- Phone: +64212622224
- Email: chris@giantrobot.co.nz
Professional objective & summary
I seek to build tools which bring people and communities together sustainably.
I'm an experienced and highly effective developer, adept at debugging, architecting and testing code. My strengths are broad awareness, empathy, and effective communication. Team success for me is about lifting capability, nurturing relationships, and eliminating obstructions.
I mentor enthusiastically and enjoy shared process and "working open". I'm confident and active community participant, contributing effectively to multiple open source projects. I see power in stories, and find narrative a powerful tool in building understanding to collaborate.
Data and technology is a powerful force to shape and change the world we live in. I recognise this as a responsibility and take security, privacy of personal, commercial and government data seriously.
I enjoy graphic and construction crafts, and am learning to play guitar.
Strengths & competencies
- Communication, relational understanding
- Human centred focus on technology
- Adept problem solver and debugger
- Experience with a range of tools & systems
- Strong understanding of security & privacy
- Practical delivery to needs
Programming & tools
- Languages: PHP, Javascript, Docker, Bash, Git, Drupal, Symfony
- Tools: Composer, Git, Node & NPM, Make, Lando
- Containerisation: Docker, Kubernetes, Rancher, Cove
- OS layer: Linux & OSX sysadmin & debugging
- Testing: CI/CD, PHPUnit, Behat, other test frameworks
- Workflows: Gitlab CI/CD, Github Actions, workflow automation
- Deployment solutions
- Data migrations & ETL
Presentations
Training and presentations delivered:
- Git one day Workshops 2019, 2021
- HTML and CSS for Content Editors
- Drupal South 2021 Security Panel - Dependency Track
- Talking Drupal: Testing with Behat
Business
- Communications, advocacy & representation
- Copywriting & documentation for end users and developers
- Training and mentoring
Roles
Senior Developer & Open Source Advocate
Catalyst - September 2017 to current day
At Catalyst I enjoy working with larger and more specialised teams. I'm proud to have shifted approaches from one-off, custom code solutions towards preferring reuse of tested, supported components with config-based implementations.
- Build practice clarity in effective use and engagement with open source
- Mentor developers & lead project teams
- Develop new build websites & data platforms for business & government entities
- Feature development & maintenance of existing web projects
- Open source component maintenance, development & coordination
- Implement reusable business acceptance solutions across projects
- Solution design for content, data migration, platform builds
- Implement data migration processes for several government agencies
- Develop deployment & code management solutions
- Establish exemplar solutions for CI/CD & development process
- Web performance and load testing analysis
- Develop CLI apps for data processing & developer tooling
- Develop chatbot plugins for business tooling
- Develop API clients, providers & consumers
Senior Developer
Fuzion Aotearoa - May 2013 to August 2017
- Development & maintenance of proprietary code for Fuzion & clients
- Development, maintenance & coordination of opensource components
- Built out fleet of servers
- Standardising hosting product across many customers
- Established security team & processes for CiviCRM, a project with contributors globally
- Incident response, security management
- Mentored & trained developers
Owner/operator
Giant Robot - April 2003 to May 2013
Built a small internet agency focused on development and provision of web-based software to a broad range of organisations. Operating a business taught me to combine focused development tasks alongside those essential to sustainably growing a business.
Community
Open source maintainer & contributor - 1999 to current
Community and development responsibilities for a broad range of software components. Community development is critical to making collaborative development viable.
See chris.bur.gs/projects for a list of current projects.
Officer & board member
North East Valley Community Development Project - 2019 to 2021
Community development project board member with responsibilities for governance, community relations, meetings, guidance and oversight, and financial responsibilities.
Code club teacher - 2018 to 2019
Mentoring and instruction of primary age students in software and game development.
Dunedin Security Group
Co-ordinator - 2012 to 2019
Organiser of software interest group to cultivate local knowledge and information sharing for computer security topics.
Board of Trustees member & chair
Pine Hill School - 2013 to 2019
Various duties of school BoT member & chair at Pine Hill School, Dunedin. Responsibilities include governance, BBQ operation, board and public meeting chair, community relations and issue resolution, and supporting the principal and staff in their roles.