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Stephen Bartholomew
Hi, I'm Stephen Bartholomew. I love building software to solve real-world problems. I care a lot about secure, well-tested code but above all, I want to deliver a positive outcome for users.

Skills

  • 17 years solid experience in Ruby / Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, MySQL and Postgres
  • 8 years experience with React and React Native
  • Strong front-end HTML/CSS
  • Committed to security, accessibility, and automated testing
  • Working experience with Kubernetes, GCP, and Linux systems administration
  • Strong understanding of business and product development
  • Ability to hit the ground running whether building from scratch or working with existing codebases

Work History

Bit Boutique

Owner / Lead Developer

January 2024 - present

Smart Pension

Senior Ruby Engineer

November 2022 - January 2024

I worked in investment engineering for Smart's Keystone pension platform.

My duties included:

  • Day-to-day individual contributor - working through feature, bug and improvements, code reviews
  • Part of the technical design, internal advocacy, and implementation team for a major upgrade to multi-currency support across the whole platform
  • Mentoring & domain knowledge sharing through documentation and pairing
  • Operations commander rotation - trusted role with production AWS access for production support queries

Reallyenglish

CTO / Lead Developer / Senior Developer

2012 - 2022

I started Reallyenglish as a software developer and took over as development team lead in 2013. In 2019 I became CTO of the global Reallyenglish company.

My duties as a hands-on CTO included:

  • Software development & architecture
  • Cloud infrastructure management
  • Technical project management
  • Product & Service roadmaps
  • Working with CEO/CFO to prioritise development around business goals
  • Refining development, support, and testing processes
  • Hiring and supporting developers
  • Defining and communicating internal policies and processes e.g. security practices, breech disclosures, secure development
  • IT budget management for cloud infrastructure and staff machines

During my time at Reallyenglish I:

  • Developed and managed the transition to a platform for developing course content. This meant that to new course content projects could be developed with less software development work - in some cases, none at all.
  • Developed and managed building of our mobile app and subsequent upgrades.
  • Established QA testing processes
  • Expanded the development team and processes

Curve21

Founder & Tech Lead

2006 - 2012

Curve21 was a small web development agency that I ran for 6 years serving a range of clients working on over 40 different websites and applications. I was one of three developers and oversaw all aspects of architecture, project management and code. In addition, I managed client & internal web servers.

Our approach was to work closely with clients, running on site workshops with prototypes and working code to create a solution that matches real-world needs rather than a spec sheet.

Many of the projects have since been replaced or changed but here are some examples of client projects we worked on:

Communities for Renewables

Project to help local communities in Cornwall assess an area for wind turbine installation.

  • JavaScript annotated mapping interface
  • Map server with postgis & mapserver
  • Use of OS and bespoke GIS layers
  • Dynamic data forms with custom calculations

DoSomethingDifferent

  • Bespoke Consumer ecommerce system
  • Trade-only ecommerce interface with custom pricing Trade API
  • Affiliates system with partial white labelling
  • Full back office website administration
  • Back office order, supplier, invoice & account tracking Multiple currencies

Strings Direct

  • Bespoke ecommerce system
  • Stock & pricing integration with onsite database
  • Full order & shipping tracking
  • Multiple payment integrations with repeat credit card transactions
  • Back office administration
  • Amazon marketplace integration
  • Google shopping integration
  • Multiple currencies

Islington Council's Energy Centre Advice Database

  • Configurable contact database of referral forms Automated previously manual tasks
  • PDF letter generation
  • Reporting & exporting
  • Partner company referral management interface

Curve21's Custom CMS

  • Flexible content management system
  • Extensible content type platform
  • HTML, CSS, Javascript edited online via a theme editor
  • Automated custom caching of front end elements
  • Social media integration
  • Custom form builder with emailing & data storage

Freelance

Web Developer

2003 - 2006

Variety of projects in a number of languages & platforms including a bespoke booking system for Brighton & Hove buses.

Fastnet International

System Administrator / Web Developer

2000 - 2003
  • ISP Technical Support
  • *nix & Windows ISP systems administration (Web, Mail, DNS, DSL etc)
  • Internal and Client software development