07704 948 943
alex.hopgood@gmail.com
I am a developer experienced at participating in an agile team (using
Kanban & Scrum) and dealing with multiple internal and external
customers with familiarity working on greenfield and legacy projects for
live commercial environments.
I have a desire to support and learn with others, committing to reducing
knowledge siloing and am possessed of a quick learning curve.
Keen to produce quality, maintainable software whilst addressing
technical debt. I aim to respond to changing circumstances whilst
keeping an eye on the “bigger picture” to ensure future strategy isn’t
compromised or stymied by near term decisions.
Comfortable representing teams and communicating to the rest of the
business.
I am looking for a place to learn new technical skills within a
close-knit cross functional team where I can contribute to a high
quality, measurable and continually deployable product.
Java Development: Java 8-21, Hibernate, Spring; Boot, MVC, Security & Injection Frameworks, maven, TDD using JUnit, Mockito and AssertJ.
Continuous Integration: Jenkins, Github Actions, Git, Coding standards through Sonarcloud, Cobertura & Jacoco.
Server Administration: Puppet; hiera, eyaml. Vagrant, Docker, Kubernetes/Minikube, Tilt, Kind, Bash scripting. Apache web server and Traefik as reverse proxies. LetsEncrypt for certificates. Consul as a service mesh.
RESTful & SOAP Web Services: API design, integration, consumption and maintenance. Wiremock & Karate for testing & Swagger for documentation.
Agile software development: SCRUM, Kanban & Sprint management
Amazon Web Services: SNS, SQS, ECS, ECR, EKS, CF, DynamoDB, CloudWatch Insights with local development and testing using localstack and the AWS CLI.
Misc: MySQL (5.6, 5.7), Postgres, Golang, Terraform, Prometheus & Grafana, Kafka, Defect Dojo
Comfortable developing on Linux, Windows or MacOS. Experience with Eclipse, IntelliJ & Goland IDEs
Attest is a consumer research platform that puts trustworthy insights
in more people’s hands.
By combining the best bits of research technology and human expertise,
we make it simple and fast for anyone to uncover opportunities with
consumer data, continuously, at a global scale.
Skills: Golang, Terraform, Kubernetes, Postgres, Prometheus & Grafana, Github Actions, Kafka, DynamoDB, SQS, CloudWatch Insights, OpenAPI, Kind, Tilt, Defect Dojo
Not On The High Street curates an online shopping experience that
cannot be replicated anywhere else with unique products crafted by their
partners and sold only on their platform.
You won’t be able to find anything from their site on your local high
street, all items are made by UK small businesses and many items are
able to personalised for any occasion.
Skills: Java 11-17, Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Minikube, Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS API Gateway, Cloud Formation, Simple Queue Service (SQS), Simple Notification Service (SNS), Relational Database Service (RDS), App Mesh, Localstack, Spring Boot, Docker, Hibernate, MacOS, Karate, Flyway, Datadog, Grype, Syft, JMeter, Gatling.
Nutmeg provide a managed wealth service with low fees and transparency, enabling customers to manage their investments, ISAs and pensions in a straight forward way through their web interface and mobile clients. Nutmeg are challenging the banking and investment industries by removing the barriers for everyday people to invest, users need no investment know-how as the portfolios are professionally managed. Having raised £42 million in 2016 alone (the largest round in the UK since the vote to leave the European Union) and followed that with backing from Goldman Sachs to the tune of £45 million in 2019, Nutmeg are planning to take their business plan international.
Worked in the operational excellence (O.E.) team on the main Nutmeg product supporting the day to day operations. This was done by increasing unit test coverage, providing bug fixes and working with the product team to deliver improved functionality.
Worked within the Penetration Test Online team to action items raised by an external penetration test and conducted internal penetration tests against our own APIs.
To prepare Nutmeg for the MIFID-II legislation
in January 2018 I participated in a greenfield project to report
Nutmeg’s trading activity to the FCA as it happened.
