Joanne Young

I'm a software developer - I love making things and problem solving

Introduction: Hello! I'm Jo, thanks for coming to my page to learn more about me!

I am an experienced Front-End Developer with a strong background in delivering large-scale public sector projects. Prior to joining Deloitte, where I am currently contributing to the development of a high-profile registration and ordering system, I have worked as a Front-End Engineer at Beamly Consultancy as a UX/UI developer. I am well-versed in the software development lifecycle, including writing clean code and implementing test-driven development practices. This allows me to consistently produce work of high quality and reliability. At Deloitte, I have been working on projects in the commerce domain utilising my technical knowledge and practical experience in industry, I am well-equipped to effectively contribute to and deliver results for any project I am involved in.

Background: After 6+ years in the tech industry, this provided key commercial experience and developed vast transferable skills such as communication, teamwork, and organisation. Such examples are in addition to the technical programming skills gained at Deloitte and Makers Academy.

Key Technologies: JavaScript (ES6), React, Node.js, Express, Sinatra, Git workflow, SASS, CSS, HTML

Experience

Software Engineer

Deloitte Digital

Contributed to the build of a large-scale public sector ordering and registering platform for health testing client.

Building key features using Vue.js and REST API, following the Government Design System
Exceeding client test coverage requirement by writing clear and concise tests with Jest, Vue test utils for unit tests, and Cucumber for end-to-end integration testing
Utilising Azure DevOps, Jira, and Confluence for ticket management, pipeline instrumentation, and documentation
Supporting junior team members through mentoring and knowledge-sharing sessions
Developing the translations enablement functionality, a key client request and legal requirement. Presented the build process and learnings at internal Deloitte conference.
In addition to client projects, I also contribute to Deloitte's internal open-source initiatives as a senior team member. I am responsible for leading the development of features based on stakeholder input, and I oversee the development the design to build and deployment.

October 2020 - Present

Junior Software Engineer

Beamly (Part of Coty inc)

Contributed to the build of headless CMS product and design system using HTML 5, SCSS, JavaScript, React.js and Redux Updated and improved suite of components as part of a dedicated agile squad.

Utilised component library to build pages and redesign websites, adhering to engineering principles - BEM/KISS/DRY code.
Re-platformed brand websites Rimmel, Sally Hansen, Max Factor and Marc Jacobs within the broader development team from WordPress to React. Working on large codebases allowed me to work with legacy code as well a build new react components
I am confident using Visual Studio Code to build and test code, Github and command line for version and branch control, GoCD and Fastly for pipeline instrumentation and cache management.
Jira for ticket management and Confluence for documentation.

February 2019 - Present

Technical Delivery Manager

Beamly (Part of Coty inc)

I was the first point of contact for 87 global clients, determining business needs and led the team to deliver projects on budget and on time.

Managed end-to-end innovative projects - interactive quiz campaign pages, chatbot and website, builds across global markets.
Led scrum ceremonies - stand-ups, sprint planning, refinement and sprint reviews. Stakeholder management including gathering requirements, demonstrations and presenting KPI's
Worked with in house and offshore development teams in Poland to ensure smooth and efficient workflow within agreed SLA's. - Internally planning team resource, timeline, budgets and drawing up Statements of Work.
Managed maintenance through Chrysalis ticketing system, prioritised web tickets based on business needs.

November 2017 - January 2019

Digital Production Coordinator

Arcadia Group Ltd, London, UK

Managed content delivery and optimisation of UK + 5 International Miss Selfridge e-commerce websites, mobile sites and apps, led a team of on-site digital assistants and offshore developers in India.

Product Owner for migration of 6 sites to a new responsive website, lead the A/B testing strategy working with third party 'Qubit' and trained team on the platform.
Managed all BAU content through CMS and product migration, improving order volumes by 5% and additional product filter attributes, increased CTR of 10%.
Built-up in-house email deployment team, and trained staff on the email service provider, HTML email campaign creation and processes, thus reducing cost by approx £20,000 a year.
Selected from over 100 applicants to meet regularly with the CEO and highest stakeholder of Arcadia – Sir Philip Green to partake in extra projects. Promoted from Assistant to Coordinator, six months into the role.

