Portfolio of James Barwell

I am a developer, specialising in front-end development for the web and currently working for Orange. I have experience working on large-scale enterprise web applications, on projects for organisations such as the MoD, Government and EDS. I enjoy developing using Javascript and LAMP technologies (PHP, Python & Django), and have also used C# and .Net previously. At university I studied Interactive Systems Engineering, and I also have a background in standards-based XHTML and CSS.

07716 142 228 / james@barwell.plus.com

Relevant experience

Analyst programmer / Orange (January 2010 and ongoing)

Developing cutting-edge web applications as part of Orange's Tactical Customer Service team. We are a small, Agile team, tasked with rapidly replacing and upgrading old systems and architecture with efficient and reusable solutions, making heavy use of web services. I am working with and contributing to a custom MooTools framework, based on object-orientated and MVC concepts, which interacts with a Zend PHP/MySQL back-end over a JSON-based RESTful API. Our platform runs on Red Hat, using Apache, Lighttpd, Memcached and Subversion. In my first few months I have taken responsibility for a large part of our UI design and development, along the way creating many reusable UI widgets and integrating unit testing into our framework.

Developer / Salamander Organisation (April 2009 to December 2009)

Salamander are an enterprise architecture company, with a powerful core product that handles object and information modelling. In my role there, I developed web applications and corporate dashboards on top of the core product, delivering successful high-value projects for organisations such as the MoD, BAE, EDS and Government. Although I was employed primarily for my front-end skills, the work I did was wide-ranging and involved the use and development of jQuery plugins & UI widgets, Ajax, C# and .Net, Windows Forms and XML.

Developer, web & graphic designer / Vebra & Guardian Media Group (August 2006 to March 2009)

My most recent role at GMG was as a developer working on a large-scale web application. The product enabled estate agents to manage all aspects of their work online, such as booking appointments, communicating to customers via e-mail/SMS and viewing custom reports. Technologies in use included a custom object-orientated PHP5 framework, Javascript/MooTools, Ajax, Smarty, MySQL and Red Hat running Apache and CVS. Previous to my role as a developer, I had worked on the web and print teams, creating standards-based bespoke websites, using Javascript/jQuery, Google Maps, various CMS systems and Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator.

Web designer / The University of York (June 2000 to June 2005)

Employed as the sole designer to work on a project to educate the public about environmentally friendly packaging. I was tasked with creating and maintaining a web presence for the project, working part-time whilst at school/university. The project was originally short-term, but was successful and received extra funding to allow it to continue. The website was designed in Adobe Photoshop and hand-coded in HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Education

The University of Birmingham (September 2002 to September 2005)

B/Eng Computer Interactive Systems with Honours, Class II (Division I)

My degree was a mixture of software development, computer science, engineering methodologies and interactive design, with a practical focus.

Relevant modules included

Final year project

The design and development of a virtual musical synthesiser using C++ and VST technology. The functionality was based on Yamaha's notoriously hard to use DX7 frequency modulating synthesiser, but with my own design to ease and encourage the creation of new sounds through experimentation. The project challenged me to go through the entire process of creating the synthesiser, from research through to design and development, and finally proving through mathematical analysis that it worked correctly.

Languages

Software literacy

Interests

Referees

Available upon request.

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