Using Spring Boot micro services with AWS SQS and SNS as the messaging
platform between the services we collated individual trades into blocks
for submission.
Team member in the team responsible for creating the next generation platform for Nutmeg’s expansion:
Skills: MacOS, Docker, JDBI, JPA, Java 8, Karate, Postman, Swagger, PlantUML, Hexagonal Architecture, Spring Boot, Json Web Tokens (JWTs), Marathon
Masabi provide an industry leading mobile ticketing platform for the UK rail market and is an emergent player as a solution for metropolitan transport agencies worldwide. Over four years the UK product has grown from revenues of £4 million to £69 million in 2016:
The UK rail product included branding and management of between 11 and 12 brands of well-known train operating companies (VirginTrains, FirstHullTrains, FirstTranpennineExpress, FirstGreatWestern, FirstCapitalConnect, FirstScotRail, AbellioGreaterAnglia, CrossCountry, ChilternRailways, RedSpottedHanky, EastMidlandsTrains, O2, NorthernTrains, AbellioScotRail) as well as working with the national body the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) to provide industry wide expertise and services.
Line managed development team of 2 server developers, 1 client
developer and 2 quality analysts; leave management, 1-2-1’s, training /
conferences.
Maintained and improved the legacy product that provides Masabi’s main
UK revenue source.
Implemented peer to peer shared credential database within the team to
ensure that everyone had secure access to cross-team resources.
Encouraged pairing between dev and qa to increase communication and
understanding of features and work.
Implemented a rolling support role to ensure that no person would be a
single point of failure or reliance, enabling us to provide support
during office hours year round.
Led and encouraged knowledge and responsibility sharing amongst the team
(not quite cross functional) through pairing, responsibility switching
(e.g. support role), shared doc writeups, team presentations and hack
days.
Ensured business and customer critical stats runs were completed on the
day they were needed, brought the run time down from two days to an hour
and also distributed the knowledge so one of three team members could
pick up the task if others had high priority items already in
play.
Created acceptance criteria to help provide a universal level of
acceptance from a developer, quality analyst and account manager
view.
Ran stand ups, sprint planning, retrospective, backlog grooming and
stakeholder meetings (2015-01-01 to 2015-06-01) until a product manager
could be found. Instigated lead developer lunch meetings.
Responsible for architectural design decisions (shared cache,
externalised properties etc).
Mentored members outside of my own team.
Code Reviews for PCI compliance.
Founded a cross-team security council to review existing and newly
discovered vulnerabilities and action updates.
Implemented industry standard for RSP6 barcodes via code and turned this
into a service.
Creation of a SOAP web service for an industry standard used by a high
profile client (ATOC) for consumption by the entire rail industry.
Instigated cross-team server meetings to encourage sharing of common
domain problems and solutions.
Led team security best practices by example ensuring the team took
ownership for everyday security matters (2FA, password managers, screen
locking etc).
Created detailed documentation to speed up and standardise our
release process.
Integration with multiple 3rd party SOAP web services and updating of
web service schemas (wsdl files); Atos Origin (now Worldline),
TheTrainline, National Rail Enquiries (NRE), National Union of Students
(NUS).
Unit testing using Junit (used TDD), Mockito, Builder Pattern, JFlux
(for rapid feedback).
Encouraged and led “refactor Fridays” to increase code quality on a
legacy code base.
Increased code coverage from 35% to 60% across the three main projects,
up to 70% on specific ones (tested with Cobertura in eclipse and via
Maven and Jenkins).
Skills: Java 6, Spring 3.x; MVC, Security & Injection Frameworks, Jersey, DropWizard, Hibernate, Tomcat, SOAP Web Services, Apache CXF, Cobertura, Subversion, Bamboo CI, MySQL 5.5, maven, JUnit 4.x, Mockito
Isca’s main focus was on creating kiosks and mobile applications for the retail sector.