October 2014 - October 2017

Digital Campaign Assistant

SAGE Publications, London, UK

Created HTML email templates and campaigns for all 20 markets Designed and built web forms, surveys and pages
Liaised and presented email performance insights to stakeholders

September 2013 - September 2014

Education

Makers Academy

Software Engineering

March 2020 - July 2020

A 16-week intensive software engineering bootcamp. Working in a group setting following an Agile framework, using daily standups to ensure delivery of our target features. We used a TDD approach to create a series of fullstack applications using a combination of Ruby and Javascript with frameworks such as Node and React.

Always aiming to sharpen my toolset & craft well-written, readable code
Staying curious with new and popular technologies
Mentored a student in a later cohort, this helped embed the information I had learnt and enabled me to fully grasp key concepts of the course
Learning, honing and maintaining best practices for coding (e.g. TDD, XP Values, Agile approach)
- Languages: Ruby, JavaScript (and jQuery), HTML/CSS
- Web Frameworks: Sinatra, node.js/Express
- Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB
- Testing Suites: RSpec, Capybara, Selenium-Webdriver, Jasmine, Jest
- CI/CD: Travis CI, Heroku

General Assembly

Front End Development

October 2018 - January 2019

I was a student on a 10-week part-time course where I learnt to build responsive websites with HTML, CSS, and simple JavaScript. This course kick-started my career change, and I was able to transfer from a Delivery Management role to a Software Engineering role at the company I was working for at the time.

AgilePM® Foundation And Practitioner

APMG International

September 2018

The course equipped me with offers a practical and repeatable methodology that achieves an ideal balance between the standards, rigour and visibility required for proper project management, and the fast-pace, change and empowerment provided by Agile.

University of Leeds

Bachelor of Arts - Digital Media

September 2010 - September 2013

Final Major Project: As a student, I found it difficult to find Adhoc jobs in my local area to help make ends meet. I created a website using PHP, Javascript, HTML and CSS, which hosted jobs postings by employers, and students could sign up using their university email address and apply to jobs via a jobs board. Code can be found here.
Core subjects: History of the Web, Interface design, Accessibility, Project Delivery and Technical Coding modules. I selected PHP, SQL, Javascript, and HTML/CSS as my focussed technical languages.

Kesteven and Grantham Girls School - A levels in Business, Media, Theatre and Dance.

Technical Skills

JavaScript, Node and React - I have a variety of projects using full-stack capabilities and comfortable tackling efforts solo or working in collaborative groups
RESTful APIs - I can build using REST to send and receive requests
TDD approach - Makers Academy taught me the importance of honing a test drive approach to test functionality and behaviour first while maintaining high code coverage via unit tests and acceptance tests.
Object Orientated Programming - Able to write code by breaking the objects into classes and methods/functions.
Debugging - I have a calm and rational approach to debugging, by gaining visibility of the bug, and tightening the loop until fixed.
Documentation writing - I can write clear and concise documentation for anything I write, allowing for the next developer to understand the code

Maintenance and pipeline instrumentation - I have deployed my projects using Github Marketplace actions

Codacy (checks code quality)
Synk (checks for security vulnerabilities)
Dependabot (automates dependency updates)

At Beamly I have previously used:

GoCD (pipeline instrumentation)
Fastly (cache management)
AWS: Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) (cloud-computing platform)

Passionate about UI: During my time at Beamly my strengths were in being able to take a visual design in sketch, and transforming this into a fully functioning website/campaign page through Javascript, React and HTML/CSS, with pixel-perfect precision. I collaborated well with the UX team and was able to help meet the delivery deadlines which delighted clients.

