I am junior developer focussing on the back-end who has recently graduated from Makers Academy. I found the three months there challenging, exciting and immensely rewarding. I am now looking for a role that allows me to further expand my learning through complex problem-solving and continued exposure to new technologies.
Previously I worked in insurance, in the Lloyd's of London market for 4 years. Automation was an essential skill I taught myself in order to improve accuracies in large amounts of data and save time otherwise spent on needless manual tasks. The satisfaction of seeing the vast improvements that my influence had on my team's work led me to consider a career change.
I investigated the growing Insurtech industry and attended several conferences and lectures. I came to the conclusion that I would like to be a part of the tech industry to help modernise and improve other industries. Makers Academy has now really cemented in my mind the fact that I have made the right decision.
I am fast-learning, personable, mathematically-talented and have an eye for detail. I'm now eager to start coding professionally!
During my time in insurance, consolidating large amounts of data came naturally. I would check the accuracy of thousands of payments and proof-read vast spreadsheets. One of my proudest moments was identifying a £700,000 shortfall that various managers had previously missed, saving the company that amount.
This skill is one that I have found extremely useful in learning to code, particularly in rapidly debugging issues.
With no real experience in DIY, I taught myself how to convert a van (scroll down for photos of construction) into a comfortable "tiny home" with solar-powered electrical, heating and water systems, in just 2 months.
For my previous job I took the initiative to learn how to create complex, dynamic spreadsheets that connected to the company's database and updated automatically. This saved huge amounts of time otherwise spent on manually preparing reports, as it had been done for years beforehand.
During my time at Makers this skill enabled me to learn new concepts, frameworks and languages quickly and produce high-quality code shortly thereafter.
I have always found mathematics comes easily to me. My greatest achievement was winning a medal in the Maclaurin round of the Intermediate Mathematical Olympiad, as one of the top 100 candidates in the country.
I have found my proficiency in maths is incredibly helpful when programming more complex logic.
I have a good amount of experience at working in a team. My final projects at university, my time in insurance and my time at Makers all required me to develop my teamworking skills.
During my time in insurance I often prepared reports without being instructed. I would share my findings with the team and shed light on previously undiscovered issues. This work often hugely benefitted the team.
At Makers I found I found myself just as comfortable listening to others as I was taking the lead and providing a clear direction for the team. I learnt the importance of frequent stand-ups and retros and the essentiality of clear communication.
| Name | Description | Tech/tools |
|---|---|---|
| Guilt trip / Sloth | A phone app that gamifies the pedometer to encourage users to reach a step-count target. I played an integral part in getting the app to display the phone's step count and linked the app to local phone storage to ensure data persisted. I had a considerable role in much of the app's logic and the app's design/layout solution. In two weeks I learnt how to use React Native and create a phone app. | React Native, JavaScript, Expo, Jest, Express |
| My Website | A website I built to showcase some of my projects and my recent travels (see here). I built this because I wanted to learn how to create a slick-looking React-based app. I also wanted to learn how to build an image slider for a potential upcoming project. | React, JavaScript, Heroku, AWS |
| Bank account | A simple solo project that models a bank account. This project demonstrates OOP, the SRP, DDD, dependency injection, thorough testing and clean, legible, tidy code. | Ruby, RSpec |
| Hatch (In Progress) | A web app for a budding property company that connects small, independent retailers with high street landlords. I took on this project to simultaneously help an exciting new company get free access to a relatively complex web app, and to improve my knowledge of Rails, CI/CD and AWS and cloud architecture. The app is deployed on Heroku but I am currently teaching myself about AWS and ultimately the web app will go into production there. | Ruby, Rails, RSpec, Capybara, JavaScript, Bootstrap, HTML/CSS, Travis, Heroku |
Ark Syndicate Management Ltd (March 2016 to January 2020)
Underwriting Assistant in Specialty Programmes
- Portfolio management of a £40m book of business. Analysing large amounts of data to identify broader issues.
- Analysing trends and patterns in individual, distressed binders, producing reports to illustrate these, and making recommendations to improve profitability.
- Automating reports and pricing models to vastly improve efficiency across the team.
- Attending extra-curricular courses and lectures to gain knowledge of the industry (Actuarial course at Lloyd’s, WSIA Surplus Lines course in Atlanta, Insurtech conferences).
- Travelling abroad to meet with clients and attend conferences, often unaccompanied.
- I was originally an Admin Assistant in the Claims Department until August 2016. My roles there included data reconciliation and claims bordereaux analysis and processing.
- Full-stack
- OOP, TDD, MVC, DDD
- Agile, Pair programming
- Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React Native, SQL, HTML, CSS
- Git, Github, CI/CD
- RSpec, Jasmine, Jest
- EI, empathy, teamwork, self-awareness and self-regulation.
- Cert CII and Dip CII completed; 4 out of 5 ACII modules completed.
- BEng Engineering Mathematics (2:1)
- Carried out 8 group projects - producing solutions to real-life engineering problems through data analysis and mathematical modelling.
- Studied C, C++, MATLAB, HTML and CSS.
- A levels: Maths (A*), Further Maths (A*)
- Cambridge Pre-Us: French (M1), Economics (P1), studied German and Art for one year
- GCSEs: Eight A*s and one A
- Cycling/Long-Distance Sports - I've completed various long-distance rides, including: London-Paris, Amsterdam-Dunkerque, a return trip to Barcelona and numerous races. Kayaked the length of the Thames. Competed in the Blenheim Triathlon, the London marathon and the Pyongyang half marathon.
- Travel/Adventure - Worked in a hotel in Courchevel for 5 months for the ski season. Volunteered in a Romanian orphanage. Worked in a bar in La Paz. Converted a van into a campervan to travel Europe.
- Languages - Intermediate French and German, basic Spanish.