Andrew Newton Systems Architect / Developer

I am a highly experienced, enthusiastic and hard-working IT Professional. I have worked as both a Network Engineer and a developer and for the last 8 years I have been combining my range of experience to architect full-stack enterprise-level solutions. Technology is a passion of mine, and I ensure I am always up to date with the latest technologies and industry best-practices. I have experience working on projects for very large customers, including multi-national corporations and government agencies.

For over 15 years I have used Linux and other open source software at work and at home. I have very strong networking and systems administration/DevOp skills, including extensive experience with a variety of Cloud hosting platforms. My range of experience has allowed me to design and implement Enterprise Software and Network Solutions for many companies over the last decade and assist in the development and education of other members of the teams I have worked in.

June 2018 - Present

Senior PHP Developer

Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency

CapGemini Contract

I joined the CapGemini team working on a government Brexit project for the DVSA in Leeds. We are building an application, scoring, and allocation system for road haulage permits that will be necessary after Brexit. I have been heavily involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of the new system.

The highly volatile political landscape has forced our teams to respond very quickly to emerging requirements, and to date, we have delivered on time.

In addition to developing the new application module itself, our team has been assisting in improving processes and introducing new re-usable patters for the customer which will provide benefit beyond the term of the project.

• Zend Framework
• Doctrine
• NodeJS
• CQRS
• PHPUnit
• AWS (EC2, RDS, Elastic Load Balancer, Route53)
• Vagrant
• Jenkins CI/CD

September 2017 - June 2018

EyeBOS Technical Architect

Petards Joyce-Loebl Ltd

I led a small team designing and developing a new footage synchronization and back-office replay system for Petards on-train CCTV systems. The platform allows operators to stream live video from trains to their web-browser and to request recorded footage to be uploaded to the cloud for review. The system was been designed to be highly available and tolerant of network connectivity issues which often interrupt communications from moving vehicles to the cloud.

The project involved designing the overall architecture for the solution, as well as implementing the on-vehicle and cloud-hosted applications themselves.

• Laravel PHP Framework (REST API)
• VueJS (Client UI)
• NodeJS (Worker Daemons)
• Microsoft C# Legacy desktop client support
• Microsoft ASP.NET Legacy web app support
• MySQL
• Mosquitto MQTT Broker
• AWS (EC2, RDS, Elastic Load Balancer, Route53)
• Web Sockets
• rsync
• Agile Development
• Jenkins CI/CD - PHPUnit
• ffmpeg

January 2017 - September 2017

Analyst Systems Developer

Mobile Rocket Limited

At Mobile Rocket I helped refactor and migrate an existing customer application onto a new, resilient, scalable and highly-available AWS hosting infrastructure. I also worked on several new Laravel Web applications for their customers. In addition to delivering on customer applications, I led the adoption and implementation of CI/CD (Atlassian Bamboo) pipelines, code review processes, and other development lifecycle improvements.

In addition to the development work, I deployed an Asterisk VoIP phone system and integrated it with a PHP based CRM system for their growing sales team.

• Laravel PHP Framework
• VueJS
• MySQL
• AWS (EC2, RDS, Elastic Load Balancer, Route53)
• Git
• Bamboo CI
• PHPUnit
• Asterisk VoIP PBX
• Swagger (API documentation)

September 2012 - January 2017

Enterprise Architect

Askaris Information Technologies Limited

I was responsible for the architectural design of a suite of Enterprise SaaS solutions developed by Askaris. Leading a small team, I developed a hybrid Cloud/OnPremise application framework that provides Preventative Maintenance and Safety Inspection functions for offshore facilities around the world.

In addition to developing applications for market, I also implemented many internal systems for Askaris and other Group companies. These include Drupal CMS systems, OpenERP (Oodoo) ERP solutions and several bespoke web applications. One such application was a bespoke HR Database system and Payroll System, which integrated with an existing Windows Active Directory platform via LDAP to allow single-sign-on with existing domain credentials.

• EmberJS
• Apache Cordova (PhoneGap)
• Agile Development (SCRUM)
• Git revision control
• NoSQL Database Technologies (Couchbase Server/Couchbase Mobile/CouchDB)
• Android Mobile Development
• Ubuntu Server
• VMWare / Xen / KVM Virtualization
• Public Cloud Services (AWS/DigitalOcean)
• SailsJS (MVC RESTful Framework for NodeJS)

April 2010 - September 2012

Technical Operations Manager

Onyx Group - Business Continuity Centres

I returned to Onyx Group to manage their estate of Business Continuity Centres and to act as technical lead on customer technical disaster recovery planning projects. A major part of this role was meeting with customer IT teams to audit and analyse their IT systems and create and implement a DR plan to ensure continued operation in the event of a disaster. I also developed several new web-based systems to facilitate DR operations such as imaging/shredding Desktop PCs and managing our call-centre VoIP platform.

My role included designing and implementing systems that would integrate with customers' production networks, allowing data, services, and connectivity to be available at our DR sites within minutes or hours if a disaster rendered a customer site inaccessible.

I was responsible for planning and managing regular Disaster Recovery plan tests with customers such as Tesco Bank, Northern Rock and BNP Paribas. Several customers had to invoke their disaster recovery plans for real during my employment. In each instance, customer staff were quickly relocated to one of our sites, and redundant systems and network links successfully allowed their operations to continue.