Keen eye for detail while re-platforming the legacy websites from WordPress to React, this required redirecting legacy URLs to the new URLs, this taught me about regular expressions as all redirects were implemented through a JSON file, and needed a keen eye for detail. Additionally, this was sometimes in Russian or Chinese, so required special attention.

Accessibility - After Topshop was sued for lack of accessibility in 2018, this was due to alt images not having appropriate 'alt' tags and colour contrasting below satisfactory standards. I suggested to the next company I worked for that this be addressed to avoid any legal issues in future.

Performance - While running site tests at Arcadia, I spotted that the images provided by the Design teams were huge and slowed site performance down. I suggested we reduce the imagery size (while not compromising quality) for faster site performance; This improved the website load speed by 50%.

UAT testing, A/B testing - While working at Arcadia, I was running site analytics on Adobe Omniture (homepage tracking report) every week. I noticed that the homepage hero's second and third image on the slider was not generating many clicks. Therefore no traffic was reaching those pages. We decided to run A/B testing to see if the website homepage could be improved, I coded a few different examples, and the analytics proved over the coming months that this was the right decision as the visitors preferred to see all imagery upon landing on the homepage.

Mobile-first mentality - When building a website for a new client, I used my knowledge gained from General assembly. When queried on how to mobile optimise, I suggested we as developers use a triple nested flexbox as the design was in a grid-like format so would be the best approach. I had noticed that 80% of the audience was mobile users, so Mobile-first decisions should be at the forefront of decision making and flexbox allowed this. We built the website using mobile-first, and it launched in 2019.

Workflow

Mobile-First, Responsive Design
Cross Browser Testing & Debugging
Test Driven Development
Cross Functional Teams
Agile Development & Scrum

Interests

Apart from being a web developer, I love staying fit and healthy by going to the gym. I am a member at At Your Beat Dance Studio and Base Dance studios, where I go to dance classes a few times a week via ClassPass. I also like to mix this up with Yoga and Pilates.

I also dedicate some time to volunteering for a Charity - 'Reenage' a charity which organises meet ups with elders in my local area, in a bid to tackle loneliness in the community. Here I organise tea parties for small group in my area on the weekends.

I have always been one for getting involved in multiple aspects of company life from social committees to Corporate Social Responsibility societies. I have been part of every social committee for every company I have worked for, even stemming back to university life where I was on the social secretary for the Leeds University Cheerleaders.

Fun Fact

I am a qualified scuba diver


Reengage Portal Full Stack application used to help with my volunteer work with the elderly for Reengage charity. Built using React, Node, Express and MongoDB. To hear more about the tech stack and agile workflow - here is a short video demonstration from the final project demo day This is live here Username: admin-example Password: passw0rd-portfolio	Acebook Full Stack application which is a simplified dupe of social media website - Facebook built using React, Node, Express and Mongodb. Tested in JEST and Cypress	Makers b&b Full Stack application which is a simplified dupe of booking website - Airbnb built using Ruby, Javascript, Sinatra, PostgreSQL. Tested in RSPEC (unit) and Capybara(feature)

Personal Website Front-end application showcasing my personal portfolio built using Javascipt, jQuery, HTML, SASS (currently converting to React) [deployed](https://www.joanne-young.co.uk/)	News Summary API Front-end application using the Guardian newspaper API to display news articles on a single page application built using Javascript and Fetch API	Weather API app Front-end application using the Open Weather API to display current weather conditions on a single page application built using Javascript and Fetch API Project deployed here - here.

Bank Technical Test This technical test demonstrates test driven development, high code quality and Object Orientated Principles. Users can withdraw and deposit cash and print statement via REPL Built using Vanilla Javascript and Jasmine for testing	Bowling Kata Users can input bowling scores and keep record of the game built using Vanilla Javascript and Jasmine for testing	Thermostat API app Front-end application allowing users to increase or decrease temperature with configuration settings Built in Vanilla Javascript. Using Open weather API to pull in current temperature information