Flutter UK & Ireland division is part of the global Flutter Entertainment group, a FTSE top 20 company which has a $14 billion turnover.

The UK&I division contributes $4.5 billion towards this turnover. The UK&I division owns several well known UK betting brands such as SkyBet, Betfair and Paddy Power.

This is the same role as the Sky Betting and Gaming role except that it encompasses other Flutter UKI brands including Betfair.

As part of a company wide initiative successfully migrated Sky Bet onto a single platform to drive various Flutter brands, including Betfair, a billions of pounds transformation project.

Highlights:

• Migration to a single platform for all Flutter UK&I brands

• TypeScript
• Docker
• Apollo GraphQL
• React.js
• React Native
• Prismic CMS
• Git

Working within the Bet Promotions squad responsible for the Front end and Back end for Front end of various promotion systems on the Sky Bet app / website.

Highlights:

• Sky Bet Club - a key customer engagement and reward product generating £60m+ incremental revenue per year with over 250k weekly qualifiers. - For more info see https://billysmithers.me.uk/blog/sky-bet-club-automation and https://billysmithers.me.uk/blog/sky-bet-club-walkthrough
• Receiving an award from my peers for going above and beyond in a Sky Bet Club related project
• Daily Shootout a free to play game played by half a million customers, part of a high profile TV and Billboard advertising campaign, resulting in a £18 million profit attributed to the game. For more info see - https://billysmithers.me.uk/blog/daily-shootout

• TypeScript
• Docker
• PHP
• MySQL
• Kotlin
• Kubernetes
• React.js
• Terraform
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Node.js
• Vault
• Apache Kafka
• Redis
• Git

Responsible for leading a squad in a company wide initiative of a greenfield project to migrate the Rockar e-commerce application written in Magento to an in-house microservice based architecture using Typescript based APIs, Apollo GraphQL and Next.js for the Frontend.

Highlights:

• Migration from Magento to Microservice architecture

• TypeScript
• Docker
• GraphQL
• Next.js
• Git

Again a change in title to reflect the role as we had a Tech Lead per team so to bring the title in line with being responsible for the whole of the engineering department.

Introduced microservices for interacting with Marketplaces(Amazon, ManoMano) and Delivery carriers (Parcelforce, DX). Moving them away from the site and a monolithic approach.

VictoriaPlum.com wins the 2019 FTA (Freight Transport Association) Logistics awards. For the systems that enable the delivery offering I was the main developer. https://www.commercialfleet.org/news/latest-news/2019/10/28/fta-logistics-awards-2019-winners-announced

Highlights:

• Leading the engineering department
• Microservice architecture

• PHP
• Laravel
• PostgresSQL
• MySQL
• Elasticsearch
• JavaScript
• Systems Design
• Vue.js
• Laravel Zero
• Laravel Lumen
• Microsoft SQL
• TypeScript
• Docker
• Git
• Redis
• OOP
• E-commerce
• Database Design
• Scrum

A change of titles to reward the fact I was technically leading the team already. Continuing in the same vain. Introduced queue messaging for applications to communicate and remove the heavy lifting operations from the synchronised HTTP request. One to ones with my team and mentoring my colleagues. Leading the team in following Agile Methodologies.

With the help of devops colleagues introduced Varnish HTTP caching to aid performance of the customer facing site.

Built a rules / rewards discount system so it was flexible enough to add rules and rewards easily and also meant the marketing / commercial team could create flexible and different kinds of promotions. (It was a standard 10% hard coded into the site previously). This boosted Average Order Value by £100 per order and helped conversion rise by 2%.

I also produced a delivery price system in the same vein, meaning different days of the week, couriers, timeslots and also accounting for warehouse pick capacity - each delivery date had different prices, again with the same flexibility as the discount system. This led to carriage income rising by 3% per order.

Highlights:

• Introducing Agile methodologies
• Migration from an in-house framework to Laravel

• PHP
• Laravel
• PostgresSQL
• MySQL
• Elasticsearch
• JavaScript
• Systems Design
• Vue.js
• Microsoft SQL
• TypeScript
• Docker
• Git
• Redis
• OOP
• E-commerce
• Database Design
• Scrum

Responsible for building a development team and introducing industry standard practices and tooling such as git for version control, Object Oriented and Event Driven design, unit testing, peer to peer code reviews and separation of concerns between applications. Helped grow the team from two including myself to twenty.

The growth of the development team was a major part of VictoriaPlum.com becoming a household name and saw profit grow year on year to the point the company was invested in by TPG, who also invest in Uber and Spotify.

Highlights:

• Building a team from 2 to 20 introducing industry best practices

• PHP
• Laravel
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• Systems Design
• Microsoft SQL
• Git
• Linux
• OOP
• E-commerce
• Database Design
• Scrum

Wren Kitchens is a leading manufacturer / supplier of kitchens and bedrooms to the public and trade. I was responsible, as part of a team, for the development of the room planning tool used by the showroom design consultants. I was also responsible for the development of the stock warehouse system.

Highlights:

• Building the Wren Kitchen planner used in showrooms

• PHP
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• XML
• Solr

Sound Solutions Internet is a Hull based company specialising in e-commerce. As part of a team, I was responsible for the development of websites and web based systems using PHP, MySQL, CSS and JavaScript.

• PHP
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• XML
• CSS
• HTML

Bestfrontseat specialised in delivering internet video, especially the broadcasting of live events over the internet. They were one of the pioneers of HTTP based video streaming. As a senior member of the team, I was responsible for the design and development of websites and web based systems.

• PHP
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• XML
• CSS
• HTML

At the time of me working there Hull College had over 1,500 members of staff and up to 40,000 students enrolled at one time. As part of a team, I was responsible for the production, maintenance and administration of the college's internal websites.

Highlights:

• Introducing the college to the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment and elgg E-Portfolio system
• Re-design of the college's intranet, from static html web site to dynamic content management system/ portal with user authentication, over 1000 fully searchable documents, different views depending on level and type of user and integration with the college's VLE. The new system followed W3C guidelines (XHTML and CSS), to ensure accessibility and compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act
• Development of elgg modules for part of JISC funded project named HELPP
• Development of an application using MVC architecture (CakePHP) for the Learn Direct branch of the college

• PHP
• MySQL
• JavaScript
• XML
• CSS
• HTML

Responsible for implementation of database systems for use with a Youth Workers team for storing information regarding events and library materials.