Andrew
Vos

Senior Full-Stack Rails Engineer

Summary

Highly skilled Rails Engineer with 19 years of experience in full stack software engineering.

Outside of work, I am passionate about woodworking, trail running, parenting, and immersing myself in literature. An avid surfer, I thrive on challenges both in and out of the tech world, bringing a well-rounded perspective to every endeavour.

Skills

Soft Skills

Achievements

Experience

Quidco logo
March 2023 to June 2023

Worked with Featurist on the QuidCo site rewrite.

  • Worked on the QuidCo site rewrite.
  • Rebuilt a vital high-traffic API without downtime using nginx to proxy requests to the old and new API.
CSS
HTML
JavaScript
Bash
Docker
AWS
React
Next.js
Load Testing
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
GraphQL
MoneyHelper logo
November 2021 to March 2023

Lead a team of developers to rewrite money management tools (apps) to make them more intuitive, accessible, and beautiful.

  • Designed and built many money tools for the UK government.
  • Presented and championed the moving of many projects out of a failing AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) system to Next.js and TypeScript.
  • Designed the whole development system to allow multiple teams to build tools concurrently.
  • Managed the deployment infrastructure for the team.
  • Approved all code reviews from an external agency who were building tools in the same codebase.
CSS
HTML
TypeScript
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Azure
Heroku
React
Next.js
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Load Testing
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Tailwind CSS
Bootstrap
ChangeLab logo
May 2021 to October 2021

Worked for an agency that builds video conferencing software for multiple clients.

  • Added new features to video conferencing software.
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
React
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Florence logo
March 2020 to May 2020

Started out on a contract to design nationalcareforce.co.uk, then designed and built other apps.

  • Build the National Care Force site during COVID-19 to help volunteers find places to volunteer.
  • Built staffsmarter.co.uk, a care provider resource manager app that allowed clients to manage their staff shifts.
  • Built Florence Rota, an easier to use version of staffsmarter.co.uk. This app included a drag and drop interface that allowed clients to easily manage staff allocation to shifts with a fully functional calendar.
CSS
HTML
TypeScript
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
React
Next.js
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Tailwind CSS
Bootstrap
Indigo Lighthouse logo
February 2018 to March 2019

Built a subscription managment system for Sam's Club

  • Built a system that allowed customers to buy recurring subscriptions for contact lenses in the US
CSS
HTML
JavaScript
Bash
AWS
Heroku
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Honeycomb logo
July 2017 to December 2017

Started off as a Developer then became Tech Lead on the Product Growth team

  • Managed a team of six engineers
  • Worked with the team to make the product infrastructure more stable
  • Fixed performance issues in production
  • Managed and worked on multiple regional product expansion projects
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Docker
AWS
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
GAIN Capital logo
January 2017 to June 2017

Working with a Featurist team we designed and built an app that would allow users to exchange many different currencies.

  • Built the foreignexchange.com money transfer service
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Bootstrap
PensionWise logo
September 2016 to January 2017
  • Created a telephone appointment booking system for The Pensions Advisory Service.
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
GDS logo
October 2015 to May 2016

At GDS we were tasked with building the GOV.UK Service Manual site and a CMS for managing all the service manual content.

  • Built the GOV.UK Service Manual site with a team of content editors
  • Built a CMS for managing all the content
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
AWS
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Featurist logo
September 2015 to September 2015

Short contract rewriting a site for a large pharmaceutical company.

CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Bootstrap
Fullsix logo
June 2015 to August 2015

A contract role doing feature work for Tesco on their homemadebyyou.co.uk project.

CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
Bootstrap
Shopa logo
May 2013 to February 2015

My first time working with Featurist, a software development agency built up of friends from ITV and BBC. We were tasked with building all the software for Shopa, an app that would give cashback to users who bought products through our website.

