Leon Rowland

leon@rowland.nl | https://leon.rowland.nl | https://github.com/zogot

Summary

A dedicated Software Architect born in the UK and currently living in the Netherlands. With 11+ years of building internal and external software. Extensive focus has been spent on evaluating existing software solutions, discussions with team members and stakeholders to plan and improve existing codebases, design and develop replacement systems and improve all elements with, and around, the software.

With continued dedication on quality of code, test driven development, zero downtime deployment strategies, an optimal developer experience and business focused output.

Core Skills

Typescript and NodeJS
NestJS
PHP
Terraform
Kubernetes
Docker
RabbitMQ
Hexagonal Architecture
Test Driven Development
Technical Direction
Git
ArgoCD
GitHub Actions
Google Cloud Platform
Team leading and teaching
Client+Stakeholder communication

Experience

SalesChamp

Software Architect | Sep 2021 - Current

Evaluated the existing software solution together with stakeholders and the development team, to understand the expectations. Created a written plan describing the options available for creating the new solution.
Developed the entire initial infrastructure, development experience and microservices, using Kubernetes, Tilt, ReactJS, NestJS and RabbitMQ.
Introduced the team through thorough documentation and courses on how the development environment works and new development processes.
Created innovative solutions to the business problems to provide a real unique angle in the competitive space.
Implemented a progressive rollout approach to replace systems from the Legacy application with their corresponding part from the new application.
Created the Terraform and Google Cloud infrastructure to support current clients and the planned future growth.
Implemented automatic deployment processes with ArgoCD and a focused approach on reliability and backwards compatibility using GitHub actions.
Handled the rollout, teachings and explanations of the new Application, that was used by major energy companies in the Netherlands.

Magneds

Head of Development | Feb 2017 - Sep 2021

Conducted an internal study and analysis on the existing applications and software, leading into produced documents describing pain points, areas of improvements and alignments between business expectation and output.
Made incremental improvements based off that study that improved many areas. From development environment improvements to code structure and principles.
Implemented a framework built up from PSR, Symfony and Laravel components to get a more standard approach of development, while also support legacy improvement and investment already made.
Engineered a move away from dedicated hardware that ran all projects simultaneously to a distributed cloud setup with variant costs per client.
Organized a split of the software into different projects for the frontend and the backend to homogenise the implementation between native apps and websites.
Introduced, presented and taught Hexagonal architecture throughout all programming discipline teams to meet the unique product requirements.
Ensured the work met the scalable needs of supporting some of the biggest supermarket, petrol and entertainment businesses in Europe.
Guided the team into keep accurate CHANGELOGs, READMEs and internal documents on Confluence described with readable styles and standards.
Trained the development team and surrounding teams into SCRUM methodologies

ClearVox

Lead Developer | Mar 2014 - Feb 2017

Lead architect for infrastructure of the entire new platform. Including the deciding factor in what technologies and implementations to carry on with.
Prepared entire Virtual Machine for current and future developers to get setup quickly.
Build complete Puppet scripts to handle development and live releases.
Prepared the system for large scalable usages, to handle taking over the existing platform in a cheaper and more efficient manner.
Learnt and implemented the full Asterisk telephone stack for a multi tenant system.
Handled the changes required for a better release cycle for the previous platform.
Ensured a 100% assurance in its quality since it was distributed on physical hardware installed at unreachable locations, like Cruise Ships

Pronamic

Backend Developer | Jan 2013 - Mar 2014

Built many WordPress websites with a focus on turnaround for their deadlines
Discussions and implementations of improvements to reduce time on duplicate tasks required for the development team
Learnt and implemented many improvements and features related to the iDeal platform for the main WordPress plugin
Encouraged and helped introduce many of the development team towards Version Control over existing FTP processes.
Built many WordPress plugins, both for common elements between all projects, new community plugins and paid plugins.

Fisk

Backend Developer | Jul 2011 - Jan 2013

Built a church intranet for a collection of churches in the region.
Built a QR store system for Dokkum that had many stores involved and a event weekend in the city centre
Many WordPress websites