Alex Francis

Web engineer, team leader and manager

Primary skills

Web, java, perl, agile, analysis, leadership, communication

I'm looking for

• Software engineering combined with team and personal development

• A dynamic, agile and user-centric web software environment
• The opportunity to develop sector-leading web experiences
• An intensive, rewarding and worthwhile role
• An open, communicative and fun team

About me

• 8 years experience with the web, 10 in software

• Naturally talented software developer
• Dedicated, passionate and highly motivated
• Always deeply involved with my work
• Good awareness of business context and user perspective
• Motivated by team success and building momentum

What I can do

• Continually adapt best practices to suit current needs

• Object oriented software architecture, design and build
• Understand, communicate and analyse user requirements
• Build, manage and lead a team
• Agile methodologies including Scrum and XP

What I've done

• Built successful web software

• Recruited and shaped small, effective teams
• Improved processes and enabled team success

My current role

• Hands-on engineering manager of a product team of 9

• Sift is an award-winning web content management system provider with a turnover of £6M and approx 90 staff
• Building a new product release with new technology
• Implemented version control, peer review, unit testing
• Driving agile adoption
• http://www.sift.com

My career history

2003

Joined Sift (see above)

2000 - 2003

Technical Director – CastleLinks Ltd

"AMS" Online recruitment products

1998 - 2000

IT Consultant – Hampshire County Council

"FMS" Financial management systems product

1994 - 1998

MPhys Physics degree (2.i) (combined BSc & MSc)

University of Southampton

My skill summary

• Java, JEE, spring, struts tiles, JSP, MVC, jboss, junit, eclipse
• XP, Test-Driven, Scrum, user stories, planning game
• XHTML, CSS, javascript, W3C standards, accessibility
• XML, XSLT, XPath, DTD, XSchema, SOAP, ReST, DOM, SAX
• Perl 5, OO perl, CPAN, mod_perl, regular expressions
• Other dynamic languages including python, ruby and PHP
• Ant, anthill, subversion, CVS
• PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, PL/SQL, database normalisation
• Linux, bash shell, GNU tools, shell scripts, vi
• Apache configuration, SQUID proxy server configuration
• Web application design, scaling, security, robustness, APIs
• Product development, prioritisation, release planning
• Introducing and supporting process improvements
• Team recruitment and management

What I'm learning about

• OpenID

• Facilitating agile retrospectives
• Ruby on Rails and Django framework (python)
• Domain specific languages
• Malcolm Gladwell's Blink!

Contact me

• Email me: alex@alexfrancis.org.uk
• On the web: http://www.alexfrancis.org.uk
• Phone: ask me for my phone number
• Address: ask me for my address
• Referees on request