Personal Profile

Platform engineer and physics graduate with over 6 years of experience developing, supporting, and deploying web applications to cloud and on-prem environments.

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Work Experience

Software Developer at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (Sep 2023 - Present)

• Working on the deployment and administration of a data commons platform made up of several different microservices which include databases, cloud services, and applications built with Python, Go, and Nodejs. These microservices are deployed (using Helm) on a Kubernetes cluster.
• Built Nextflow workflows for automating cloud-based bioinformatics processes.
• Gave scientific presentations at the SASBi conference in September 2024.
• Core technologies used:
  • Kubernetes (Minikube for testing and K3s for dev)
  • Python and Bash (for writing scripts)
  • Cloud services (AWS: S3, SQS, SNS, EC2)
  • MinIO (for on-prem bucket storage)
  • Nextflow (for building workflows)

Product Engineer at Absa Group Limited (Jul 2019 - Aug 2023)

• Built React plugins for an independent developer portal (Spotify Backstage) which could be used by development teams to manage their deployment resources.
• Developed Angular web application for development teams to have their applications deployed onto on-prem Kubernetes clusters.
• Built a Kubernetes operator to manage Artifactory registry credentials.
• Offered after-hour support to development teams using our services.
• Core technologies used:
  • Go programming language for building Kubernetes operators
  • Angular 8 (with Typescript)
  • React for building plugins for Backstage (an IDP template owned by Spotify)
  • NestJS for building a microservice that connects to public or external APIs
  • Jenkins, Tekton Pipelines, and ArgoCD as CI/CD tools
  • Github for version control and ticket/issue management (later moved to JIRA)
  • Rancher as the Kubernetes platform manager

Web Application Developer Intern at Absa (Feb 2019 - Jun 2019)

• Built a web application for online learning (similar to Udemy).
• Core technologies used:
  • JavaScript with Node, Express, and Pug (formerly known as Jade)
  • MongoDB as the database

Mobile App Developer Intern at The Digital Academy (Aug 2018 - Jan 2019)

• Built an Android mobile application that rewarded users with points that could be used to make purchases. These points were earned by learning new tech skills.
• Core technologies used:
  • Java (Android Studio) & Spring Boot
  • MySQL and SQLite

Teaching Assistant in the Physics Department (Feb 2015 - Dec 2017)

• Presenting lessons/tutorials to groups of 30 to 60 students
• Laboratory demonstrations (setting up and supervising experiments)

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Technical Skills

Programming Languages

• TypescriptJavascript
• Javascript
• Python
• Go
• Java
• Bash

Software Frameworks & Libraries

• Angular
• React
• NestJS
• Cypress & Playwright (UI end-to-end testing)
• Jest (unit and integration testing)

Databases

• PostgreSQL
• NoSQL (MongoDB)
• MySQL (some exposure to SQLite as well)

DevOps & Cloud Services

• Containerization (Kubernetes & Docker)
• CI/CD (Jenkins, Tekton Pipelines, ArgoCD)
• Version Control (Github & Bitbucket)
• AWS: S3, SQS, SNS, EC2

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Education

University of the Witwatersrand (Feb 2011 - Jul 2018)

• Master of Science (by Dissertation) Awarded (Theoretical Physics)
• Bachelor of Science (with Honours) Awarded with distinction (Physics)
• Bachelor of Science Awarded (Physics and Mathematics)

Research

• Title of dissertation: A Quantum Mechanical Toy Model for Black Holes
• Title of honours project: Investigating Time Machines

Online (Coursera & Udemy)

• Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginners: Hands On
• Node.js: The Complete Guide to Build RESTful APIs
• Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis
• Introduction to Data Science in Python (University of Michigan)
• Business Metrics for Data-Driven Companies (Duke University)

Professional Certifications

• Amazon Web Services Cloud Practitioner (Dec 2021)

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Personal Details