Dave Kirk Email & Phone Number

Pontyberem, Wales, Gb

Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

London & Cardiff

After joining Penta Technology as Head of Technology I was asked to act as their CTO to provide technical guidance for the executive team and a contact point for customers and potential investors* Leading a team of remote developers, platform engineers and testers working on both internal projects and customer engagements* Setting the long term technical direction, working with senior engineers and customer facing consultants to understand our customers challenges* Delivering high quality code for internal projects, whether it's JavaScript for our PaaS API, Ansible for automating platforms or CI / CD pipelines* Looking for ways to improve our release processes, through additional QA, speed of delivery or delivering code into secure environments* Helping customers to migrate to modern architectures, utilising the cloud (inc. AWS and Azure), Kubernetes, event sourcing, microservices, etc* Leading the recruitment for engineering staff, ensuring we get the best technical talent whilst maintaining our culture

London & Cardiff

Bristol, England, United Kingdom

 Led a team of platform engineers delivering a secure AWS platform for a Scottish government department Championed the adoption of infrastructure assurance across the company, working closely with the assurance capability leads Worked with the technical architects to design a number of platform solutions, including certificate management, continuous delivery and database management Worked with other capability leads in Bristol and across the company to implement improvements and foster a strong culture Provided pastoral care, career development support and mentoring the platform engineers in Bristol Was involved and acted as line manager for the start of the Bristol graduate programme, working to establish the approach and support the graduates.

London & Bristol

 Part of a team who rescued a failing project to develop financial reporting application for a government department that processes over £80,000,000 of transactions annually Created a full end to end delivery pipeline using a combination of JenkinsCI, GitLab triggers, RPM packages and Bash scripts Lead developer for a case management system for central government to support British nationals involved in overseas crisis’. The application and support environment were accredited and ISO 27001 certified. Project won a ‘Digital Excellence’ award. Developed an in-house people management application to manage leave requests, performance reviews and resourcing. The application was rolled out across the company to 1000+ people Developed a custom automation framework for a commodities trading firm Defined and created manual and automated tests for a high-performance FX trading platform that handles almost 40% of the worlds FX transactions

London & Bristol

Working with various clients, primarily in Government I have delivered a number of projects working as both a developer and senior developer since starting a BJSS. Some of the key highlights include: • Rescued a failing project to manage all of the financial transactions for a large government project. The system handled over £80,000,000 of transactions annually, through various methods of payment including Direct Debits, Card Payments and Cheques • Part of the team that developed and maintained a new, more robust mechanism for the processing and notification of non-time sensitive tasks and events. The solution was written in PHP and used various APIs and Amazon SQS queues to publish notifications • Created the CI / CD pipeline, allowing us to quickly build and release code for testing and deployment to production. Using a combination of JenkinsCI, GitLab triggers and RPM packaging • Developed a number of custom components for CakePHP (2.x) including a datasource component that allowed us to interact with a (mostly) RESTful API using the built in ORM queries • Created a number ‘modules’ to interact with various services, including internal APIs, 3rd party APIs (such as Google Maps, Capita Card Payments) and Active Directory/LDAP • Supported internal projects who were required to interface with the financial reporting system, including providing technical guidance on the use of the exposed RESTful API and new notification system

London, United Kingdom

Worked in defining the test approach for a web based FX Trading platform (running in Silverlight) supporting a number of browsers and operating systemsAnalysis of requirements to create a work test estimation schedule for development and execution of test scriptsDefinition of test cases, ensuring all requirement acceptance criteria were covered

London, United Kingdom

Member of test team responsible for delivering Functional Testing of a high performance, high availability FX Trading platform running on a fully distributed architectureResponsible for validation and execution of System and Integration test scripts to ensure compliance with client requirements and integration with existing support systemsDelivering against aggressive timelines whilst maintaining a top level of testing quality and integrityInterrogation and modification of the Oracle Database and Windows or Unix logs to create valid test data and verify the results of testsWorking within a widely dispersed team across various sites whilst maintaining a high level of communication and team work

Development of a proprietry test tool plugin using a combination of Ruby, XML and QT(C++) to enhance the automated test coverage within the Business Unit. (The test tool has been released under the open source project Testability Driver.)Automated Test Asset owner for the Performance Test Asset. Test cases are stored in HP Quality Centre and the automated test scripts are stored with Git (version control system)Key User Support for test automation tools across the UK, providingsupport and guidance in the development and execution of test scriptsAutomation test lead for any products assigned to the local site, including test script execution and result analysis

Coordinated a team of 3 test engineers responsible for the testing of 3rd party applications to be integrated into the companies productsDeveloped a number of tools to assist in the delivery, tracking and release of the applications from developer to integration teamResponsible for the creation and ongoing maintenance / modification of the global common test assetIntroduced automated testing processes to the local test team which were eventually taken globally for the testing of 3rd Party Applications

Lead Tester for the software application that was part comprised part of the companies UMTS/HSDPA modem offeringResponsible for the customization of the software application to match the customers brandingSupported Lab Testing where required at a number of major infrastructure providers, including Ericsson, Nokia and AlcatelRan extended pilot of Quick Test Pro (QTP) to evaluate suitability for test requirementsProvided technical support to the sales team, including during client meetings

Test Lead for a product family of GSM based modems, leading a team of 10 test engineer, performing field trials throughout EuropeSupported customer approval of the companies products in Europe and APAC regionsDeveloped and maintained a customer support extranet siteSupported Lab Testing at a number of major infrastructure providers, including Ericsson, Nokia and NortelProvided technical support to the sales team during client meetings and exhibitions

Responsible for the day to day management of a team of 6 Helpdesk Analysts, supporting Vodafone UK's internal user base.Daily responsibilities included escalation of un-resolved issues, management of phone cover and reporting tasks. Reporting to the Service Delivery Manager, I was part of the initial team of 10 that was increased to 30 as we won new support contracts within Vodafone.

Mcp, Windows 2000

Microsoft Certified Professional Windows 2000 Workstation Microsoft Certified Professional Windows 2000 Server

Nvq 3, Installing And Supporting It Systems

Gcse, English, Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, History, Art, Religious Education, C And Above