Colin Riddell

Colin Riddell BSc (Hons)

Software Engineer and Technologist

An experienced, disciplined and formally trained (BSc) Software Engineer, Coach, Educator and Speaker with 14+ years experience across a very diverse range of sectors and technological disciplines.

Bringing an infectious enthusiasm for Software Engineering disciplines, Open Source, technologies and entrepreneurial Product Management to teams. Proven track record of solving problems with understated, simple solutions. Can design systems that are robust and fit for purpose while making the correct technology choices along the way. Proven ability to easily adapt to learning required languages / frameworks and a default «bring the whole team» attitude.

Has the ability to manage and coach individuals and teams to become the best they can be and deliver a product that exceeds expectations.

Recently, proudly started a side project called The Coder Career. The Coder Career is a community I co-founded that helps both aspiring and current professional Software Engineers get the most out of their careers. We run a growing Podcast, YouTube Channel and a thriving Discord Community We also run meetup events in the Scottish and UK community which are extremely successful.

Technologies 💡

Currently proficient with: Java, Spring, Spring Boot, JPA, Hibernate, SQL, React, JS, Node.js, Kubernetes, Linux, Microservices, ReST, SocketIO, RabbitMQ, BASH/zsh, BDD / Cucumber, TDD, Google Cloud, Git, Markdown, GitHub, CI/CD(Travis and Jenkins)

Currently skilling up: Event sourcing, RxJava, RxJS, Kafka, Spark, Helm (k8s), Graal, Scala, AWS, Redux, Serverless, Micronaut, CSS

Have worked with in the past: Python, Flask, C, C++, OpenCL, LLVM, Protobuf, Grafana

Enthusiastic to learn: Elixir, GraalVM, Istio, GraphQL, Swift, TensorFlow, ML, Neural Networks.

... this list is endless 🤪

Experience 👨🏻‍💻

FanDuel

Senior Software Engineer: April 2021 ➜ Present

FanDuel is online fantasy sports and betting company.

At FanDuel, I work on building systems for Free To Play (F2P) games, game configuration, secure OAuth Systems and B2B API's.

Technologies: Java, Spring, JavaScript, AWS, React, SQL, Next.js, Kubernetes, Terraform, DataDog

  • Building OAuth authentication systems with Spring Authorization Server with some OSS contributions
  • Using Spring Boot with, JPA, MyBatis and many other related libraries running on top of k8s to build resilient back-end systems. Coaching and training on Spring + Spring boot.
  • Taking part in on-call support as part of "build it, own it" team. Mentoring junior and mid-level engineers.

CodeClan

Senior Software Development Instructor: May 2018 ➜ April 2021

CodeClan is a coding bootcamp that re-skills individuals into Software Engineering roles in Scotland.

Technical leader and people manager. The former allows me to draw on my experience to help students on the course as well as other staff grow their skills. Keeping course material relevant. Approachable and professional leader getting most out of the team.

Technologies: Java, Spring, JavaScript, Node, React, SQL, Ruby, Python

  • Delivering hands on software development training to a professional standard.
  • Full Line Management and coach of instructor team for Glasgow campus location.
  • Responsible for maintenance and development of teaching materials for Java, Spring Boot and React
  • Design and implementation of high-impact training materials for key clients.

Bird.i

Head of Product / Development Manager: Aug 2017 ➜ April 2018

  • Built main portal app’ while training junior developers in React.js, Redux, Firebase and BDD + TDD
  • Using Cucumber/gherkin to aid rapid product iteration and ensure delivered quality.
  • Building AWS Elastic Beanstalk micro-services for payment processing with Stripe
  • Finding product/market fit for product verticals + requirements management
  • Building and maintaining company OKRs
  • Leading user-centric product development methodologies

ResDiary

Product Manager: July 2016 ➜ Aug 2017

Technical Product Manager for ResDiary. ResDiary is a SaaS restaurant booking and table management platform.

  • Introduced + nurtured use of new technology such as: React.js, BDD + TDD
  • Implemented team split to work towards self-organising teams.
  • Coaching on User Story Mapping, Design Sprints, Lean (Startup) (Build, Measure, Learn), Success Criteria.
  • Improvements to company culture with knowledge sharing talks, focus on learning and collaboration

Senient Systems

Software Engineer: May 2015 ➜ June 2016

Senient Systems was an early stage startup company building cutting edge server hardware and software for higher density cost-effective data centre compute and storage.

  • Built suite of middle-tier infrastructure management and control APIs and tools with Python( Flask, SQLAlchemy), Websockets, Java, ReST, Spring, Apache Kafka, ProtoBuf, PXE-boot, Debian

Codeplay Software: May 2008 ­➜ May 2015

Compiler Software Engineer + Team Lead

Codeplay are a specialist software company who build compiler technologies for all types of systems and platforms.

  • Team Lead on several compiler projects through the planning, design, implementation of software for various architectures and processors, including compiler design, toolchain creation testing systems.
  • Worked with C++, Python, JavaScript. LLVM, OpenCL, Linux, Jenkins, Docker, VisualStudio to build OpenCL and compiler tools for mobile and SoC systems.

Interests ⚡️

Outside of software and technology I like cooking, running, electric vehicles, gaming on PC + tabletop, travel, socialising and entertaining, fintech, banking and trading.

Outside of work I also hobby in side-projects:

  • The Coder CareerThe Coder Career is a community I co-founded that helps both aspiring and current professional Engineers get the most out of their careers. We run a growing Podcast, YouTube Channel. We also run meetup events which are extremely succesful.
  • Caol An entire back-end-as-a-service system that allows users(developers) to easily push and pull data through a simple client. Written with Java, Spring JavaScript. Also using Kubernetes, Micronaut, Grafana. (🔒ask for repo access)
  • Lights Control A small app for fitbit that controls Hue lighting in the home. For this I modded together my own mini react-like framework as the SDK is very limiting.