The past years of my development experience has been working
on a multitude of projects utilising numerous technologies
and reacting quickly to agile requirements. The languages
and technologies used would be dependent on a project by
project basis, I would recommend the most suitable
technologies to use for a project based on the requirements
of the system, design, implement and deploy the solution.
First Class Degree
I obtained a First Class degree in Computer Studies from
Liverpool John Moores University, my dissertation was based
on Programme Management Software and the use of software
within large corporations, I produced a piece of software
which generated Gantt charts for the user and could predict
time to complete a project based on the productivity of the
team. Some of the modules studied at University were; Web
Development, Database Systems, Mainframe Computing and
Object Oriented Programming.
Portfolio
Examples of my work
OAuth synchronisation
When: 2021
Contribution: Redesign and implementation of
the entire client and server setup.
Technologies: Node.js, Redis
Overview:
Redesigned the existing client-side implementation to be
server-side. The reason for switching to a server-side
approach was to reduce authentication errors, as only one
token could be issued at a time. By handling authentication
server-side, I ensured that client users shared the same
token, allowing renewals to be managed at a single point.
Key Features & Contributions:
In my role, I led the transition of an existing client-side
OAuth authentication system to a server-side implementation.
This shift was essential to address recurring authentication
errors caused by the limitation of issuing only one token at a
time. By centralizing token management on the server, I
ensured that multiple instances of a client user could share
the same token, with renewals handled at a single, reliable
point. Previously, multiple browser tabs would not work for a
single user because each tab attempted to initiate OAuth
independently, resulting in different tokens being issued.
A key challenge in this project was resolving race conditions
that arose during token renewal. Multiple instances attempting
to refresh a token simultaneously led to conflicts, breaking
authentication for users with concurrent sessions. To mitigate
this, I designed a solution leveraging Redis Semaphores and
Mutex locks, ensuring that the renewal process was both
orderly and resistant to simultaneous requests from a single
user.
A Mutex lock was created when the first request was made for a
user, and it was released once the token had been returned.
Any subsequent requests made while the token was being
retrieved would check the lock and return the same token once
obtained. When a new tab was opened, it would retrieve the
active, valid token instead of requesting a new one. Token
renewals followed an identical process—where the first request
would acquire the lock, and all subsequent requests would wait
for the first request to complete.
Throughout this implementation, I followed a Test-Driven
Development (TDD) approach, rigorously validating each aspect
of the system to ensure reliability in production. As a
result, the new authentication flow has eliminated customer
issues related to token renewal and significantly improved
system stability.
Peer to peer WebRTC
When: 2019 - 2020
Contribution: Working with a small group
doing the design and development of entire system. Helping
junior members of the team implement features.
Overview:
Developed a peer-to-peer video conferencing solution using
WebRTC, enabling real-time communication with minimal latency.
Implemented STUN/TURN servers for NAT traversal, a
WebSocket-based signaling server for session initiation, and
secure media transmission using DTLS-SRTP, making it a core
component for multiple bespoke video conferencing
applications.
Key Features & Contributions:
This project focused on implementing a peer-to-peer (P2P)
video conferencing solution using WebRTC, enabling real-time,
low-latency communication without relying on centralised
servers. WebRTC can connect multiple clients directly for
media streaming, but establishing direct connections across
various network conditions required careful handling of NAT
traversal and firewall restrictions.
To facilitate seamless connectivity, I deployed both STUN
(Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) and TURN (Traversal
Using Relays around NAT) servers. The STUN server was used to
help clients discover their public IP addresses and determine
the type of NAT they were behind, allowing for direct
peer-to-peer connections in most cases. However, in scenarios
where direct connectivity was not possible—such as symmetric
NAT or restrictive firewalls—the TURN server acted as a relay
to ensure reliable media transmission.
Additionally, a signaling server was implemented using
WebSockets to handle session initiation, exchange SDP (Session
Description Protocol) offers and answers, and transmit ICE
(Interactive Connectivity Establishment) candidates between
peers. While WebRTC itself does not define a signaling
mechanism, this server was essential for bootstrapping peer
connections before they could establish direct media streams.
PGP Document Storage
When: 2019
Contribution: Design and development of
entire system
Technologies: Node.js, AWS S3, PGP, HSM
Overview:
I developed a highly secure document storage solution that
leveraged PGP encryption and AWS S3, ensuring that sensitive
files were never transmitted or stored in an unencrypted
state.
Key Features & Contributions:
End-to-End Encryption: Implemented a system
where files were encrypted before leaving the user's browser
using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). This meant that even if
intercepted during transmission, the files remained unreadable
to unauthorised parties.
Secure Storage with AWS S3: Utilised signed
URLs to facilitate direct uploads to Amazon S3, preventing
unnecessary exposure of unencrypted data to backend systems.
Hardware Security Module (HSM) Integration:
Allowed encryption keys to be securely managed using HSMs,
ensuring the highest level of protection for private keys
while maintaining ease of access for authorised users.
