Software engineer two years into a career change from secondary-school maths teaching. Brought a teacher's instinct for clarity into a TypeScript codebase — colleagues call me "the one who actually documents things". Strong on the fundamentals because I had to learn them on my own time. Looking for a team that values both speed and learning, where I can keep growing while contributing real work today.
Full-stack engineer on the small-business product. Shipped the leave-tracking redesign, the new manager-approvals flow, and an internal tool now used daily by the 30-person customer-success team. Most-requested code reviewer on the team according to last quarter's metrics — colleagues say my PR comments read like good lesson plans. On the on-call rotation since month four; took my first 3am page calmly, which I credit to having previously taught Year 11.
TypeScriptReactCode reviewInternal toolingOn-call
2024 — 2024
Junior Engineer (contract) +
Co-op Digital· Manchester
3-month contract bridging the gap between bootcamp and full-time. Worked on the membership-card scanning app. Shipped a fix that reduced barcode-scan timeouts by 60% — turns out it was a debounce issue that nobody had bothered to measure. Confidence-building first paid gig in tech.
ContractMobile webBug-hunting
2022 — 2024
Bootcamp & self-study +
Northcoders + own time· Manchester
Full-time bootcamp followed by 18 months of project-based self-study while teaching part-time to pay the rent. Built a Cards Against Humanity clone, a markdown notes app with full-text search, a small CLI nobody else used but taught me what I needed to know, and a Chrome extension that auto-summarises GitHub PR diffs (still in use by ~40 people).
BootcampSelf-taughtSide projectsChrome extension
2014 — 2022
Secondary Maths Teacher · Head of Department +
Trafford College (KS3-KS5)· Manchester
Eight years teaching maths to 11-18 year olds. Head of department for the last two. Closed the year-on-year results gap between FSM and non-FSM students for the first time in the department's history. Trained six early-career teachers. Wrote and shared a scheme of work that now lives in the public domain and gets ~2k downloads a year.
Head of departmentPedagogyClosed FSM gapECT trainer
Tech Stack 6 AREAS · CLICK TO EXPAND
TypeScriptStrict mode · No anys
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Strict TypeScript daily. Comfortable refactoring loosely-typed legacy code towards type safety without rewriting it. Read enough type-level TS to understand the conditional types in my codebase, write enough to be useful.
ReactHooks · Server Components · Tests
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App-router Next.js, vanilla React with Vite, hooks deep enough to read the React source when stuck. Comfortable with React Server Components and Server Actions — the new mental model clicked once I stopped pretending it was just SSR.
TestingUnit · E2E · Trust
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Believe the test suite is the documentation that ages best. Vitest and Playwright for the bulk; manual exploratory testing for the parts that matter. Comfortable writing tests before the code when the API surface is clear.
Code ReviewClarity · Specifics · Kindness
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Most-requested reviewer on my current team. Try to leave the PR better than I found it — small fixes inline, big concerns as discussion threads, always with a 'here's what I'd try' suggestion.
CommunicationDocs · PRs · Tickets
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Eight years explaining quadratics to teenagers translates surprisingly well to writing PR descriptions a junior can act on. PRs read like good lesson plans: what, why, what to do next.
AccessibilityWCAG 2.2 · Keyboard · Screen readers
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Took the WCAG 2.2 course on my own time when I joined BrightHR. Now the team's go-to for accessibility review. Comfortable with keyboard-only navigation tests and screen-reader behaviour across NVDA and VoiceOver.
Achievements CLICK TO EXPAND
01
Approvals tool used daily by 30+ customer-success staff
2025 · BrightHR · First internal product owned end-to-end
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Built and shipped the first internal tool I owned end-to-end — a manager-approval queue that replaced an Excel spreadsheet and a Slack channel. 30+ customer-success staff use it daily; the team lead now says they couldn't run the function without it. Code review on the launch PR from a staff engineer was three lines: "yes, yes, yes."
02
Closed the FSM attainment gap
2021 · Trafford College Maths Department
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In my last year as head of department, the year-on-year results gap between free-school-meals students and the cohort average closed to zero in our subject for the first time. I'm proudest of this one. The scheme of work behind it is open-access and still gets downloaded.
03
Chrome extension — PR Diff Summariser
2024 · Side project · 40+ active users
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Built during self-study. A small Chrome extension that uses Claude to summarise GitHub PR diffs in the PR review page. 40+ daily active users (mostly former bootcamp classmates). Not trying to be a startup; trying to be useful.