Formed of a cross functional engineering team encompassing agile planning and execution using Embedded Windows, Java, SIP/VOIP Software Switch and web technologies (HTML, CSS and Javascript). These were used to provide the core product of a touch screen kiosk with a telephony enabled web application for Point of Sales (POS) interaction with customers backed by an on site telephony and web server.
Customers were located in the UK, Canada and France where over 200 kiosks were deployed to a leading department store.
The company was refounded in Canada under the name of Toushay in 2012.
Gained extensive knowledge of the Java development environment over
four years.
Set up a continuous development environment, testing framework and
coding standards through the use of Jenkins (CI), Junit,
jBehave/Selenium (testing), Sonar (code standards) and Maven &
Artifactory (build & publishing tools).
Evaluated various mobile/embedded operating systems for use as a touch
screen kiosk operating system, ended up choosing Windows Embedded
Standard 2009 (WES 2009).
Once the choice was made, trained colleagues in deployment and
maintenance of the mobile OS as well as taking ownership of continuing
customisation.
Devised a custom command line tool to back up, upgrade or restore a WES
2009 OS image to use when in the field and in the lab with our touch
screen kiosks.
Experienced with using programming frameworks/packages/APIs to prevent
“reinventing the wheel”.
Managed product roadmap leading to the implementation of SCRUM process
for the company which resulted in consistently high quality product
iterations.
Key contributor to planning, review and retrospective meetings where
compromise, negotiation and discussion required, allowing the agile
process to flow.
Experienced working within a small multidisciplinary team where clear
communication is vital to preventing wasted effort and time.
Performed in a high pressure environment closely with the same small
group of people, often to a deadline, requiring putting in extra time as
it is needed. To be a successful part of a team under such circumstances
requires a positive outlook to maintain morale and an ability to get on
productively with many personality types.
Familiar with identifying and evaluating software toolsets.
Skills: Subversion, JUnit 4.x, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, JQuery Mobile, Bootstrap, Google Web Toolkit, Windows Embedded Standard 2009 & 7 (WES 2009 & WES 7), Google App Engine, MongoDB, Experience with Freeswitch and SIP standards
Wesley Clover is the investment vehicle of Sir Terry Matthews a serial technology business founder with companies such as Mitel, Newbridge Networks and Sandvine. Its role is to seed new start up companies (typically with new graduates) that can attack specific technology verticals that larger companies lack the agility or resources to tackle.
During a three month graduate placement in Ottawa, Canada I was
seconded to a small working group where I was vetted for suitability and
compatibility for a start up incubation program with other graduates.
These graduates came from Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea universities in
the UK, Waterloo University in Canada and Rochester Institute of
Technology in New York.
I developed business technology ideas and concepts in a competitive
environment to win backing to create a start up.
Working as part of a team in this large retailer my main role was to
provide the best customer experience possible in keeping with the
company’s high standards. This ranged from face-to-face dealings with
the public to indirectly via the phones.
I worked well under pressure, whilst proving to be enthusiastic,
flexible and adaptable.
Managed to keep up-to-date in an ever changing industry/medium.
Responsible for maintaining store displays, money handling, training of
peers and new staff, stock room duties, receipt of deliveries.
Communication with colleagues and dealings with customers requiring tact
and respect have rounded and improved my communication skills on a
personal and informal level.
My experience in retail has resulted in a dynamic approach to problem
solving where solutions are often needed quickly and discretely.
As a member of staff over the very busy Christmas period I had to prove myself capable of dealing with large volumes of customers and incoming stock whilst being friendly, informative and keeping the merchandising as tidy and high impact as possible to attract custom.
Gained the ability to work with and integrate into a team with individuals of various strengths, merits and dispositions. Stamina was required for long early opening shifts where both till and kitchen work would be required and also when dealing with difficult customers. Patience and tenacity were qualities gained due to the fast paced work environment where reactivity is also beneficial. A methodical approach was fostered through “clean as you go” by keeping work areas clean and tidy whilst also ensuring that food could be produced as and when needed.
