Ben Naylor
Software Engineer, Power Nerd, Enthusiast about Enthusiasts
+31 6 1427 2332
nayben@gmail.com

Introduction

Hoi πŸ‘‹! I'm Ben!

Software Engineer and Dev ex enthusiast by day, Rustacean πŸ¦€ hacker by night.

I like writing code, but I like optimizing developer work flows even more. I have a firm belief that a productive engineer has the right tools for the job, and those tools should help them to do the things they are paid to do. I also happen to enjoy giving back to the open source realm.

I've worked on code bases of varying sizes and complexities, in the breadth of intertwined complex business logic with many compounding state machines, all the way to highly available micro services handling in the realms of 1000req/s. I always come back to finding ways to optimize work flows, and bringing engineers together in fun, new and creative ways to solve problems challenges.

I am:

  • Born in New Zealand πŸ‡³πŸ‡Ώ
  • An EU permanent resident in The Netherlands πŸ‡³πŸ‡±
  • Open source enthusiast πŸ¦„
  • Knowledge and technology sponge 🧽
  • A pragmatist at heart πŸ’
  • Active team member, needing a collaborative environment to be the most effective πŸ’Ή

πŸ‘‡You'll find more about the things I've done and do below

Experience

The main technologies that I use daily (since 2020) include (but aren't limited to): Ruby, Ruby on Rails, GoLang, Kubernetes, Docker/Containers, Tilt, Nginx, GCP... and likely more.

My contributions to the open source realm are largely in Rust as those projects generally are targeting speed and memory optimizations.

I feel at home in both Typed and Untyped code bases - prefering typed if and when available.

Prior to 2020, I was writing code and developing on the Salesforce.com ecosystem for the better part of 8 years - 6 of which as a full time software engineer. I moved on from Salesforce development due to the strict structure enforced by working in that ecosystem, wanting to use more modern and exciting technologies. The main other technologies I was investing in at that time was Serverless Architecture, specifically AWS provided.

Apart form the usual soft skills, I regularly:

  • Organise company internal tech talks, tech blogs etc
  • Present technical talks internally to the company
  • Present technical talks external to the company - e.g. meetups, mostly in Rust
  • Find ways to generate developer events such as Hackathons, etc
  • Activley promote and encourage remote/hybrid communication - mainly through the means of [new] slack channels, organising and engaging with others in social events, and always hopping on calls to pair with people to solve issues

Work History

Senior Software Engineer

Catawiki
Amsterdam, NL β€” Jul '20 β†’ Present β€” 3 years 7 months and counting

Some of the core business orientated highlights:

  • From ideation to implementation, arranged and organised a group of developers and platform engineers to migrate from legacy container images to new image structure and format. Reduced custom designs to industry best practices, and derisked a 3 year old security concern
  • Migrated 17 ccTLDs to a singular locale aware domain, for 30+ microservices in a 3 phase roll out for a 10 year old application without downtime
  • Designed and implemented changes to an automation which resulted in ~2 million euro a year worth of cost savings
  • Produced, organised and promoted many new artefact and their structures (documentation, automations, etc) in a landscape where such artefacts were not commonplace
  • Spotted the need -> Organised and developed Kubernetes Base training to bring developer skills up to a base standard for the company

I also like to create a positive developer culture, so there's a bunch of these:

  • Formed groups of ICs to brainstorm and develop the next generation of Developer Experience for the company
  • Contributed, evolved and actively promoted Internal Tech Talks, External Tech Blog, and an Internal Tech Unconference
  • Created a fireside chat format with all of CXX and Extended management when the company shifted to remote working to bring out the human side of management

Senior Developer/Code Juggler

Guidion
Amsterdam, NL β€” Dec '17 β†’ Jun '20 β€” 2 years 6 months

I originally started working with Guidion whilst I was consulting at Nextview around March '17.

Largest achievements:

  • Led the technical implementation of a migration from a 10 yr old system to a new platform.
  • Built a reliable Financial Integration that in one year processed €30+ million through 900,000+ transactions.
  • Created and implemented developer tools in a platform where it wasn’t common, including: Semver, linting, test automation, etc. Was recognised by the host platform provider.
  • Succeeded in using bleeding edge technology, whilst contributing back to the community, encouraging other developers to move towards modern technology and modern toolsets.

Environment:

  • Created and set a standard for tight team and business collaboration through clear presentations in understandable terms for all parties.
  • Setup a documentation standard for consistent System documentation.
  • ~800 userbase dealing with complex app business logic. Specifically materials and product dependencies, completion gates, complex validations etc.
  • Most senior dev on staff. Accountable for overall software, system, and object architecture, however preferred to delegate and rotate responsibility to ensure everyone was engaged.

Technical Architect

Nextview
Amsterdam, NL β€” Nov '16 β†’ Dec '17 β€” 1 year 1 month

Nextview (formerly Beethree) was my first job in The Netherlands. Nextview is a Salesforce consultancy, where I worked on varying clients, including Guidion for the better part of 8 months.

I participated in the full spectrum of consultancy activities from presales through to development and support. I was relied on for my depth and knowledge of Salesforce, along with my systems architecture knowledge to bring quality implementations for the clients I worked on.

My approach to requirements was to always ask for the "Why" to ensure I was building the right thing that would actually solve the business problem. I engaged with decision makers to ensure that we were working together.

This is where I started heavily using and implementing SFDX, along with CI/CD to ensure that our team was as productive as possible.

Senior Technical Consultant

Fronde
Auckland, NZ β€” Aug '14 β†’ Oct '16 β€” 2 years 2 months

Lead CRM Developer

Vodafone
Auckland, NZ β€” Nov '12 β†’ Aug '14 β€” 1 year 9 months

CRM Developer

Localist
Auckland, NZ β€” Apr '12 β†’ Nov '11 β€” -1 year -5 month

Various

Spark
Auckland, NZ β€” Feb '07 β†’ Nov '12 β€” 5 years 9 months

Various roles over 5 years including Reporting Analyst, Business Improvement Manager, and Business Analyst. More details can be provided on request.

The Extras

🀞The above gave most of the answers. If you're here, you want to know more.

Here's some things that make me most productive:

  • Delivering value regularly (production at least every couple of days)
  • Having a peer(s) at the same technical level as me (I need some technical challenges)
  • Having a team that is proactively engaging and looking for things to do
  • Having good developer tooling - or at least letting me fix this for everyone
  • Having an open team environment, we are here to solve the same problems
  • Flat heirarchy - we're all flesh and bones

Also, in my free time I like to contribute back in the OSS space. My main focus is towards Artichoke - Building a Ruby interpreter in Rust πŸ¦€.

Any present projects I'm working on can generally be found on my Github. I'm probably playing with something simulation and/or data related.

And here's some presentations/talks I've done in recent times:

This site was built using GatsbyJS and is hosted on Github Pages.

Contact

For any enquiries, please feel free to contact me through any of the following mediums: