Luke Barton

Principal Software Engineer

London
  • luke@lukebarton.co.uk
  • 07931525866
Professional Profile

A dedicated and driven professional with extensive experience gained within key software engineering and development positions, working to senior level within a range of start-ups, established companies and government departments. Focused upon delivering work of the highest professional standards to ensure the delivery of all projects to deadline, specification and elevated quality levels. Demonstrates an excellent knowledge of application development, with strong team leadership skills, an advanced knowledge of the full development lifecycle and outstanding client skills. Possesses excellent business communication skills and can consult with professionalism at all levels.

Technical Skills
Team Lead Primary Skill Multi-disciplined Team Lead
  • 14+ years of experience developing software, defining architecture, provisioning infrastructure and conducting business analysis
  • Assisting teams and organisations at all levels
  • Experience with several programming languages, capable of learning new languages quickly
  • Well versed in the full software development lifecycle (including all things DevOps) - from conception through to deployment and support
  • Work experience in an array of industries including finance and government
  • Interested in high scalability, real-time data and systems architecture
  • Enjoys delivering beyond just writing code and a keen Domain Driven Design enthusiast
Programmer Primary Skill Node.js, Go, Scala, PHP et al.
  • 14+ years of hands-on programming experience with a variety of languages
  • An advocate of good development practice including pair programming, unit testing and test-driven development
  • Experience working with Cloud providers such as AWS and GCP, tools like Terraform, Docker, databases such as Postgres, MongoDB and more
  • Capable of working with whatever frameworks, libraries or languages are required
Work Experience
Principal Software Engineer November 2020 - December 2021 Cazoo - cazoo.co.uk
Operational Software
  • Led the architecture definition of the Operations side of Cazoo (receiving, refurbishing, keeping and transporting vehicles) that resulted in the formation of 5+ new product-engineering teams and defined the direction of Operations over the next 2+ years.
  • Coached 3 of those product-engineering teams from discovery through to delivery and guided the creation of interaction contracts between different business areas
  • Advised teams on software implementation approaches, helped teams make decisions relating to the adoption of new engineering practices as well as troubleshooting friction relation to existing practices. Topics include Trunk Based Development, Testing Strategy, Event Sourcing
  • Tech: TypeScript, React, Serverless Framework, Terraform, AWS
Lead Software Engineer October 2019 - October 2020 Sainsburys Groceries Online - sainsburys.co.uk - (Contract)
Groceries Online website
  • Span up a transformative cross-team project to further the strategic aims of the business and implemented tactics to aid its success
  • Helped the business clarify it's priorities in the face of limited resources
  • Represented the team to third-parties involved in technical integrations
  • Mentored and trained Graduate developers
  • Tech: Go, React, Redux, Terraform, AWS
Senior Software Engineer March 2018 - April 2019 The Trainline - trainline.com - (Contract)
My Account of the Trainline website
  • Developed long-term plans for improving the service level and development rate of the project through targeted improvements to the software design
  • Reduced error rates by 98% through analysis and execution of improvement plans
  • Involved in principal-level solution planning
  • Spoke at the internal Trainline Tech Conference 2018
  • Promoted best practices and improved collaboration by mentoring the junior members of the development team
  • Tech: Node.js, React, Redux, Flow, Typescript, TeamCity
Lead Software Engineer Feb 2017 - December 2017 Local Heroes - British Gas / Centrica - (Contract)
Uber-for-tradespeople
  • Implemented infrastructure-as-code across their entire tech stack
  • Reduced time-to-production from hours/days to under 10 minutes with a new build pipeline
  • Defined development practices and helped teams run their own applications in production
  • Developed actionable disaster recovery plans, incident response and post-mortem processes
  • Planned and executed a company-wide game-day which saw staff members take on different roles throughout the day, solving operational problems, learning about the product and validating the business proposition of the product itself
  • Tech: Terraform, AWS, TypeScript, Node.js, React, Redux
Senior Software Engineer Aug 2016 - Nov 2016 iPlayer - BBC - (Contract)
Web-version of the BBC iPlayer
  • Trained permanent staff in React & Redux
  • Inspired exciting new directions within the team
  • Proposed an alternative development path toward their next strategic milestone
  • Tech: React, Redux, PHP, AWS, Jenkins
Software Engineer Mar 2016 - June 2016 DEPMU - Home Office Digital - UK Home Office - (Contract)
GDS-assessed software for managing capacity of immigration centres around the UK
  • Contributed key insights that resulted in important changes to the application's data model
  • Identified and helped address key issues in the agile software development process
  • Tech: Node.js, Docker
Software Engineer Jan 2016 - Mar 2016 Border Force - Home Office Digital - UK Home Office - (Contract)
GDS-assessed software that predicted staffing requirements and passenger throughput at ports of entry into the UK, using real-time data
  • Conducted a broadly-scoped analysis of the project, concluded with suggestions to improve the project's ability to deliver value
  • Tech: PHP, MySQL
Software Engineer Jul 2015 - Dec 2015 Office of the Public Guardian - Ministry of Justice - (Contract)
Internal case management software for the Office of the Public Guardian
  • Steered team process and software architecture
  • Conducted face-to-face research to identify user needs - Reduced build times by over 50% by optimising pipelines
  • Tech used: Docker, PHP, Angular.js
Lead Software Engineer Sep 2013 - Dec 2014 Wonga - Financial Service Provider - (Contract)
Cross-platform mobile app for offering consumer loans to customers in Poland
  • Span up the technical team
  • Co-ordinated technical work with internal and external stakeholders - Conducted face-to-face user research with customers
  • Tech: Scala, PHP, Cordova, Angular.js, Jenkins