• Enterprise Networking Technologies (Cisco, Checkpoint, VLANs, MPLS, BGP, OSPF)
• Cloud Backup & Virtual Server Systems
• Call Centre VoIP solutions
• Virtualization Technologies (VMware, Xen)
• Linux Systems Administration
• Mass-Imaging tools such as Clonezilla, FOG, Ghost, MS SCCM
• Web Application Development (CakePHP, Jquery, HTML5)

Jan 2010 - March 2010

Analyst PHP Programmer (Contract)

Orange, Darlington

I worked on a short-term contract with Orange as part of a team of 10 developers working on RESTful PHP/Mysql Based applications for use by Orange staff throughout the UK. Development was based on a heavily extended PHP Zend Framework system, and a key part of the role was ensuring the scalability and reliability of the applications in question.

• Zend Framework PHP Development
• RESFTful Web Service/API design
• Agile Development

October 2008 - June 2010

Director / Systems Architect

Emphony Technologies Ltd

In 2008 a friend and I were presented with an opportunity to develop a bespoke web application for SABIC Europe at their Wilton site. The construction of a new facility was facing severe delays and they needed a bespoke completions management solution developing quickly to help regain control.

Emphony Technologies was created to service this contract. We created a bespoke Project Completions Management application that was used to identify and assign work to contractors. The system included paperwork generation with integrated 2D QRcodes. These sheets were completed in the field by contractors and then batch-scanned, identified and compiled automatically into PDF certification dossiers for compliance purposes. This has previously been a laborious manual task.

• PHP / Javascript Development
• High-Availability Hosting design and deployment
• Virtualization Technologies (VMware, Xen)
• Linux Systems Administration
• Agile Development

July 2005 - October 2008

Network Engineer

Onyx Group

My duties at Onyx ranged from the day-to-day administration of their national business ISP network to the design, implementation and support of large multi-disciplinary solutions for Onyx customers. The ISP duties involved daily contact with Linux server systems and Cisco routing and switching hardware.

I took technical lead on several projects for large clients such as DSGi (Dixons Stores Group), and the Meat Hygiene Service. These projects usually combined a mixture of Server hosting infrastructure and WAN connectivity to provide services to customer sites nationwide. Many of these projects employed MPLS VPN technology over leased line and xDSL connections and leveraged Onyx's resilient national network. I often worked alongside Onyx sales staff in meetings with prospective customers to provide pre-sales technical input for proposed solutions.

I was responsible for designing and implementing a number of high-availability hosting solutions for customers using Linux technologies such as Heartbeat and DRBD. I also designed and provisioned a number of virtualisation systems for customers, some Xen based and some VMware. Many of these high-availability solutions involved the use of SANs, including SANs based on Coraid hardware using the ATA over Ethernet protocol.

During my time at Onyx I worked alongside another engineer to begin the design, development and deployment of the IT Infrastructure at Onyx's workplace recovery centre (BCC) based in Team Valley. This infrastructure allowed customers to prepare hard-disk Images that their staff would use in the event of a disaster, and the capability to automatically deploy these images to the centres desktop PCs and make use of the BCC VoIP system in the case of a customer disaster.

• Network Architecture / Design / Implementation
• BGP, OSPF, IPv4, IPv6, VLANs, Load Balancing etc
• Redundant , high availability network design.
• Virtualization Technologies (VMware, Xen)
• Linux System Administration (SSH/SCP/FTP/Rsync
• PHP MVC Development

2004 - 2005

Telephony Technical Analyst

TeleWare PLC, Thirsk

At TeleWare I was responsible for providing support to customers ranging from medium, to multi-national sized enterprises. The role has involved managing and maintaining the WindowsNT/2000/2K3 server systems running the TeleWare software, as well as specific support for the TeleWare software itself. This role has required me to develop an in-depth knowledge of enterprise-level networking, traditional TDM telephony systems and Voice over IP Technology. In addition to supporting clients I also worked on several software development projects to create custom software to improve the productivity of the support desk.

Expert, 10+ Years

Network Engineering / Design

For over a decade I have worked with networking technologies. From small networks serving a few users to Internet-Scale international networks. I have designed and deployed Layer 2 Network solutions and built large routed networks leveraging OSPF/BGP. For over 6 years I have been working with IPv6 in preparation for the migration that will be needed now the IPv4 address space has been exhausted.

Expert, 8 Years

Agile Development

Since 2008 most of my roles have involved an element of software development. Mainly focussed on PHP/Java/Javascript using a variety of frameworks I have desaigned, developed and maintained a range of applications for small businesses to multinational corporationsr

Expert, 6 Years

Cloud Services

For over 5 years I have been leveraging Cloud computing and storage technologies in the solutions I have designed. Including Amazon AWS (S3 Storage, EC2 Compute, Elastic LB), and other smaller services and cloud APIs.

I have designed a range of RESTful APIs for the software solutions I have engineerd, and also consumed many different public Cloud APIs to augment the functionality of the applications being constructed.

Teesside University

BSc Computer Science (Hons)

Telford College

BTEC National Diploma in Computing.