Rik Brown

Expert freelance & professional software developer and system administrator specialising in web applications.

Heart Internet VPS

I led the development team of Heart Internet's VPS product. I was responsible for both the front-end UI (jQuery, AJAX, etc) and back-end platform (Perl). The product was extremely successful and has since been adopted by their sister company, 123-Reg, for their VPS product.

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Dental Appointment System

I am developing an appointment system for dental practices in partnership with a previous freelance client. The system is integrated with Google Calendar and CalDAV servers and allows practices and their patients to book, view and manage their appointments online.

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DMAT Auditing Tool

A web application/CMS system developed for a freelance cliet, allowing users to be targetted with "questionnaires" to audit their progress. Aimed at medical practices and developed in Perl with HTML5/CSS3/jQuery (utilising some new HTML5 extensions such as geolocation and storage API).

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Member of a small development team at a leading UK web hosting company.
Lead developer of extremely successful VPS (Virtual Private Server) project, built from the ground up in Perl, providing completely customisable servers to customers. This product has gone on to massively exceed sales targets and receive great accolade, as well as being adopted by sister company 123-Reg as the backend for their new VPS product.
Customisation of various PHP applications (e.g. PrestaShop, Joomla!, etc) for one-click script installers.
Personal focus on improving and modernising code using libraries such as jQuery to create a better user experience.
Consistently acknowledged as a friendly and approachable developer, and aimed to bridge the gap between development, system administration and customer services due to my unique experiences in each of the departments.

Freelance software development and system administration for clients in the UK and abroad.
Since June 2011 co-created and co-directing a company, Sencra Ltd, to put my freelance work on a professional footing and to gain valuable insight into the world of business.

Spent 11 months from July 2010 to June 2011 living in Bangkok, Thailand. During my stay I learnt basic spoken and written Thai and travelled extensively. I supported myself by developing my freelance business – finding and communicating with clients online.
Projects have included:
- Writing a large auditing tool in Perl, with a modern HTML5/jQuery “web app” front-end (for a London software/SEO company)
- Tools to query the Royal Mail postcode database (PAF) and cross-reference with other analytical data for marketing purposes (for a London software house/SEO company)
- Fixes and improvements to a fitness website, written in PHP but in desperate need of coding clean-ups (for a US-based entrepreneur/fitness fanatic).

Dissertation: developing context-sensitive word prediction for the Android platform, based on a corpus of medical texts (NHS Direct transcripts) compiled by the School of English. Wrote thesis and developed prototype mobile application (alternative keyboard for Android).
Other key modules: Human Computer Interaction, Computer Security, Advanced Computer Communications, Compilers, Operating Systems.
Team leader and lead programmer of second year group project developing an audio processing tool using Java.

A Levels: Computing (A), English Language (A), Government and Politics (B)
AS Levels: Electronics (A), Mathematics (B)

10 subjects at A/A* including English, Maths, Science (Double Award), French and Applied ICT.
School prefect.

Motivated, outgoing and challenge-seeking individual. Personally, friendly and easy to get on with.
Experienced Perl programmer with both vanilla CGI object orientated Perl, FastCGI and the Moose framework.
Follows best practices, documents code (on top of making it as self-documenting as possible), and knows how to use CPAN!
Adept in other languages, including PHP, and can demonstrate a rapid adaptability to unfamiliar languages/platforms/code.Fully knowledgeable of MySQL development and administration, as well as PostgreSQL and even MongoDB.
Regular user of git version control software. Some experience of SVN and darcs.
Hired directly from university as a Software Developer at Heart Internet after demonstrating skills in development and system administration during my time on work placement. Was given great responsibility during my time there.
Very experienced with the jQuery framework, having used it to write many personal/freelance projects and having expanded its use at Heart Internet. Equally experienced with modern HTML5 extensions such as the geolocation API.
Great with HTML development (XHTML/HTML4/HTML5, preferring the latter), with CSS2/CSS3 and the LESS CSS library, although vanilla CSS is fine. I can translate mockups into websites, but I am not a designer.
Also capable at Linux system administration (particularly Red Hat/CentOS, although fairly familiar with Debian/Ubuntu). Fully competent at standard LAMP-stack configuration/maintenance as well as shell use.
Have been programming since introduced to the computer around the age of 5 by my father (one of my first ‘projects’ was developing an application in Visual Basic 3 that made a picture of Thomas The Tank Engine wink at you – fairly revolutionary).

References are available on request.

Email me at rik@rikbrown.co.uk
Connect professionally on LinkedIn
Hire me on Elance (but honestly, I'd prefer if you just contacted me directly)

Rik Brown

Heart Internet VPS

Dental Appointment System

DMAT Auditing Tool

Work Employment history & work experience

Heart Internet Ltd Nottingham, UK http://www.heartinternet.co.uk
Software Developer (previously System Administrator, Technical Support) June 2008 - December 2012

Sencra Ltd Nottingham, UK http://www.sencra.com
Freelance Developer/Consultant/Director June 2011 - December 2012

Freelance Bangkok, Thailand
Freelance Developer/Consultant July 2010 - May 2011

Education University and college

BSc Computer Science First Class
University of Nottingham September 2006 - July 2010

AS/A Levels
Cheadle & Marple Sixth Form College September 2004 - July 2006

GCSEs
Chapel-en-le-Frith High School September 1999 - July 2004

Skills & Hobbies Skills, abilities and talents

References

Contact me Email, LinkedIn, Elance, etc