Natacha Tomkinson

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Senior Software Engineer,  Hurdle

January 2022 —  Present   3 years 5 months

• Delivered rapid Proof of Concepts and MVPs under tight commercial deadlines in a start-up setting, enabling client demos and unlocking early business opportunities.
• Refactored a legacy PHP Laravel monolith by migrating key functionality to Node.js event-driven microservices, improving scalability and performance.
• Collaborated with internal teams and external partners to gather requirements and deliver user-focused features aligned with business goals.
• Designed and implemented a secure partner authentication microservice using JWT within the AWS ecosystem, enhancing integration and security.
• Built AWS Glue jobs to safely mirror production data in a sandbox environment, excluding sensitive data to support compliant and realistic testing.
• Developed robust internal and external user interfaces using Node.js and React.js, improving user experience and reducing manual effort.
• Led the front-end chapter, championing best practices, facilitating collaboration, and elevating code quality across the team.
• Organised regular knowledge-sharing sessions to support continuous learning and improve team-wide development standards.
• Guided the adoption of front-end best practices including component reuse, testing standards, and accessibility improvements.
• Contributed to shared UI libraries and design systems, streamlining development and ensuring visual consistency across products.
• Provisioned infrastructure using Terraform and the Serverless Framework, improving deployment reliability and infrastructure scalability.
• Designed and documented APIs using best practices to improve maintainability and developer experience.
• Applied OWASP guidelines and the principle of least privilege to strengthen security posture and reduce risks.
• Mentored, coached, and participated in hiring efforts to grow a diverse, collaborative engineering team.
• Practised Test-Driven Development (TDD) to ensure robust, reliable code with strong test coverage.
• Authored and maintained technical documentation including READMEs, handbooks, and Architecture Decision Records to support onboarding and maintain project clarity.
• Implemented CI/CD pipelines with Buddy to automate testing and deployment workflows, accelerating delivery.
• Integrated AI tools such as Cursor and ChatGPT to boost productivity while maintaining a focus on secure usage.
• Created Slack alerts triggered by Datadog log patterns to proactively notify the team of critical application issues, improving incident response times and system reliability.
• Explored Go through mob programming during 10% time, expanding language fluency and team knowledge.

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Senior Full Stack Engineer,  Kano Computing

September 2021 —  December 2021    3 months

• Built a new platform as the sole developer to support content delivery for the StemPlayer, laying the foundation for future scalability.
• Quickly adapted to evolving project requirements and strategic shifts, making the decision to transition out as the project direction changed significantly.

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Senior Software Developer,  University of York

August 2019 —  August 2021   2 years

• Supported an organisation-wide migration to AWS, and React.js / Node.js, enhancing scalability and maintainability.
• Collaborated closely with internal stakeholders to accurately scope requirements and deliver user-focused features on time.
• Paired with and mentored team members, fostering knowledge sharing and professional growth within the team.
• Participated in hiring efforts to grow a diverse, collaborative engineering team.
• Developed both web and mobile applications, ensuring responsive design and robust functionality.
• Led the creation of a shared React.js UI component library using Storybook, improving consistency, accessibility and reducing time to production
• Integrated university systems with external APIs to enable seamless data exchange and improved service interoperability.
• Utilised AWS services including Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and SQS to build scalable, event-driven solutions.
• Implemented event-driven architecture to improve system responsiveness and fault tolerance.
• Set up and maintained CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins to automate testing and deployment, reducing release times.

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Full-stack Developer,  Forward Financing

February 2018 —  August 2019   1 year 6 months

• Built technically performant apps for clients, focusing on both front-end and back-end development
• Refactored auto-decline logic to better filter high-risk deals, improving auto-declining capacity by 20%
• Built shared React.js and TypeScript libraries to standardise the user interface and internal logic, boosting code reuse and maintainability while reducing inconsistencies
• Worked with a range of technologies including Elixir, Phoenix, PHP, Ruby, Rails, React.js, Sass, CSS, and Node.js
• Leveraged bundling tools such as Rollup and Webpack to optimise front-end performance, by reducing package size

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Web and Mobile developer,  WEARVR LLC

August 2016 —  February 2018   1 year 6 months

• Developed and maintained a full-stack VR game platform, handling both front-end and back-end development to ensure seamless user experiences and robust system performance
• Implemented and maintained automated testing to ensure code quality and reliability throughout the development lifecycle
• Set-up and maintained CI/CD pipelines using TeamCity
• Worked with Ruby on Rails, SQL databases, CSS, JavaScript, React.js, react-native, rspec, Mocha, Chai, and Jasmine

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Presales Engineer,  Amplience

May 2016 —  August 2016    3 months

• Examined client requirements and provided feasibility estimates
• Developed proof of concept solutions
• Performed client-facing demos using JavaScript

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Systems Analyst,  Amplience

March 2015 —  April 2016   1 year 1 month

• Gathered requirements and helped clients implement new solutions
• Created XML metadata schemas

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Project Manager,  ChannelAdvisor

July 2013 —  March 2015   1 year 8 months

• Trained clients on SAAS solution
• Used regular expressions, FTP, and advanced Excel functions
• Implemented light VBA scripting

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Computer Science, MSc

2020  —  2023   3 years 3 months

University of York

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English teaching, C.A.P.E.S. (≈P.G.D.E.)

2006  —  2007   1 year

Université Jean Moulin (Lyon III)

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English Language, Civilisation and Literature, Master 1

2005  —  2006   1 year

Université Jean Moulin (Lyon III)

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English Language, Civilisation and Literature, BA

2004  —  2005   1 year

Université Stendhal (Grenoble III)