Zero Trust Data Protection: Even if the S3
storage was compromised, the encrypted data remained useless
to an attacker, as decryption could only occur with the user's
private key.
This system was designed with security, scalability, and
efficiency in mind, allowing for seamless document encryption
and retrieval while maintaining compliance with strict data
protection standards.
In addition to implementing the core WebRTC infrastructure, we
developed a Rust-based API to handle various non-signalling
connectivity aspects, including authentication, payments, and
donation processing. While WebRTC efficiently manages
peer-to-peer media transmission, many conferencing
applications require additional services beyond
signalling—such as user management, session persistence, and
monetisation features. Our API provided a secure and
high-performance backend to support these needs.
Rust was chosen for its speed, memory safety, and concurrency
capabilities, making it ideal for handling real-time
transactions and network operations. The API exposed endpoints
for processing payments and donations, ensuring seamless
integration with the video conferencing platform. We utilised
Stripe for payment processing, allowing users to purchase
premium features, contribute to creators, or make one-time
donations during a call. Webhooks and event-driven
architecture enabled real-time updates, ensuring transactions
were reflected instantly within the application.
Beyond payments, the API also managed user authentication,
access control, and session validation. JWT-based
authentication ensured secure access to restricted features,
while rate limiting and request validation mechanisms
protected against abuse. The API played a crucial role in
enhancing the overall conferencing experience, allowing
developers to integrate monetisation and security features
without interfering with the core peer-to-peer communication
layer. By keeping these services separate from WebRTC
signalling, we maintained a clean architecture, improving
maintainability and scalability across multiple projects that
leveraged this conferencing solution.
Hyperion API
When: 2015 – 2016
Contribution: Creation of fundamental
systems within the API such as transformations and API
integration's into external systems.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, and RabbitMQ.
Requirements: This API was used to talk
between existing API's and products, it was used as an
external endpoint for systems such as emails and websites to
provide booking details.
This API was setup to replace existing systems and legacy API
endpoints and to be able to replace sections of the existing
site into a system which was easier to maintain and to develop
on. The whole product was developed utilising TDD to be able
to ensure changes were suitable and regressions were not
introduced.
One of the sections that I worked on was to translate an
existing API endpoint into a format that could be used for
another system which required the data to be in a different
format. I created a middleware that interpreted the request
data and translated it into a format that Hyperon could use,
the normal endpoint would be called from this returning the
data. The middleware could also translate the returning data
if required. The translations could be performed based on the
customer calling the endpoint and the translation mappings can
inherit from each other and be expanded upon.
Twitter Data Miner
When: 2012 – 2013
Contribution: Integration and adoption of
existing code base to change use and adapt to customer
requirements
Technologies: Java, JTwitter, Flat File DB,
GATE
Requirements: Collect information from social
media based on location of tweet and the information contained
within the post.
While working with Clinical Justice one of the side projects
was to develop a system which could be utilised to collect
information from social media sources, this information could
then be analysed with a system such as GATE to semantically
analyse the content of the strings of peoples posts or tweets.
The project that was created in light of these requirements
was using Java, there is a twitter API which allows users to
collect data based on search parameters and this information
is then relayed into the ‘fire-hose’, the Java system would
listen to the fire-hose and collect the information if certain
further search criteria was matched. The library that was used
was based on JTwitter which provides a Java based
implementation to access the fire-hose. The system was adapted
to listen for tweets coming from the UK as that is where
Clinical Justice operated, certain search teams were used such
as ‘medical negligence’ and ‘justice’ which allowed the data
to be filtered down by the fire-hose relatively well. The
posts were linked to a user so that a re-engagement with the
customer could occur at a later date.
Once the data has been collected, GATE was used to provide
semantic al analysis on the search terms collected so that the
true meaning of the post could be deduced automatically, this
filtered list could then be used to re-engage with the people
who had posted the status.
Ingot 2
When: 2013-2014
Contribution: Holiday System, Manager and
Auditor access. Warehousing Management system, Linux system
administration.
The Ingot Portal is a system that has been created and
developed by Warrant Group over a long period of time, there
has been a few iterations of the product. These iterations
have ranged from standard HTML, CSS and PHP deployment to the
latest version, which is utilising Symfony, ExtJS and Doctrine
to create a structured system which implements an MVC
architecture to logically separate the elements of the system.
This system is used internally by the Warrant Group staff for
management of the system and also customers which are informed
of status updates when there shipment reaches its destination
or there is a announcement made against it. The customers that
Warrant Group deals with previously had no way to automate the
process of obtaining the information about where the items
were and the Ingot Portal enables the management and
distribution of this information across a wide user base
effortlessly.
The main system that has revived most of my contributions is
the Holiday System – this system is for employees to log into
to book, view and manage their holidays. Some of the manager
views that have been created in ExtJS are shown below which
shows the use of context menus to provide more user
interaction with webpages which is generally expected now.
ExtJs is considered to be one of the hardest languages
associated to JavaScript as it has such a steep learning
curve, however the documentation is excellent and this has
made the creation of these systems very intuitive.
