After four years at the University of York I decided it was time for a new challenge. Enter Cloud Gateway.
It's a small start-up based in Leeds, delivering secure cloud hosting for some top clients.
I've been brought on board to take charge of all front-end stuff, mostly our customer portal, which has meant diving into Angular, and I'm loving it!
I worked at the University of York from January 2015 to May 2019.
The higher education sector hasn't always been the most up-to-date when it comes to their websites, but in my years at York I was proud to be part of, and then lead, a quick-moving digital marketing team.
We built and developed a responsive framework to deliver a new and improved digital experience for students, alumni and staff.
Four years, working for some top brands, with some top people.
Working at Epiphany allowed me to flourish, rising from being the single developer in a team of two to be a senior developer in a team of over 20.
I started there in August 2010 along with Gaz Battersby, as a new team dedicated to creating cool interactive pieces. It seemed to work pretty well, and the team grew.
A great place to work, with a brilliant culture and outstanding people. But new challenges awaited at York!
One of Leeds' first digital agencies, which set my career rising.
Although I was there for less than a year, working at Sense put me in touch with the Leeds agency scene, and allowed me to make contacts that have lasted to this day.
It was bitterly sad when it closed its doors, but Epiphany was there to catch a couple of ex-Sense employees to lead their new R & D team.
Running my own business made me realise where my strengths lay.
I'm no salesman, and running my own business proved that to me. I'm proud of the work I did there, and learned a lot of valuable lessons, but I was never going to be able to bring in the business I needed to stay afloat.
It was during this time that my career path started veering towards front-end development. Until then, web developers tended to do a little bit of front-end, a bit of back-end, some copywriting and even sysadmin when it was needed. But the digital world was growing and I needed to specialise.
I can be found in a few places online. Here is a small selection.
I tend to use Facebook for personal stuff. So it'll mostly be me checking in to family-friendly restaurants, telling you how far I've just run, or posting pictures of my kids.
Twitter is more work-related. I often tweet about stuff I'm working on, or cool stuff I've seen online. Occasionally I'll retweet something too.
I've got a few mini-projects on Bitbucket as well as Github, including this web page here! I can't decide which one is better.