Thomas Redstone

Lead a multi-squad team, modernising Texecom's infrastructure, focusing on cloud-native solutions, automated deployments, enhancing system reliability and Infrastructure as Code.

I started with a small team of 3 developers, with a significant dependency on external contractors and agencies working largely independently, which often lead to new projects that overran and had poor handover to the team, leading to gaps in knowledge, to a team of 8 engineers, supplemented by contractors at times, but with a focus on working either directly within the team, or working on much smaller, focused projects that the team are able to take ownership of before launch, and ensure knowledge gaps are minimised.

Driving forward application development, resolving long overdue, deeply ingrained technical debt, and instigating a drive to unit tests for all new or modified code, and to refactor existing code to improve maintainability, reliability and performance.

Establishing and leading the squad to bring development to bring the development of the Texecom Connect React Native mobile app inhouse, and complete a major rewrite of the application, paying off long overdue technical debt and positioning the team to deliver the features the product team had long been waiting for.

Moving from a clickops model, towards full infrastructure automation, and beginning to be able to adopt Platform Engineering principles, both through hands on contribution, and by building the Platform Squad, which has come a long way, delivering repeatable environments, automated pipelines for; database migrations, legacy code deployments, base image and golden image builds, and applying Terraform changes.

Architected and built an event-driven service using API Gateway, EventBridge, Lambda, and DynamoDB, deliberately avoiding queues on the happy path to prevent unnecessary bottlenecks (with DLQs for failure handling). This POC guided the team's production build and forms part of a Strangler Fig migration strategy to incrementally replace the legacy monolith with microservices.

Built a cXML PunchOut integration handling millions in annual uniform orders, converting cXML to EDI XML & using SFTP. Involved stringent validation & unit testing.

Specified a TypeScript replacement for a dated PHP ordering portal, choosing tech based on skills & customer value.

Created a Docker build for GetJohn's "Punchout Hub", an API integration platform, improving modularity & efficiency.

Key in building "Punchout Hub v2" using Laravel & LiveWire and adding OpenAPI descriptions of the services. Preserved old code & improved system modularity. Designed a role-based client dashboard & handled hundreds of daily logins.

Promoted better unit-testing practices & streamlined dev environments.

Automated server monitoring & backup setup using Bash scripts.

Headed a team of developers crafting a platform for mobile apps, web interfaces, & kiosks. Also developed the back office React based interface. Applied agile & TDD for rapid, quality deliveries. The platform, featuring RESTful services with TypeScript & Go on AWS, leverages CI/CD, automated testing, & infrastructure as code using Terraform for reliable, fast feature rollouts.

Developed a TDD-based microservice to create unique identifiers within ranges & act as a single source of truth for key order data, resolving legacy system bottlenecks & speeding up order processing to meet a 70 writes/second SLA. The service enhanced reporting, extended the legacy system's lifespan, & maintained throughput during peak times.

Engineered a microservice generating barcodes based on data pulled from a range of sources, reducing order-related printing & simplifying returns, saving over £100,000 annually. This service interacted with a range of systems to retrieve & verify key details to make onboarding of consumers of this service simple.