The CV of Karl Williams: Web developer and pragmatic idealist.
Phone: 07903 226710 | Email: karl@deadlight.net |
I am a web developer with a decade’s experience making beautiful and functional websites and I have a passion for harnessing tech to improve the world.
I am a firm believer in the right tool for the job (rather than the right job for the cool, new tool) and approach all problems with curiosity, pragmatism and an emphasis on collaboration.
Software Engineer
December 2022 - present
Full-stack Engineer
Jul 2022 - December 2022
Actively developing a new dimensional modelling application in a stack using C++, Python and React. I have worked on all aspects of the codebase working closely with the product team to develop features to bring the tool to market.
Full-stack engineer
Aug 2021 - Jul 2022
I worked in backend team writing financial reporting systems in python and PHP. Engineering projects included data cleaning, web scraping and report generation. We migrated a legacy codebase to a newer system, making heavy use of RabbitMQ to send messages between services.
Senior developer
Nov 2020 - July 2021
Phantom is an agency with many prestigious clients; I personally worked on projects for Google and the Financial Times.
The majority of my work was for Google on their Hotel Insights project. This required parsing huge amounts of search data from Bigquery, processing it and saving it to a local Redis cache. I also extended and maintained the API delivering the processed data to the frontend of the project.
Developer
Aug 2020 - Nov 2020
At Stint, I work as a developer in the API team, using Django to provide REST and GraphQL endpoints to the web and mobile applications.
Web developer
Oct 2013 - May 2020
At Canonical, I worked as part of the integrated web and design team looking after a large portfolio of Canonical websites and webapps including all facets of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
My role included production of frontend code for websites, webapps and our internal, open source Sass library, Vanilla Framework.
In addition to the usual CSS, HTML and JavaScript, I worked with the full array of modern web technologies. This included writing lean, efficient Sass, proficiency in some backend technologies such as Django, Flask and Jekyll and making use of a toolchain of utilities such as NPM and Docker.
I participated fully in all aspects of planning, monitoring and demoing work within Agile teams and worked closely with colleagues across engineering, design, UX and other disciplines.
Web developer
Mar 2008 — Oct 2013
At IPC, I worked with all aspects of a large portfolio (30+) websites with a focus on performance at scale, reuse and maintainability.
The mostly PHP-led tech stack included Symfony, Django, Wordpress and various legacy systems. In addition to frontend and backend web development, I have also maintained systems for importing external data feeds and configured deployment systems.
During my time at the company, we moved from Waterfall-style planning to Scrum/Agile and I was fully involved in driving its adoption.
BSc. (Hons) Computing, awarded 2006
My hobbies and interests include:
The things that drive and excite me are:
Karl and I worked together at Canonical in the Web Team. His knowledge of web technologies is excellent, he is a hard worker, and made the team better for all. I would heartily recommend him or any web/tech project!