Thomas Stevens Email & Phone Number

Reading, England, United Kingdom

I was one of two senior engineers hired by telecommunications giant VMO2 to bring development for the My Virgin Media app in-house. This meant supporting legacy work, creating GitLab CI/CD pipelines, enforcing code quality standards, integrating Appium automated testing, all whilst developing new features for an app with millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of monthly active users.The approach we took was to use Clean Architecture and modern coding standards, tools, and methods, with a full range of unit tests and integration tests for all new features, which lead to high quality code that required little maintenance, that then freed our time to modernise the legacy code and reduce issues across the board. To ensure code quality we had our pipeline make sure all JUnit unit tests passed, ran Jacoco test coverage, and had to pass Detekt community code standards. To ensure performance we used Kotlin coroutines and Flows to enable us to run requests parallel and off the main thread. All of this was enabled and backed by the Android team's tight cooperation and utilisation of pair programming, peer reviews, and daily technical discussions.Our key accomplishments include: Home Screen 1.5 a completely updated UI and UX meant as a jumping point for future individualisation using customer data, granular user data management and GDPR compliance with OneTrust was added to support current and future data collection and preferences, the modernisation approaches increased crash free sessions to 99.9% and were monitored via Dynatrace, updating the app to Android 13 with a number of deprecated libraries removed, and the successful transition of mobile customers to O2. The impact on the business was an account management app with increased usability, a lower crash rate, and an enhanced customer experience ready for the AI data driven future.

Nyoum is a communications company looking to disrupt the next generation’s communication market by being video communications first while tapping into the power of the internet through contextual services. The development and research of the Love application had been conducted on iOS in iOS heavy markets and the team required someone to build the Android application to compete in Android heavy markets.

Hammersmith And Fulham, England, United Kingdom

EnglishScore is a Blenheim Chalcot incubator startup, collaborating with the British Council and Imperial College London to democratise English language testing worldwide through mobile and web applications. I joined as one of two Android Developers to contribute to the evolution of the EnglishScore app from an MVP to a cutting-edge language testing platform.On Android we used Clean Architecture by splitting the app layers into separate modules, with Android feature modules as the view layer, and Kotlin MPP modules as the domain and data layers. This was my first introduction to Clean Architecture and I dived in by watching the lectures, and reading the book. My first implementation of Clean Architecture was in the Analytics system, where I used bridges to separate the multiple third party libraries, and a composite manager for use within the domain layer. This proved to be a boon as we needed to change one Analytic provider, something that if the library was used directly, could have potentially taken several days, but instead took minutes to remove and only slightly longer to add the new one. Our Clean Architecture also enabled the Kotlin MPP domain and data layers to be used with a new B2B web UI layer, which in turn secured additional contracts. This was a stark real world example of just how powerful Clean Architecture is and I have been an advocate for its usage ever since.In my time at EnglishScore I learned Kotlin coroutines for asynchronous requests, Android data-binding for reducing boilerplate in fragments, Motion Layouts for smooth animation transitions for the on-boarding screens and currency selector, Clean Architecture, Kotlin MPP, and was exposed to the MixPanel analytics platform. We successfully reached feature parity with the MVP enabling us to deliver the updated application to a global user base exceeding half a million customers worldwide.

Southampton, United Kingdom

I embarked on a self-employment venture with the goal of building an application from scratch. This journey allowed me to gain a comprehensive understanding of various roles, including designer, developer, and decision-maker, providing valuable insights beyond development alone. Although unforeseen circumstances interrupted the deployment and marketing phase, I successfully achieved my initial learning objectives and identified areas for improvement.

Chichester

Airborne Interactive Ltd specializes in developing and integrating embedded software for interactive video systems in passenger aircraft. During my tenure, the aviation industry was transitioning to Android as the default media systems for new airplanes. I joined the team to provide Android expertise during this pivotal change.Key Achievements and Responsibilities:- Technical Expertise: Provided Android expertise during the adoption of Android technology within the company, assisting the architecture, setup, and development process for Android-based passenger interactive systems. - On-site Technical Support: Provided crucial on-site technical support for the installation and maintenance of passenger interactive systems on aircraft, ensuring a seamless passenger experience.- Collaborative Problem-Solving: Assisted colleagues by addressing Android-related queries and challenges, fostering a collaborative and knowledge-sharing environment.Impact:Successfully facilitated the transition to Android-based development, leading to several significant accomplishments:- Launch of Phase 1 of a passenger interactive system for Hainan Airlines.- Initiation of Phase 2 development for the same application.- Collaboration and bid submission with Blizzard Entertainment.- Commencement of an update project for Qatar Airways' mobile applications, showcasing our adaptability and ongoing client relationships.

Alton, Uk

Compsoft creative is a bespoke mobile and web application design and development agency that works closely with customers to get them the product they need. I was hired as a junior android developer to work alongside a wealth of experience in android, iOS and .Net. My responsibilities included producing features, fixing bugs, and getting stuck into every aspect of the development and deployment process. During my time we released multiple android applications to the play store to customer satisfaction and transitioned android development from Java to Kotlin.Apps contributed to:- Recebo- Cybaseal- Screwfix Quickshop- UIB

Southampton, United Kingdom

Merck Chemicals Ltd provides performance chemicals for a wide range of engineering practices; the science group at Chilworth Hampshire specialises in liquid crystals for displays. I was hired as an intern to complete a LabView programming project to interface with lab equipment in order to add functionality required for a new round of experimentation.- Completed a LabView programming project to enhance lab equipment functionality for upcoming experiments.- Responsibilities included hands-on experimentation, data collection, and thorough data analysis.- Delivered weekly progress presentations on both project completion and data analysis.- Completed the programming project ahead of schedule and continued to support experimentation efforts.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Physics, 2:1

The course was heavily mathematics based and covered such topics as series, differential equations, Fourier transformations, big-O.

Master Of Engineering - Meng, Mechanical Engineering, Not Completed

Activities and Societies: Imperial College Men’s rugby ClubStress analysis, mathematics, thermodynamics, mechanics both - fluid.