Robert Burrell Donkin

BSc

PgDip

MSc

MBCS

Professional

Professional Bodies

BCS — The Chartered Institute for IT

Member of the British Computer Society

Director and Principal Engineer, Tech Up North Ltd

In 2016 I co-founded a small software engineering business undertaking external and internal projects. Contracts successfully delivered follow.

US Sportsbook Programme, William Hill PLC

In 2018 a landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court opened up to all 50 States rights to license Sports bookmaking. A rush to market followed. William Hill PLC decided to develop a mix of existing technologies into a website aimed at the new online market in New Jersey. This was followed up by a second generation website based on new technologies with a better strategic fit. Tech Up North Ltd developed a series of microservices ― both solo and within Agile teams ― mediating the flow of data from trader to browser.

Spring and Summer 2018 ― Lean First Generation Microservices

Developed dockerized Spring Boot microservices on Linux in AWS
Small multidisciplinary collaborative team
Close collaboration with test automation specialists achieved high coverage
Close collaboration with key stakeholders maintained good business alignment
Close collaboration with overseas teams ensured end-to-end high quality data flow
Supported drive through US Certification to Go Live
Custom Splunk app provided insights into data flow
Lean and Agile approach practicing Scrum and then Kanban

Java 8•
Akka•
Akka Streams•
Scala•
Jackson•
MacOSX•
TDD•
BDD•
Mockito•
Maven•
Git

Autumn 2018 ― Second Generation Proof-of-Concept Microservices

Proof-of-concept aimed at key senior management stakeholders
Successfully demonstrated that a new engine could cost-effectively supply data
Solo analyse, design and develop adaption layer
Spring Boot microservices in Docker on AWS
Lean approach tracked using Kanban

Java 8•
Akka•
Akka Streams•
Jackson•
MacOSX•
Maven•
Git

Winter 2019 ― Second Generation Microservices

Horizontally scalable stateless architecture
Spring Boot microservices deployed in Kubernetes on AWS
Backing new high volume website coded in React.js
Small multidisciplinary team
Agile practicing Scrum
Test First, TDD, BDD and end-to-end automation

Java 8•
Spring Boot•
Spring Kafka•
Spring•
Spring WebFlux•
Reactive Streams•
Jackson•
MacOSX•
Maven•
node.js•
Mockito•
AssertJ•
Git•
CI/CD pipelines

UK Retail Programme, William Hill PLC

The William Hill retail estate had around 3500 locations in the UK. The programme aim was to replace all third party kiosks with more advanced products owned by William Hill. The customer-facing Kiosk and the staff-facing Tablet were HTML5 Chrome apps running React.js and node.js backed by Java microservices both locally and in a private cloud.

This was a major programme running over many years with Scrum-at-scale organised into many teams. Tech Up North Ltd contributed to the project linking online and kiosk accounts.

2017 ― Kiosk and Tablet Plus Project

Dockerized microservices deployed to private cloud by CI/CD pipelines
Full scale Scrum teams in a variety of locations in various nations
Close collaboration with test-automation experts ensured frequent releases
Developed Splunk apps helping support to comprehend data flow in the estate

Java 8•
Spring Boot•
Spring•
Jackson•
JAX-RS•
React.js•
HTML5•
CI/CD pipelines•
TDD•
BDD

Mobile Phone Security, Trustonic

Trustonic is a Cambridge start-up securing mobile phones focused on ARM-based hardware cryptography. Customers include many high profile, global blue chip corporations. Tech Up North Ltd was brought in to design, develop and test a key command line tool to a fixed contractual deadline.

Autumn 2016 ― Cryptography Keystore Tooling

Comprehensive automated end-to-end test framework delivered
Demonstrated compliance with external and internal API standards

Java•
Javax Cryptography•
Bouncy Castle•
Maven•
Mockito•
TDD•
BDD•
Test First

Before Tech Up North Ltd

Java Developer, William Hill PLC • 3 years

Liability Project

Near-real-time (<15 seconds) data analytics from around 10k points-of-sale
Large data volumes (256G peak memory usage per instance) with non-linear shape
High throughput (250 incoming messages per second peak per HTTP endpoint)
Agile delivery using full-size multidisciplinary Scrum team
Supported production by diagnosing faults and tuning peak performance using JMX
Mentored a graduate
Routinely delivered over 90% code coverage
Developed correctness-at-volume automated test tool for like-live environment

Java•
Spring•
Spring Integration•
ActiveMQ•
Tomcat•
MySQL•
Hibernate•
WebSockets•
Eclipse RCP•
Web Services•
JAX-RS•
Apache CXF•
TDD•
BDD•
Test First•
Mockito•
CI•
Pair Programming•
JMS

Kiosk Project

Contributed to the front end team developing a novel retail Kiosk solution

JavaScript•
react.js•
angular.js•
HTML5•
CSS3•
node.js•
npm•
Chrome app•
puppet

Lead Agilist, Hedtek Ltd • 9 months

Ruby on Rails•
Coffeescript•
HTML•
angular.js•
BDD•
TDD•
Git•
Chef•
PostgreSQL

Senior Consultant, Retail Express • 5 Years

Brought into this retail data analysis startup at around 6 months in.

Java•
J2EE•
Pair Programming•
led some small teams•
mentored graduates•
map reduce with GridGain•
Design Patterns•
Offshore collaboration•
Agile UML•
Red Hat Linux•
Apache Tomcat and Jetty•
Webservices•
HTML•
Swing•
Subversion•
Weblogic•
Websphere•
Oracle•
DB2•
MySQL

System Development Engineer, Du Maurier Limited • 2 years

Innovative HTTP-based internet enabled point-of-sale solution. Remote working.

Java•
J2EE•
HTML•
MySQL•
Ant Build•
Scripted Deployed onto Mandrake Linux and OpenLDAP

Trainee • Software Engineer • Consultant, UniPro • 4 years

Human resources software for a small software house with clients in The Gulf and in Africa. ISO-9000 accredited.

DSDM•
Visual Basic•
Oracle•
PL/SQL.•
mentoring•
interviewing•
led small teams

Academia

University of Warwick

Master of Science, Interdisciplinary Mathematics with Distinction

Profinite Group Theory 92% (4 alphas)

The Construction of Mathematical Knowledge 73%

Geometric Group Theory 73% (1 alpha)

Advanced Mathematical Thinking 72%

Dissertation Study on the Thinking of Mathematicianssupervisor David Tall

Bachelor of Science, Mathematics with Honours 1st Class

Undergraduate Supervisor, Mathematics

University of Manchester

Postgraduate Diploma, Advanced Computer Science with Distinction

Machine Learning 94%

Automated Reasoning 88%

Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning 88%

Future Multi-Core Computing 85%

Masters Demonstrator, Agile Software Development

Vocational

Technical Reviews

Getting Started With Apache MavenPackt Publishing

Acted as Technical Reviewer on an introductory-level video course about Apache Maven. An interesting experience, giving me some insights into the creation of video training courses.

The first time I've acted as a reviewer for a video course.

Jakarta Commons Online BookshelfManning Publications Co.

Over the years, I've contributed a quantity of documentation for open source projects including Apache Commons. It's one of the best ways to learn a technology but this was the first time I've been involved in something more substantial and systematic.

Left me with a deep respect for the effort and energy required to produce a book.