Curriculum Vitae

Paul Ahern, Web Developer

My Story So Far

Having worked at Natwest bank in London for 15 years developing Retail Banking applications, using the COBOL programming language, in 2006 I moved back to Ireland to build a place in the country. While there, I attended an MSc course in Artificial Intelligence and worked on a helpdesk supporting web meeting products.

Since September 2010, I have been working in London as a Web Developer mostly using Python and Django. As an Irish citizen I am eligible to work in the UK.

Technical Skills

Programming: Javascript, Python
Scripting: Bash, Python
Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL
Web: CSS, Django, HTML, React
Version Control: Git
Project Management: Pivotal Tracker

Portfolio

Examples of my work are available on this page: ahernp.com/pages/portfolio.

Education

1987-1990 BA Computer Studies, University College Cork:

• Majored in Information Technology; Minored in Geography.

2006-2007 MSc Computer Science, University College Cork:

• Subjects – Computer Security, Mobile Applications and Artificial Intelligence.
• Projects – Building a University Timetabling tool using Constraint-Based programming techniques and modelling an adaptive Spam filtering system.

Experience

2016-2021 at HybridTheory (formerly Affectv) in London:

Working as a Web Developer on an in-house web application.

• Implemented new web application built using React.
• Maintained a legacy client-side application built using AngularJS.
• Supported the implementation and deployment of targeted advertising campaigns.

2014-2016 at Festicket in London:

Worked as a Web Developer maintaining and enhancing the festicket.com website.

• Integrated Booking Protect (refund protection) into the Festicket purchase process via an API.
• Wrote reporting logic to provide B2B communication to suppliers. Wrote and maintained automated Unit Tests using py.test.
• Used a sprint-based Agile approach to deliver changes to festicket.com.
• Provided IT support to staff: Set-up PCs and accounts for new joiners; Offboarded leavers.
• Created and maintained an internal company wiki to document standards and procedures.

2012-2014 at Digitalis Reputations in London:

Worked as a Web Developer migrating an existing in-house tool onto the Django web framework.

2011-2012 at ReportLab in London:

Built several web sites which enable organisations to provide links to PDF output which is dynamically generated from their own data sets using the Reportlab core product.

My team has also built a Django-based wizard which allows users to buy foreign exchange. This has been rolled out across several financial institutions.

Built web sites in direct collaboration with the Clients. Liaised with Clients to manage the interfaces between their systems and Reportlab's.

2010-2011 at Steel Business Briefing in London:

Worked as a Web Developer building sites using the Django web framework.

2008-2010 at Premiere Global Services in Ireland:

Worked as a Web Technical Specialist supporting clients using web-meeting products: Adobe Connect, Microsoft Live Meeting & Webex.

2006-2007 sabbatical in Ireland:

Attended a full-time taught MSc course at UCC titled: Intelligent Systems for Business and Manufacturing.

Learned to drive.

1990-2006 at Natwest Bank in London:

For seven years I worked on a Live Support Team, helping to keep vital bank systems running. This included two years on the Helpdesk dealing with problems reported by non-IT staff across the countrywide branch network.

For several of those years I also worked as a duty-programmer. This involved working at night to see that the batch programs completed successfully and dealing immediately with any problems that arose.

The remainder of my time was spent on application development teams.

As a member of Application Development teams I participated in the end-to-end process of designing, documenting, building and implementing systems. From collecting requirements from users through writing design documents and implementation plans as well as coding and testing my role covered the full development process.

Technical Environment: IBM OS390 mainframe.