David CROSS

SEO/Perl Developer (Contract)

ZPG, London
Working on Zoopla's SEO team. Making changes to their web site to ensure that Zoopla web pages retain good search engine ranking.

Worked on a project to move all of Zoopla's web sites from http to https.

Technical lead on a project to ensuer that SEO features were the same on a new version of the site and the legac site. This included writing a system that encapsulated information about web pages that could be used from both systems.

Technical ownership for an API which returned details of SEO features to the new version of the site.

Legacy version of the site written in Perl using Mason. New API written in Mojolicious.

Perl Developer (Contract)

JP Morgan Chase, London
Working on Perl programs to handle the loading of PNL positions from various data sources. Main project to rewrite a number of file-monitoring programs into one more maintainable program.

Advised team on the best way to implement modern Perl techniques in a restrictive Perl environment. Introduced Perl testing techniques.

Perl Developer (Contract)

Broadbean, London
Working on a project to make Broadbean's systems more scalable by moving them into the cloud. Analysing existing code base and identifying areas that need changes in order to work on cloud-hosted servers. A lot of work on database access to code to ensure that legacy database access mechanisms were removed from the code base.

Perl Developer (Contract)

Net-A-Porter, London
Working on various parts of the Net-A-Porter's back-office systems. Tech stack was Perl (Moose, DBIx::Class, PSGI, AMQ, Template Toolkit), PostgreSQL and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Projects included ensuring that all back-office systems were UTF8-clean and a long-term project to automate the putaway and retrieval of merchandise in the US distribution centre. This included interfacing with third party hardware using AMQ.

Perl Developer (Contract)

Moonfruit London
Working on the backend of Moonfruit's Sitemaker software. Writing Perl to access a Sybase database running on a Linux platform. Technologies included the Dancer framework and the Template Toolkit. Also developing Sybase stored procedures in Transact SQL.

Projects included a reimplementation of the main Moonfruit web site and the addition of blogging and e-commerce modules to Sitemaker. Systems were all implemented in Perl and data was returned to the front end via API calls from Flash, Flex and Javascript.

Perl Developer (Contract)

Gumtree.com, London
Working on a number of projects on the Gumtree.com web site. Worked on many enhancements and bug fixes. Designed and implemented a replacement for the image upload and storage system. Involved in projects to share Gumtree data with other companies. Acted as a Perl mentor to parts of the development team. Refactored pieces of legacy code in order to make it easier to write unit tests. Introduced Perl::Critic to the company. Worked with business and product team to tie down specifications.

System architecture was Perl and MySQL running on Debian servers with a mixture of Apache and lighttpd web servers. Perl processes ran under FastCGI. Development was carried out using Scrum.

Perl Developer (Contract)

LoveFilm, London
Working on a new streaming video service, concentrating particularly on the database access areas of the system. Pioneered the use of DBIx::Class in the company. Designed a way for DBIx::Class to fit in with existing database access methods. Advised other members of the in the use of DBIx::Class.

Developed APIs which sat on top of these classes and were used by front-end developers to create web pages. Working from high-level specifications written by business analysts and worked with front-end developers to determine exact requirements.

Blog Developer (Contract)

Guardian News & Media, London
The Guardian ran its blogs using Movable Type for several years, but during this period they moved them into their in-house content management system.

This role involved maintaining and enhancing the current blog platform (editing templates, changing navigation, implementing new performance tracking code). There was also some work supporting the team who were porting the blogs to the new platform. This included advising them on the structure of the Movable Type database and providing data dumps to enable them to test their processes.

In parallel with this, there was also work acting as a general “toolsmith”, providing useful utilities to the development team. In particular, I built a system that parsed data files containing details of Cyclometric Complexity and made that data available to developers through a web-based application.

Developer (Contract)

UBS, London
Maintenance and development on a system to reverse engineer a database schema from Oracle and Sybase database servers. The files generated can be stored under source code control and any changes made to these files can be applied to the database server in an intelligent fashion. This system is a strategic tool which is used by many of UBS's internal development teams to keep track of database schema definitions. The source code is approximately 100,000 lines of highly object-oriented Perl code. Designed and implemented a four-fold speed increase in Oracle processing.

Software Engineer (Contract)

BBC Future Media & Technology
Developer on an internal web service which distributes schedule information to many BBC web applications. Service written in Perl (using DBIx::Class and Catalyst), uses MySQL to store data and runs on Apache under Solaris.

Web Developer (Contract)

UBS, London
Developer in the storage management group. Writing web-based reports to monitor storage usage and measure group KPIs. Designed and built daily and weekly reports using Perl, Template Toolkit, Javascript and Ajax. Designed and implemented system database.

Developer (Contract)

BBC New Media and Technology, London
Developer working on various aspects of the BBC’s main web site. The systems were implemented in Perl using an Oracle database running on Solaris.

Developer (Contract)

Senior Perl Developer (Permanent)

Outcome Technologies, London
Senior developer working on systems to gather data on the effectiveness of medical treatments. Introduced Template Toolkit and Class::DBI to increase programmer efficiency.

Developer (Contract)

KarmaDownload.com, London
Complete redesign and reimplementation of the web site for online record company. Rebuilt Windows/IIS/Access/Cold Fusion prototype on Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl.

Developer (Contract)

Guardian Unlimited, London
Various tasks involved in the maintenance and development of GU's website. Mentored team members in Perl and Extreme Programming

Developer (Contract)

AMP, London
Support and enhancements on AMP's financial information website. Training and mentoring other developers in Perl and web technologies.

Technical Architect (Permanent)

Bibliotech, London
Technical design and implementation for a web-based community aimed at schools.

Developer (Contract)

Various companies including large banks (SBC Warburg, Nomura, Credit Suisse First Boston and others) and dotcoms like Sportal and QXL.

Diverse technologies, but specialising in Perl and databases (Sybase, MySQL) on various flavours of Unix and Linux.

Details available on request.

Senior Analyst Programmer (Permanent)

The Walt Disney Company Ltd, London
Design, development and user support on a retail decision support tool.

Software Engineer (Permanent)

Comtext International Ltd, London
Design and development of GUI front end to Telex/Fax/Email service.

Programmer/Senior Programmer (Permanent)

Learmonth & Burchett Management Systems Plc, London
Design and development largely based around the data modelling part of a CASE tool.

GCE 'O' Levels in Mathematics, English Language, English Literature, Physics, Chemistry, German and History
GCE 'AO' Level in Geology

GCE 'A' Levels in Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Physics