Gerard Ward | Software Engineer

Gerard Ward

Technical Skills

Node.js

Scala

Java

Kotlin

Swift

AWS

Python

React

HTML/CSS

Git

Education

University of Glasgow
Sep 2014 - Jun 2019

MA Computing Science and French,
Upper Second Class Honours (2:1)

Projects

BBC WeatherVane: github.com/gerardward3/WeatherVane

Side project completed during BBC Software Engineering Graduate Scheme rotation with News and Weather Apps team. Android app with widget that uses BBC Weather API data to animate a weathervane.

Emulating Glasgow's First Computer: github.com/gerardward3/level4-project

Final year university project for Computing Science dissertation. Web emulator of the DEUCE - Glasgow's first computer. Received A5 grade for dissertation + project.

Awards

University of Glasgow
Mary G. Ross Prize, 2015

Software Engineer

Work Experience

BBC

BBC Home: Data Capabilities | Jun 2021 - Present | Glasgow, Scotland

Developed backend features of BBC Homepage to provide more personalised content to signed in users.
Used AWS AppSync to mantain GraphQL APIs.
Deployed cloud infrastructure using AWS CDK to write AWS CloudFormation templates.

BBC Sounds: Radio & Music Services | Mar 2021 - Jun 2021 | Glasgow, Scotland

Developed and maintained APIs used for BBC Sounds web and mobile applications.
Aided in migration of monitoring and alerting systems to AWS.
Assisted in creation of load test tool to improve testing of Sounds popularity services workflow.

BBC News and Weather Apps | Sep 2020 - Feb 2021 | Glasgow, Scotland

Rewrote parts of BBC Weather app for iOS 14+ using SwiftUI framework.
Created features of small and medium BBC Weather app widgets for iOS 14+ devices.
Improved accessibility features and split screen support of BBC Weather app for iOS.

BBC Voice and AI | Mar 2020 - Aug 2020 | Glasgow, Scotland

Increased routing accuracy of NLU model for Beeb voice assistant.
Added support for extracting genre entities from music and podcast related requests to Beeb.
Optimised tests in Jenkins pipeline for publishing Beeb NLU model.

BBC Archive Services | Sep 2019 - Feb 2020 | Glasgow, Scotland

Helped with integration of BBC Login SSO functionality into BBC Archive Search.
Implemented frontend features of BBC Archive Status tool.
Hosted retrospectives and demonstrated work at team demos.

Squarepoint Capital

Technology Internship | Jun 2018 - Aug 2018 | New York, NY, USA

Scripted tool to set up local sandbox development environment of trading system.
Debugged features of large C++ codebase for trading system.
Organised tasks using version control and issue tracking software.

Marseille Etudes Meetings

Market Research Internship | Sep 2016 - Jun 2017 | Marseille, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Designed new version of company website.
Evaluated qualitative and quantitative data to streamline recruitment process for focus groups.
Provided translation services for English-speaking clients.