Good working knowledge of various programming languages including
Prolog, Java, Delphi, C, Maude, CLIPS, ASP, C#, Haskell. Programming
paradigms included functional, declarative and object-oriented.
Group work undertaken to jointly develop, document and deliver a
software project, overcoming personal, design, implementation and
scheduling factors.
Individual dissertation completed involving independent research and
learning of parallelism and compiler theory. Resulting in fully
documented work implementing said theory into a working prototype
product.
Knowledge of entrepreneurship and product lifecycle including the
importance of planning throughout using appropriate techniques such as
the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and the Waterfall methodology.
Arthur Mellows Village College.
A-Levels in Mathematics(B), History(B) & Geography(C), AS-Levels in
Chemistry(C) & General Studies(B).
Arthur Mellows Village College.
12 G.C.S.E.s gained 5 (A), 4 (B), 2 (C), 1 (D).
Currently studying towards the Kali Linux Certified Professional (KLCP) qualification.
Member of the South London Branch
The Certified Argo Project Associate (CAPA) exam demonstrates a user’s ability to navigate the Argo Project ecosystem, including when and why to use each tool.
The Certified Argo Project Associate (CAPA) exam demonstrates a user’s ability to navigate the Argo Project ecosystem, including when and why to use each tool.
Covering: Verification, Threat Modeling, Cryptography
Covering: Input Validation, Processing Data Securely, Calling Other Programs, Sending Output
Covering: Security Basics, Security Design Principles, Reusing External Software
Covering: Services, Deployments, Authentication & Authorization ConfigMap, Secrets, Volume Management, Ingress
Course completed at 82%, covering a broad range of AWS technologies. Not certified by AWS.
Covering: Container Runtimes, Docker Daemon, Container Operations, Images, Dockerfiles, Networking, Storage and Multi-container applications.
Covering: Account Enumeration, Automated Attacks, Brute Force Attacks, Content Security Policies, Cookies, Cross Site Request Forgeries (CSRF), Injection attacks, Session Hijack
Also available as a Pluralsight companion course
Syllabus
A two day workshop around introducing architecture to the agile
methodology, ensuring enough architecture is thought of before coding
without losing the benefits of agility and fast feedback.
Learning how much detail is enough; how to convey important
architectural decisions without skimping on detail or conversely
supplying too much detail that they get buried.
I maintain a small homelab for career development and side projects allowing me to explore new technologies and gain experience DevOps by running my own infrastructure.
Indoor sports climbing, Mountain biking, Jogging.
Cooking, reading science fiction and pursuing my own technical
projects.
A kayaking group based on the Thames at Kew Bridge and the Union Canal Brentford
Participated up to the gold level of the award, through regular gym
sessions, climbing and a residential project on building dry stone walls
in the Trough of Bowland and the gold level expedition.
My experiences doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and other outdoor
pursuits have helped me develop team centric skills; demonstrating
resourcefulness as a group, determination to achieve joint goals and the
support and motivation of others to maintain morale. These skills
resulted in a joint work ethic towards a common goal under difficult
circumstances. Participation in the award has fostered my individual
resourcefulness, determination and independence.
Participated in many outdoors, adventure and community activities. Responsible for drawing up activity programmes for unit, chairing of meetings, communication with group and district scout leaders as well as other venture units and ranger units. Including support of younger counterparts in the group such as the local scout and cub units.
Participated in regular trips to an indoor climbing and bouldering wall, a form of exercise and social event in one.
Promoted self discipline, emotional control and respect for others. Regularly took part in competitive training and set pieces, teaching and support of other students either junior or senior was encouraged.
A course covering the basics needed to man a small sailing dinghy (topper or laser pico) and participate as part of a three man crew on a small yacht (laser trio).
