an all in one Developer and Ops Engineer. I looked after all our environments and their networks, the office network and staff machines, the Build and Deploy Process using TeamCity and Octopus Deploy and liasing with our hosting company.
The next 2 years saw me move to a Games Company, where I started off as a DEVOPS Engineer on a high-profile project taking a Python codebase, building it into a docker image to be deployed in a kubernetes cluster and monitoring the performance. Meanwhile the rest of my team worked on refactoring the Python codebase into small C# Services using dotnet core, and passing the finished services to me to build as docker images and deploy into the kubernetes cluster and also created scripts for the development team to use to speed up their development and local deployment time.
I like to try and develop in my spare time, when I get some, and use this time to learn new technologies which I can make use of in my day to day role.
I have a long had a huge passion for aviation and was a member of the Air Training Corps throughout my youth, and have recently acquired my Private Pilots License, which I enjoy being able to make use of on good weather days.
I used to volunteer a lot of my spare time as a Special Constable with Surrey Police for 2 years, which was an extremely interesting and rewarding role to take on and thoroughly enjoyed. However due to relocating and diminishing spare time I had to give up this role.
I enjoy running, trying to keep fit and take part in Obstacle Course Races where I can. I’m also a keen skiier as well as a waterskiier (mono) and wakeboarder.
