| Address |
26 Lawrence Street Bedford MK40 4JN |
|---|---|
| hire@neilcrosby.com | |
| Home Telephone | +44 (0) 123 42 13 801 |
| Mobile | +44 (0) 792 11 88 714 |
I am a self-motivated individual, skilled at developing standards aware and accessible websites. I have experience of leading teams to do the same.
It is of utmost importance to me to always be learning and sharing knowledge. To that end I share all of my personal code on GitHub, blog about the code I write on my blog, The Code Train, and have spoken at events such as BarCamps and the YDN Tuesdays evenings.
Outside of work, I organise group outings (such as “The Big Geek Day Out”), I enjoy photography and I bake tasty food.
I have been developing websites, both on my own and within larger teams, for more than ten years. I am skilled in (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and use PHP as my server language of choice, and MySQL for the database layer. I use microformats to semantically mark up data within webpages. I use a Mac running OS X as desktop, but I develop sites on a Linux virtual machine. I enjoy using the command-line.
I am experienced in developing within an agile scrum development process — the SearchMonkey Developer Tool was produced using this technique. I led a small team of developers during my time at Yahoo!, as well as interfacing with members from other teams — in particular Product Managers, Designers and QA Team Members.
Testing and ensuring that production code is of the highest quality is of utmost importance to me. I have experience using Test Driven Development, particularly using the PHPUnit framework. I have also written a framework which allows easy automated standards testing of front-end systems.
I joined Yahoo! in the autumn of 2006, where I initially developed sites such as Yahoo! Finds of the Year 2006. I later moved into the Search team, where I helped develop the right hand column image and video results modules.
In the summer of 2008 I was promoted to the role of Front-End Architect for Search in Europe, where I led a small team of front-end developers. Whilst in this role I oversaw the code produced by this team during the redevelopment of the SearchMonkey Developer Tool and SearchMonkey Gallery.
During my time as Front-End Architect I also developed a system for Automated Front-End Testing, and was asked on multiple occasions to speak publicly on behalf of Yahoo!.
During my time at Mintel I was lead developer of three of the group's internal websites. Each website interfaced with large data sets produced or used by various products within the company.
At the Plymouth Marine Laboratory I was required to perform many varied tasks around the creation and maintenance of satellite support software, as well as redeveloping the RSDAS website.
As the Front-End Architect for Search in Europe at Yahoo!, I was responsible for leading a small team of engineers who rebuilt the front-end component of the SearchMonkey Developer Tool. Key requirements of the Developer Tool rebuild were to increase its accessibility and usability.
I was also responsible for overseeing the ongoing development of the SearchMonkey Gallery.
Aimed at a "tech savvy" audience, The Yahoo! Answers Badge Builder tool gave users the chance to create a javascript badge to insert onto their own sites which showed off Yahoo! Answers content.
This is my personal blog, where I write about technical subjects. By writing about such subjects as automated front-end testing, building data resources using Yahoo! pipes and making stop-motion videos I solidify this knowledge in my own mind whilst also help others who are investigating similar issues.
Because I have a presence on many different websites across the internet, I wanted to have a single page where the data I was creating could be pulled together. The goal was to create a single page which could be used to give an overview of the data that I was creating and the things which are currently important to me.
The data flow into the page is powered by Yahoo! Pipes, which allows the data creation and display portions of the page to be kept loosely coupled, as well as providing an easy way to add new data sources to the page.
BEng (Hons) First Class in Software Engineering
References are available on request.