Context menus provide excellent user interaction and a much
more intuitive user experience.
Another part of the system that has had serious development is
the conflicting holidays view which is data bound to the grid
to accept and deny holidays. Once a users holiday request is
selected the grid refreshed to the date that the holiday
request has been made for – the manager will be able to view
any holidays which conflict with this request and will be able
to use their discretion to either accept or reject the holiday
request based on their requirements. Extensible was used to
provide the calendar functionality to the system which is a
plugin for ExtJS.
Data binding has been implemented which shows that the
holiday overlaps with someone else’s holiday – a very useful
tool for managers approving holidays when multiple people
from the same department can’t be off at the same time.
Data binding is also utilised on the auditing route of the
system, a user is selected within a department which then
shows that specific users holidays for that user, which can
be then be filtered down by year.
Clinical Justice
When: 2012 – 2013
Contribution: PHP Security(Injections and
XSS), jQuery Component Development, Web Design and Validation
Clinical Justice are a Liverpool based company where a new
Website was developed to replace the old WordPress website,
for versatility purposes the switch to a non-CMS based
approach was adopted. The new approach was developed by hand
with hand coded HTML following W3C’s recommendations and best
practices, so that the site would be viewable and accessible
by everyone.
Some of the examples of the implementation of the website are
below;
jMenu was used for the navigation on the website, there was a
large array of pages which needed to be included, a multi
tiered structure was required so that the menu’s can be
dropped down into multiple times to get to the required
information. The styling of the jMenu that came by default was
quite abrasive and the .js file and the .css file which were
supplied by this library were edited so that they followed a
more subtle styling which was more appropriate to the
requirements of the website.
jMenu provides excellent functionality for creating tiered
menu structures.
PHP validation for SQL injection and XSS
Prepared statements were using within PHP to stop any SQL
Injection being able to output the data from a database, PHP
prepared statements require the use of mysqli or PDO, mysqli
was used in this specific example, the parameters are bound to
the values before they are submitted which stops the statement
being altered by Injection attacks.
A Captcha is used to hinder the use of bots for submitting
information, SecurImage plugin was used to achieve the
required functionality.
There was a requirement cURL for submitting the post data to
multiple locations, through a third party library which would
deal with statistics about what pages the user viewed before
they submitted a form and also to store a copy of the
information as a record into a MySQL database.
Wqood.com
When: 2012 – 2013
Contribution: Integration and adoption of
existing code base to change use and adapt to customer
requirements
Technologies: Java, JTwitter, Flat File DB,
GATE
Requirements: Collect information from
social media based on location of tweet and the information
contained within the post.
While working with Clinical Justice one of the projects was to
develop a system which could be utilised to collect
information from social media sources such as Twitter, this
information could then be analysed with a system such as GATE
to semantically analyse the content of the message to
understand the meaning of posts or tweets pragmatically. The
project that was created in light of these requirements was
using Java, there is a twitter API which allows users to
collect data based on search parameters and this information
is then relayed into the 'fire-hose', the Java system would
listen to the fire-hose and collect the information if certain
search criteria was matched it would record this to Redis for
later analysis. The library that was used was based on
JTwitter which provides a Java based implementation of the
Twitter API. The system was adapted to listen for tweets by
geographical area, certain search teams were used such as
‘medical negligence’ and ‘justice’ which allowed the data to
be filtered down by the fire-hose relatively well. The posts
were linked to a user so that a re-engagement with the
customer could occur at a later date.
Once the data has been collected, GATE was used to provide
semantic al analysis on the search terms collected so that the
true meaning of the post could be deduced automatically, this
filtered list could then be used to re-engage with the people
who had posted the status.
Chicory
When: 2013
Contribution: Frontend responsive GUI with
Masonry grid
Technologies: CSS3, jQuery, Masonry and HTML
Requirements: Responsive recipe shopping
system, users need to easily add a recipe into their basket
from the recipe browser
On this project I worked closely with the development team to
link the sever side code to the responsive interface. I
interfaced with the owners of the company to understand and
develop their requirements and goals of the website and
convert these requirements into the finished application. The
idea was to create a Pinterest style board with multiple
columns of pictures which show a picture of the recipe, but
also the ability to add them to the cart without viewing the
item.
CSS3 was used to provide much of the functionality of the site
such as text-overflow to hide any overflowing text as the
recipes were aggregated automatically from outside sources.
The responsive recipe layout was implemented with Masonry
JavaScript library for a cascading grid layout which could
remove and add columns based on the width of the page.
OAuth
Node.js and Redis OAuth syncronisation
P2P video conferencing with WebRTC
Node.js signalling backend
PGP Document storage
Node.js PGP storage solution
Hyperion API
PHP backend API handling bookings
Twitter Data Miner
Java implementation of data scraping with JTwitter
Ingot 2
Freight Forwarding System utilising Symfony2 and ExtJs 4.2
Clinical Justice
Leads management website written in PHP
Chicory
Frontend Responsive Design with Twitter Bootstrap, CCS3
and jQuery
