Michael P. Jones
Current Status
Consulting at Nordic Semiconductor.
Bio
I have years of experience leading teams, creating software and developing web applications. I am a passionate developer with a love of programming languages.
I am enthusiastic about team organisation, structuring meetings, group culture, 1-on-1s and retrospectives.
Career
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Consulting, Nordic Semiconductor
June 2021 - Present
Developing a set of user-friendly Visual Studio Code extensions to facilitate working with Nordic Semiconductor's chips and embedded devices.
Agile development in a small team interacting with larger ecosystem of tools.
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Senior Software Engineer, Raytheon
September 2020 - June 2021
Senior member of a cross-functional team providing cloud-based web development services to clients. Involved in serverless deployments and single page applications using the Node.js ecosystem, React & Typescript.
Completed three separate cloud certifications: AWS Certified Developer Associate, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner & Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
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Senior Engineer & Team Lead, Zaptic
April 2015 - January 2020
Led of team of 4 developers, coordinating work and providing support, 1-on-1s, learning opportunities and guidance. Key contributor to improving company culture around meetings, documentation and tooling.
Responsible for front end & back end work on a process execution platform in a start up environment. Managing an Elm, Typescript & Postgres stack with exposure to user interfaces, server side development, database interactions and AWS infrastructure.
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Web Developer
October 2013 - April 2015
Sole developer of tangotimetable.com. Designing and implementing a Django-based Python web application for building community calendars. Front end created with React.js & Elm. Responsible for the full stack from Linode hosting with Postgres & Apache on Ubuntu Server with Docker containers to the application code and front end design. Newer functionality has been added with Elixir & Phoenix.
Web Developer at Radius Payment Solutions. 4 month contract helping to launch a new initiative around their vehicle telemetry product. Providing a web dashboard for analytics and configuration written with Django and communicating with 3rd party telemetry APIs.
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Software Developer & Team Lead, Weta Digital
September 2010 - October 2013
Responsible for leading a team to design and create a natural tree growth system for use in the Peter Jackson Hobbit films. Coordinating with department leads and artists over features, bugs and release schedules.
Application and tool development in C++ and Python in a world leading visual effects studio. Extensive use of the Autodesk Maya C++ SDK. Qt/Python interface development to improve the artists' workflow.
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Research & Development Technical Director, Animal Logic
February 2010 - August 2010
Supported effects team artists on animated feature including C++ rendering tools, particle system visualisation and implementing a command line navigation and shortcut system in Python which was adopted company wide.
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Research & Development Programmer, Double Negative
October 2007 - January 2010
Responsible for maintaining and extending the proprietary Maya-Renderman interface. Worked closely with different teams, implementing features to enhance the workflow and quality of the production. Conceived and implemented development and pipeline tools with database support, commandline access and web interfaces. Planned and delivered courses on Python programming and use of the shell for artists in the company.
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Technical Director, Framestore
November 2006 - October 2007
Visual effects and pipelining on Oscar & Bafta winning film The Golden Compass. Created a C++ spring-based fat dynamics system for the digital bear characters. Involved interacting with the users, providing support and extending the application based on feedback.
Personal Development
January 2020 - September 2020
Set up & run contact-stack.com as an independent business and end-to-end learning opportunity. Designed, implemented & marketed the full product. Created with Elixir, Phoenix, Postgres & Stripe integration. Developing tangotimetable.com and other projects. Interested in opportunties to support teams in a technical and organisational manner.
Education
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National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth
2005 - 2006
Distinction - MSc Computer Animation. Masters Project: Evolving Behavioural Animations using Genetic Programming.
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Lincoln College, University of Oxford
2002 - 2005
1st Class Physics Degree (BA) - Top Student in the BA class. Recipient of Scott's Prize for Best Performance at BA and Stansbie Prize for achievement at finals.
Certifications
- 2020-10-29 - AWS Certified Developer Associate
- 2020-09-24 - AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- 2020-09-30 - Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
Talks
- 2021-02-02 - Git Internals @ Raytheon
- 2020-11-03 - Getting Started with Elm @ Raytheon
- 2018-03-19 - Getting Started with Elm @ Lambda Lounge
- 2015-06-15 - Introduction to Rust @ Lambda Lounge
- 2015-02-16 - React from a Functional Perspective @ Lambda Lounge
- 2014-12-05 - Programming in Visual Effects @ University of Bolton
- 2014-10-18 - Programming in Visual Effects @ BarCamp Manchester
Posts
- 2021-04-03 - On Git Commit Messages
- 2020-04-29 - Adding a custom watcher to Phoenix
- 2020-03-17 - Mixing Gleam & Elixir
- 2020-03-17 - Introducing Dialyzer & type-specs to an Elixir Project
- 2018-02-16 - Moving from elm-validate to elm-verify
- 2017-12-08 - Right clicks & Elm
- 2017-10-24 - Django To Phoenix (6 part series)
Videos
- 2020-08-05 - Building a Pixel Editor in Rust & WebAssembly (and Javascript)
- 2020-07-22 - Introduction to writing an Elm app - Hangman Game
- 2020-06-27 - Exploring Gitk
Profiles
Websites
Contact Stack
Stay in touch with your friends through regular reminders over time frames that you control. Built with Elixir & Phoenix.
Dance Timetable Network
Community calendaring websites built with Django & React.
Open Source
Sphinx
Breathe
A Doxygen-Sphinx bridge.
An extension to reStructuredText and Sphinx which is able to read and format the contents of Doxygen XML files. It extends Sphinx's support for displaying language & API documentation to all the languages support by Doxygen. Development has a strong emphasis on supporting C++.
Language: Python
Sphinx to Github
Convert Sphinx output for use with Github pages
A Sphinx extension and command line tool that prepares the output of Sphinx to be suitable for use with Github pages.
Language: Python