- Name:
- Colin Pinkney
- Current status:
- Working as a Software Developer in sunny Florida.
- US Permanent Resident Card holder, able to work in US
Profile
Dedicated and diligent Software Developer with 20+ years of professional programming experience mostly in .Net and SQL Server, working at companies ranging from 20,000+ employees down to less than 100, including manufacturing, telecommunications, and tourism industries. Process improvement in business critical applications has played a central role in my career, requiring deep knowledge of business practices. I am always eager to help improve productivity, enhance capabilities, and enable new opportunities through new and improved automation.
Summary of higher education
| Place | Qualifications | Started | Finished |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Warwick Coventry, West Midlands, England |
BSc with Honours (Computer Science - 2.1) | 1997 | 2001 |
Current Role - Software Developer - Diamond Tours, Inc. - April 2013 to Present
My current role is working as a Software Developer in a small IT department at Diamond Tours, Inc., which specializes in group motor coach travel to 30+ destinations around the US and Canada. I design, develop, maintain and support completely bespoke sales, operations, accounting, and marketing systems that improve efficiency and accuracy of all departments. Being in a small IT department I have also assisted in the implementation and maintenance of various IT systems, including setting up application environments.
Previous Role - Lead Application Developer – Arqiva (2000+ Employees) – Jul 2005 to Mar 2013
My previous role was a Lead Applications Developer in the IT division at Arqiva (formerly NGW), which performs asset and risk management for thousands of cell towers and radio and TV broadcast sites. For the past 4+ years I have worked remotely from the US as a contract developer performing essentially the same role as the previous 3+ years when I was a permanent employee at Arqiva. This role has included:
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Working with a small team that develops and supports all of the company's in-house, business critical applications, which are mainly written in classic ASP, VB 6 and ASP.Net/VB.Net 2.0 and use Oracle for the database backend.
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Liaising with business analysts to develop requirements, coordinating the rest of development both in a 'waterfall' process and more recently using Agile Scrum methodology, architecting systems, and writing technical documentation including UML.
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Designed and developed an ASP.Net framework that allows us to quickly and reliably create enterprise websites with a consistent look and feel, publish from Dev to QA to Production environments and manage user security using a series of utility web applications. These extra utility web applications were developed by a team of contractors whose work I supervised.
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Using the framework above we have implemented several non-trivial, high profile business applications on time and to specification under my technical direction and involvement. In some cases we have estimated that the framework reduced our development effort by more than 50%.
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One web application in particular that was implemented in 1 month with this framework by myself and 2 other contractors under my technical supervision now supports cost recovery of nearly £3 million every year. This application has to be supported 24/7 365 days a year and I was recently involved in a successful program to enhance the resiliency of this service, which was aided by the fact that the framework was designed to work with load balanced servers from the start.
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Promoted to Lead Developer role in recognition of undertaking more senior tasks such as writing software development policies, deputizing for the team leader, interviewing permanent and contract candidates for new roles on the team, training other developers, and directing and reviewing code.
First Full Role - Software Engineer - Marconi (20,000+ employees) - Sep 2001 to Jul 2005
A Software Engineer within the Marconi New Product Introduction group, which dealt with global manufacturing processes. Work included:
- Development of MS VB programs and ASP scripts that interface with MS SQL Server for product testing, automated manufacture, data manipulation and reporting applications.
- Development of product test drivers and example test programs in MS Visual C++
- Full development lifecycle process for most projects with reviewed documentation (includes analysis, design & implementation, testing, trials, user documentation, and sign off)
- General factory PC, network and database administration tasks.
- Last project was to design and implement a global traceability solution, using SAP R3, for warranty and recall purposes, to save Marconi over £1 million per year.
Work Experience Summary
| Company | Job Title | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond Tours, Inc. | Software Developer | April 2013 | Present |
| Arqiva (Formerly National Grid Wireless) Warwick, England |
Lead Application Developer | July 2005 | March 2013 |
| Marconi Communications Ltd. Coventry, England |
Software Engineer | September 2001 | July 2005 |
| Marconi Communications Ltd. Coventry, England |
Degree Sponsored Student Trainee during a year out (Trainee tools development engineer) |
August 1999 | September 2000 |
| N/A | Freelance Programmer during college | July 1997 | September 1997 |
Special Skills/Knowledge
Programming Languages
- Microsoft ASP.Net/VB.Net - 16 years - Business critical enterprise website/application development using SQL Service and Oracle databases.
- C# - 8 years
- SQL - 20 years - MS SQL Server (12 years) and Oracle (8 years)
- ASP - 9 years - SQL Server & Oracle interfacing
- Javascript - 20 years
- Microsoft Visual Basic - 11 years+ - SQL Server/Oracle interfacing, product flash programming and label printing
- Microsoft Visual C++ - 3 years - Working on product drivers and SQL Server interfacing
- UNIX Shell Scripting - 3 years+ - General scripting (mainly in Bash)
- Java - 2 years - Mainly distributed XML system development
- ANSI C/C++ (Using QT libraries) - 1 year - Embedded Linux development
- Borland Delphi - 1 year - Writing MS Windows utilities
- AWK, Standard Pascal, Synchronised Resources, Moscow ML, Prolog, BASIC, 68008 Assembler -
Other Computer Skills/Knowledge
- HTML (+CSS), SGML, & XML - 20+ years - Commercial documentation, web design, & web services
- Microsoft SQL Server - 12 years - Database development & some administration. Stored procedures, triggers, schema creation, etc.
- Microsoft Windows & Linux - 16 years - PC & network administration
- Subversion (Sourcecode control) - 14 years - Administration & development
- Sourcesafe - 11 years - Administration & development
- Oracle - 7 years+ - Database development, including Packages/Stored Procedures, triggers, schema creation, etc.
- ActiveX/COM - 5 years - Various applications
- Clearcase (Sourcecode control) - - Administration
Courses attended while in employment
| Course | Company | Date |
|---|---|---|
| M2544 - Advanced Web Application Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 | QA-IQ/Microsoft | March 2008 |
| M2524 - Developing XML Web Services Using Microsoft ASP.Net | QA-IQ/Microsoft | March 2008 |
| Increasing Assertiveness & Influencing Others | Marconi Communications Ltd. | May 2002 |
| 'Management For Success' Awareness | Marconi Communications Ltd. | October 1999 |
Conferences Attended
| Conference | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|
| XML Europe 2000 | Palais de Congres, Paris | 12th-16th June 2000 |
Personal Interests & Activities
My Christian faith is very important to me, so I am often involved with activities at my church and have previously been responsible for their websites and e-mail and have operated some of the church's audio/visual equipment and helped run the youth group. Before kids, my wife and I enjoyed cycling, Scuba Diving, playing softball and exercising our dog and I wrote several Pebble Smartwatch applications. Now I try and fit learning the piano around family commitments. I also have designed websites and was involved with getting various Bluetooth Compact Flash cards working with the Sharp Zaurus line of Linux PDAs way back when.
General Skills
Very quick to learn - Self-motivated - Great attention to detail - Can work in a team or on own - Good communication
Can work with tight deadlines - Can work equally well with rapid turnover of projects or long-term projects.