Ninjadeer.com musings of Carwyn Balch

Curriculum Vitae

Personal statement

I'm an experienced Software Engineer/Solutions Architect/Project Manager looking to continue my career within Web Application Developement

With 10 years experience of the PHP and LAMP stack and a passion for PHP Frameworks (especially Zend Framework), I use an applications to design and develop high availability applications for deployment on a wide variety of platforms.

I have exceptional skills with the use of CSS to take a designers idea from a PSD to a functional design, SEO and Semantic design is 2nd nature and I have a good all round experience with JavaScript frameworks including ExtJS, Dojo and jQuery.

I adhere as close as I can to W3C standards whilst striving for cross browser compatibility, all output code is written for consumption by machines (Screen readers and SEO) for ease of access by all users.

Career achivements

• Developed Multilingual UTF-8 Zend Framework CMS and Application Structure with Coolbox Creative and developed an in-house library to ZF (pear) standards/style, these libraries included methods to allow direct debit checks with Experian services , and perform transactions with Barclays MPI and CPI and other payment providers. (2010)
• Developed and maintained the infrastructure of a network of websites with 0.5 million unique per month. (2009)
• Developed integration of price comparison sites over several geographic audiences including USA, UK and Europe to efficiently monetize traffic, boosted revenue from in article adverts by over 500%. (2009)
• Architect of a content delivery system for a network of publication sites with emphasis on reusability of code and availability using the Zend Framework. (2006)
• Managed development of a control system for the sale and re-sale of backup software DVS Backup, Managing a team of 6 developers based I wrote initial specification documents for the team to follow. (2006)
• Redeveloped a web hosting shopping cart website that used RPC API calls to set up hosting accounts and take payment / initiate subscriptions. (2005)
• Suggested and deployed shopping carts including Actinic and xCart paving the way for entry into online retail, this gained additional retail figures of over £50,000 per annum with no addition to manpower and very little overheads. (2003)
• Part of team developing management software for VOIP communication cards with PHP language and Mysql with a team across the world including China. (2003)

Employment history

Senior Software Engineer Smile-On Limited | Cardiff / London 2010 > current

Roles

Architect of new system to help dental practices adhear to Care Quality Commission Guidelines.

Helping the company improve harware infrastructure migrating some components to cloud services

Senior Developer Coolbox Creative Ltd | Monmouthshire 2009 > 2010

Roles

Architect of new Modular CMS and Membership Portal for deployment on Lloyds TSB and HBOS Union Website.

Designed Modular Application Framework based on Zend Framework to be deployed on Azure and Amazon EC Cloud solutions.

Deployed Jira, Greenhopper and Bamboo to promote an Agile TDD Environment for the new Projects.

Director / Network 3D Ltd | Cardiff | www.cpu3d.com | 2005 > 2009

Roles

Architect and Developer of 6 bespoke Publishing Websites powered by Zend Framework and phpDoctrine.

Developed a multitude of ZF applications to monetize revenue from click and impression based advertising, at its prime Network3D.s publications served up to 23 million adverts each month.

Developed Price Comparison Portal that took data from multiple API.s to deliver relevant products to readers.

Incubation projects included various SaaS Applications.

Project Manager DVS Computers | Cardiff | http://www.dvscomputers.com/ | 2005 > 2006

Roles

Management of a 6 strong team of PHP Developers worldwide.

Interpretation of requirements document to functional specification for Developers.

Software Developer | Cardiff | http://www.opalcomputers.com/ | 2001 > 2005

Roles

Developed VOIP managment and phonecard allocation software.

Key skills

• > 10 Years of OOP Languages specialising in PHP
• Zend Framework
• phpDoctrine
• Agile development methods
• Test Driven Design with unit testing
• Javscript including ExtJS, jQuery and Dojo Javascript libraries
• HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS
• Mysql and other datbases including Oracle, MSQL and Azure SQL
• Cloud and high availibility planning including Amazon EC2/S3, Microsoft Azure
• Payment gateways including Clearcommerce (HSBC / Barclays), Sagepay, Paypal and more
• Competent with *nix based systems, Linux, Freebsd, Debian, Redhat or Varients (Ubuntu, CentOs etc)
• Eclipse Development and Debug stack

Education

• BEng Electronic Engineering UWIC / University of Wales, Cardiff
• National Diploma Electronics Engineering, Coleg Glan Hafren.
• St Martin.s School, 8 GCSE.S including Electronics (A*) Maths (B), Physics (B), and Chemistry (B)

Personal Intrests

• Napoleonic Re-Enactment across Europe (1809-1815).
• Guitar, Keyboard and Audio.
• Tinkering with Electronics

References

References are available on request.