James Grant

Taken accountability for the frontend of the payments product area within a commercial banking platform, becoming a go to for knowledge and technical decisions.

Currently developing a new frontend architecture transforming the current monolithic frontend application into a scalable modular application with micro-frontends using Webpack Module Federation. This has been a great experience to develop a new workflow for developers to develop and release code and have input in all aspects of the development workflow.

I have also been a key part of our frontend interview provess, I have worked to improve our interview process including writing new code tests, whilst interviewing candidates across multiple countries.

Working at NatWest as a front end engineer focusing mostly on a corporate banking product called Bankline. Working as part of a scrum team consiting of 5 developers, 2 testers and a PO/BA I have the oportunity to help drive the team forwards and work with the PO defining what we are building.

I spend most of my time working on a specifc area of a large application that our team take ownership over. The front end is a React app that talks to an API built using a collection of Java microservices. I have spent time working in multiple parts of the stack including helping to define our front end architecure to follow best practices to implementing PDF and CSV export in a microservice.

Last year I took the lead on rebuilding the login journey to our application. I worked with the architects and designers to create something that would be fit for purpose and be easy to maintain for years to come. I then built this to a high standard which lead to a seamless switch over from the previous system with no issues. More recently I have acted as a consultant to external teams and application architects to advise on how we should be building new functionality within our application. I have also built reusable components to the same standards as opensource libraries which have been used by different teams across the bank.

I enjoy learning about all areas of our application which allows me to be a go-to person for knowledge and queries within my team and the other teams in the office. I am always looking to suggest improvements and challenge what and how we are working to make sure we are delivering the best service to the customers while also developing to the highest standards.

During my time at Simitive I worked as part of an agile team building our own in house web based software and also a large scale website for an international client. I gained experience working with a continuous integration workflow using tools such as Jenkins and working with Amazon Web Services for deployments. We built most of our software using Symfony, Backbone, Marionette, Vue and Vuex.

For 6 months I was working on delivering a standalone web product for an international client that services over 600,000 users. This has been built from the ground up using Symfony to provide a backend API and Backbone for the front end. I also gained a lot of experience with Elasticsearch to provide search functionality of millions of entities to the front end. During the project I spent time out of hours communicating with the client, performing deployments and providing support.

Towards the end of my time at Simitive my role involved assisting with the company’s devOps, this included managing our AWS infrastructure as well as deploying and migrating sites. I also spent time configuring and maintaining our clients SSO, this mostly involves configuring new clients who are using AD FS, Shibboleth and CAS but also maintaining our software’s SSO functionality.

I was asked to update an existing Android app to the latest version of Android and to fix any issues caused by this as well as a few other existing issues. This project had a very tight time scale and I was able to complete it in very good time while providing regular updates to the client.

While working at Nudge I was able to work on a large number of projects ranging from small Drupal sites to large enterprise level applications. I enjoy being able to work with clients to understand and surpass their expectations. At Nudge I was also given the oppertunity to work with all of my core skills and to gain new skills in things such as Symfony, Angular and Gulp. I also worked on a number of iOS and Android applications.

During my time at Nudge I was able to help the lead developer with the writing of Technical Specifications and also Project Requirements. I feel this is a useful skill to have as it helps me to become an even more well-rounded developer.

During the summer I had the opportunity to head to Accra, Ghana and work with the team out there. This was a great opportunity to learn more about the industry in another country but also to allow me to lead their team for a few weeks and gain lots of experience of remote teams.