Damian Nicholson

• (+44) 7533 982 072
• hi@damiannicholson.com
• https://github.com/damian
• South Shields, UK

Telephone

(+44) 7533982072

Email

hi@damiannicholson.com

Website

damiannicholson.com

Location

South Shields, UK

GitHub

github.com/damian

Summary

I’m an experienced full stack software consultant and team lead with more than a decades worth of experience. I've shipped dozens of projects for startups and multinationals alike using both agile and waterfall methods. I specialise in building rich web applications using a blend of HTML, JavaScript and CSS and React or Angular.

Experience

Contract Frontend Lead @ Conferize

• Spearheaded the latest iteration of Conferize by migrating from a hybrid REST based Rails application using Angular, Backbone.js and CoffeeScript, to a GraphQL powered Single Page Application(SPA) using React, Apollo, ES6 and CSSModules.
• Responsible for the hiring, growth, and support of the Frontend team and the overall technical direction of the SPA.
• Enabled the company to IPO on Nasdaq First North in May 2017 by developing Conferize from a proof of concept to fully fledged product with tens of thousands of active users.

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Senior Software Developer @ Sage

• Architected and lead the development of Sage One Help and the git backed CMS that drives it. All Technical Authors across Sage One use this tool to manage and publish user assistance material, which spans multiple products and locales.
• Instrumental in the development and release of Sage One Accounts, Payroll, and Accounts Extra web products.
• Introduced code reviews across Sage One using GitHub pull requests to increase code quality and knowledge sharing inspired by Open source working practices.
• Created and led workshops across the organisation to advocate the use of agile in software delivery and also promote the in house UI component platform to be used across all Sage One products.
• Proactively brought in and took over the development, maintenance of the Sage One Marketing website for a year, before hiring an internal team to continue this work.

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Web Developer @ CEF

• Saved the company over £100k in software license renewal costs through building and rolling out an in house Ruby on Rails document storage facility to replace it.
• Introduced an automated deployment strategy for all of CEFs web applications using Capistrano, prior to this releases were a manual procedure.
• Transformed our in-house ERP systems by implementing ActiveMQ to interface with one another in real time and provide accurate product data and pricing. Prior to this updates occured on a nightly basis.

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Web Developer @ Orange Bus

• Created large sites and web applications in Drupal for clients such as Nexus, Sage and Newcastle Science City.
• Integrated client projects with third party API's such as Shopify, UStream, Internet Video Archive, Amazon Products, DeviceAnywhere, Twitter and PayPal.

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Web Developer @ hedgehog lab

• Worked as the lead on two client facing projects specifically a community based travel website and also a mobile special offer publishing system. In addition to managing the deliverables and ensuring the projects were done on time both of these were built using the ZEND Framework on a LAMP stack.

Technologies

• JavaScript
• HTML
• CSS/3
• CSSModules
• React
• Redux
• Webpack
• GraphQL / Apollo
• Flow
• ESLint
• Jest / Enzyme
• Node.js
• Ruby on Rails
• Nginx
• Apache
• ElasticSearch
• MongoDB
• MySQL

Education

• 2007 - 2008 MSc Computer Security & Resilience - University of Newcastle
• 2004 - 2007 BSc Information Systems with Management - University of Newcastle

Speaking

• January 2018 - Making Sure Your Forms Don’t Suck Using React @ FrontEndNorth
• July 2017 - Chrome Dev Tools @ Frontend North East
• May 2013 - Writing testable maintainable, scalable, rock-solid JavaScript @ Scotland.js
• April 2012 - Ten Things You Should Know About Jasmine @ JavaScript North East