Simon Elliston Ball: Web, Javascript, and Java Senior Developer

Metage Capital – Hedge fund, internal systems development, risk systems, integrations (2008-)

Through development and use of web based intranets improved access to company data, and simplified trading processes. Created core research tools developed in collaboration with key front office staff, and assisted in developing models for pre- and post- trade analytics.
Developed and maintained third-party integration systems creating more robust links to key suppliers and counterparties, reducing the need for manual intervention and reconciliation. (C#, java, php, sql)
Controlled budget, identifying duplication of data suppliers and saving nearly 30% of the data spend. Through strategic virtualisation of servers, extended lifespan of applications and reduced replacement costs.
Introduced Citrix and VMWare cloud desktops, improving efficiency of computing, and simplifying disaster recovery, remote access, and workflows for international and travelling staff.
Moved the company’s infrastructure, both hardware and software to a more industry standard approach reducing long-term support and recruitment risk.

Carbon 350 – Carbon brokerage, systems and web design and implementation (2009-)

Provided startup consultancy and initial infrastructure and web presence using wordpress to allow the business to take control of their data and public image. Also provided similar services to numerous spin-outs.

Cromwell Business Systems – ERP, R&D, infrastructure, data and web development (2005-2008)

Rebuilt the entire company data and networking infrastructure following the destruction of our data-centres in the Buncefield oil disaster. Designed and implemented multiple location resilient architecture following this in three separate cities, handling terrabyte scale databases.
Headed research and development, creating and evaluating new products, reducing costs through use of open source and in-house developed technologies and improving customer retention.
Designed and implemented a Voice-over-IP solution significantly reducing internal costs and creating an additional customer product offering. Also created email and communications products which reduced operating costs and improved customer retention. Trained support staff to run products.
Modernised service offering on top of legacy platform.
Managed web development team to create household name high-traffic transactional websites including richersounds.co.uk, hughesdirect.co.uk and apollo2000.co.uk.
Revamped the web framework to improve scalability, reduce development and training costs.

Refhost – Web development, support and modernisation (2004-2005)

Designed an efficient limited tree algorithm for management of a multi-level marketing programme, replacing a long running over-night process with a real-time system. Also added a high performance dynamic graphic display of the tree. Co-developed and supported a management control panel for thousands of hosting clients.

Occasional Photography – Co-Founder, e-Commerce, photography and image processing

Founded a seasonal photography business, and created an e-Commerce platform to market individual photographs. Handled all elements of marketing, image processing and payments.
Successfully handled a throughput of over 35,000 photographs taken by six photographers, curated, edited and processed in a two week season, through development of a grid-computing image processing engine and efficient caching. Handled thousands of web hits and print orders on very limited budget.

DDI – startup with innovative retail technology

Developed retail concept using C, C++ and 3D graphics engines, and assisted senior executives in developing marketing and business plans.
Collaborated effectively with developers and others in three different states, and three different countries.

Education

Cambridge – MA History 2:1 (1998-2001)

Open University – BA Mathematics and Statistics (current)

Haileybury College: S-level; English (1), History (1). A-level; Maths (A), English (A), French (A), History (B), General Studies (A). AO-levels; Maths (A), French (A). GCSE; 7A* 3A.

Programming Skills

Over the years, I have worked with a large number of languages and libraries. My principal tools are listed here:-

Java (Spring 3.0, Web Flow, Roo, J2EE, Hibernate, Maven, eclipse, JUnit, Jenkins),
Javascript (AJAX, JQuery, Node, ExtJS, SproutCore, Backbone, etc.)
Ruby (and Rails), PHP (Zend, Cake, wordpress, mediawiki, LAMP etc)
SQL (MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server, HSQLDB)
C# (.NET, Razor, ASP.NET MVC)
HTML5, Flex (ActionScript)
XML, XSLT
Source control (SVN, Mercurial, Git)
Numerous other libraries and technologies (Lucene, Solr, micro-formats, REST)
Linux (Redhat Enterprise, Ubuntu, Debian), Windows (Server 2008 administration), Virtualisation (Xen, VMWare, Virtual Box, KVM)

Other achievements and interests

Winner of best healthcare application, Cambridge Startup Weekend 2011.

Learning R and Python, focusing on natural language processing.

Consultant developer on numerous websites for small businesses, charity events, and friends, as well as for marketing agencies. This includes http://www.badenochandclark.com (Cake PHP)