  • Wrote the shopa.com Rails app
  • Managed all the infrastructure, including extensive use of Docker, AWS, Heroku
  • Wrote many microservices (mostly in Golang) that would pull data for hundreds of millions of products from popular affiliate networks and populate ElasticSearch / Postgres databases.
  • Wrote an image server in Golang to handle millions of image requests and downloading and resizing them on the fly.
Go
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
Bash
Docker
AWS
Digital Ocean
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Agile
Load Testing
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
ElasticSearch
Bootstrap
Sky logo
September 2012 to May 2013
  • Worked across three different teams teaching BDD to developers, using Cucumber and Ruby.
  • Helped with the interviewing and hiring process.
  • Wrote software to enable functional testing of Android Applications.
CSS
HTML
Ruby
Java
JavaScript
Bash
Android
iOS
Agile
Load Testing
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
BBC News logo
August 2011 to August 2012

My first contract role in the UK.

  • Worked with the Responsive News team to help teach the use of BDD/TDD.
  • Interviewed and hired contractors and permanent developers.
  • Redesigned the BBC News site using responsive design techniques to allow the site to work on a large range of mobile phones.
  • Set up an automated load testing build configuration using Tsung. This build runs a few times every night and allows us to find out if any code changes during the day have negatively impacted our performance.
  • Designed a vagrant / puppet configuration to automatically provision sandbox environments for developers to run their code on.
  • Trained testers in the use of Capybara so that they could automate some of their manual tests.
  • Ran code dojos to help developers learn Ruby, BDD and TDD.
  • Helped the team migrate from Subversion to Git.
  • Wrote scripts to automatically deploy our code to test environments after a successful build.
CSS
HTML
Ruby
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Bash
Docker
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
Android
iOS
Agile
Load Testing
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
MySQL
ITV logo
June 2010 to August 2011

My first media company role. I made many long-term friends at ITV, and I have a lot of memories there. I joined up as a Junior .NET developer, but ended up using Ruby, PHP, and many other technologies.

  • Worked on a team writing MRSS integration to allow the BBC to link to ITV videos.
  • Worked with a team of ThoughtWorks developers to bring continuous delivery to our team and also improve coding standards throughout the team.
  • Setup of a TeamCity CI server with a small build server farm. We also set up multiple build status monitors to show the state of the build and also the state of our various staging environments.
  • Automated one-click deployment for all of our staging/production environments.
  • Automated the build process for itv.com.
  • Trained developers in the use of Cucumber, Capybara and Ruby
  • Promoted Acceptance Testing as part of the development process.
  • Worked with directly with Akamai using their HLS streaming product to enable people with iOS devices to view streaming adaptive video.
CSS
HTML
Ruby
JavaScript
C#
PHP
Bash
AWS
Heroku
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET
Agile
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
Acceptance Testing
Postgres
MSSQL

dotCommerce

August 2009 to June 2010

dotCommerce was an e-commerce platform that allowed clients to have a fully working e-commerce site up quickly.

  • Brought multiple clients on-board by either converting their sites to use our framework, or completely building their sites from designs.
CSS
HTML
JavaScript
C#
ASP.NET
Agile
MSSQL

eForte Limited

March 2009 to August 2009

My first tech experience in London. I worked for a small agency building and designing websites with PHP and html/css.

  • Worked with multiple clients to help realise what sort of website they needed and then built the site from the ground up.
CSS
HTML
JavaScript
PHP
Unit Testing
MySQL

WickedOrange

January 2008 to January 2009
  • Founded and ran a freelance web development agency.
CSS
HTML
JavaScript
C#
PHP
MySQL

LandscaperPro

January 2005 to January 2008

Founded and ran a profitable startup that built software for the landscaping industry.

  • Designed and fully built LandscaperPro, a top down garden design software that would allow you to completely design your garden with a drag and drop interface.
Go
CSS
HTML
TypeScript
Ruby
Java
JavaScript
C#
PHP
Bash
Docker
AWS
Azure
Digital Ocean
Heroku
React
Next.js
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET
Android
iOS
Agile
Load Testing
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Integration
Postgres
MySQL
MSSQL
ElasticSearch
Tailwind CSS
Bootstrap