Hello. I'm Brett.
Engineering manager \ Solutions designer \ full stack developer.
Hard working family man with a passion for the ocean, sport, technology and pop sci.
22 years within Financial Services industry, 19 years in IT. I have developer roots, ultimtately leading into software design and platform architecture, initially designing and implementing intranet and back office solutions while in later years designing B2B and B2C greenfield platforms. Having worked on the many flavours and versions of the MS and AWS stacks over the years, mainly implmenting customising, and migrating MS platform technologies, my passion for these stacks still hasn't diminished, aspecially with the advent of all the next gen products and technologies now coming through (exciting times ahead). I have spent a large portion of my career largely leading teams of developers and infrastructure engineers looking after various enterpise platforms and desiging integrated enterprise and cutsomer facing solutions. I consider myself an experienced solutions designer \ engineering manager with strong technical and analytical skills.
Having worked within the technolgy industry for what is now half of my life I have seen firsthand the breakneck pace at which science and technology has advanced. In general I believe science and technology will only make a positive difference for all. It's this which motivates my desire to stay at the forefront, learn and understand the cabapabilities of these new and emerging technologies, and contribute in an innovative and positive manner whereever the opportunity presents itself. I have always held a strong work ethic, something that was instilled into me by my father, and something I wish to demonstrate throughout my career. I have always held the belief that the only person who can really help you is yourself. Experienced in being thrown in the deep end. I love the challenges it presents and self initiative needed to see them through. Whilst I consider myself self-sufficient, I do enjoy being part of team and working collaboratively with other like minded humans. Its clear to me the power of collective knowledge has over silo'd skilled sets when embarking on any endeavour. As a developer you find yourself leaning on the open source community quite a lot and so where possible I like to give back by contributing fixes and enhanncements via PR's to some popular open source projects.
Raised in a coastal town south of Sydney I grew up with a love of surfing, rugby, skating, snowboading and skylarking around with my mates. I now call a different coastal town home ... Woonona (further south again). It's like my home town was 20 years ago. I have traded my mates up for a family and ... its awesome. I love hanging out with my kids and watching them experience the same pleasures of life I did when I was growing up. I still enjoy the same interests I had 20 years ago and now get to share them with family. I mainly spend my weekends curbing my competiveness on the sidleine whilst watching my kids play sport, and trying to find a mate who has Fox Sports so that I can watch my beloved Cronulla Shark's play on TV. If i'm lucky i'll also squeeze a surf in :). I enjoy watching movies and reading pop-sci articles. I don't mind trying my hand at home brewing, and when that fails (sometimes spectacularly) ... my favourite commercial beers are Little Creatures, Wild Yak, Kirin and White Rabbit. I also enjoy a good whiskey.
Key Competencies
Experience in delivering software and platforms across a broad range of architectures such as Client\Server, Single Tier, Multi Tier \ Distributed Systems, Mult-Threaded, SOA, MicroServices.
Strong analytical skills with emphasis on the lower detail requirement and careful consideration of constraints whilst always ensuring the underlying objectives are met.
Indepth knowledge of software design methodologies, patterns and principles such as Clean Architecture, OOP, Functional Programming, CQRS, DI (IoC), SOLID and more.
From inception through analysis and sizing, deisgn and build, implementation and ongoing operational models. Delivery on all phases of the poject life cycle is critical. It's also important to choose a life cycle methodology that suits. Horses for courses as they say.
Whether the lead on a project or leading a team, effective and open collaboration is essential to the success of any endeavour. Ensuring all team members understand your team strategy or project objectives is crucial to good outcomes. In my experience establishing an inclusive positive culture also helps drive motivation and boost morale.
Having spent years designing solutions within the enterprise space your domain knowledge tends to broaden quite signifcantly. Today's designers must have sufficent cross domain knowledge to key decisions that wont later come back to bite. Domain knowledge that goes beyond software design principles such as networking, storage, perimeter security, regulatory constraints, information architecture and cloud computing are all nessercary in order to provide stable, secure and robust solutions.
AspNetCore, EntityFrameworkCore, Middleware and Filters, DotNet Package Manager, C#, VB, F#, IdentityServer, AutoFac and thousands of other DotNet packages
Express, Webpack bundling and optimisation, TSNode, NPM and have incorporate a multitude of libraries along the way.
Proficient in CSS and ECMA5 and ES6 JavaScript, TypeScript and many of the popular open source frameworks. Webpack, Gulp, Bootstrap, JQuery, Angular2+, KnockoutJS, DataTables ... and dozens more.
SQL Server and Postgre Instance Design and Implementations, Relational Schema Design. Schema Migration Management, T-SQL and P-SQL scriptings and query optimisations. Experience designing ETL processes acros broad range of data analytical software platforms.
Proficient with Azure cloud platform. Adavanced on AWS platform. Experience using and integrating on prem infrastructure with the various SaaS and PaaS products. Have used a variety of cloud orhestration frameworks (e.g. Serverless, CloudFormation ... etc)
Over 10 years of SharePoint experience (platform implementations, migrations, development and admin)
Dabbled in the concepts behind Xamarin and the MONO runtime. Have experimented developing both productivity apps and MONOGame apps taregting all 3 majore platforms.
Windows Desktop and Server OS's and management tools, Linux derivative OS's and asscoiated tooling and components.
Bash, Windows, .Net Console, PowerShell scripting, Node scripting and more.
Experience designing and hosting cloud infrastructure components using AWS IaaS management tools and API's and developing apps and scripts hosted on this cloud platform.
Enterprise and customer facing solutions using a variety of authentication protocols, providers and IdP's ... Windows, LDAP, FBA, IdentityServer4, OpenID, all OAuth2 auth flows, Claims, ADFS, AzureAD ... etc.
Knowledge of industry specifications and architecture princples as published by leading industry organisations (e.g. WW3 and their OAuth spec).
Versions 2003 -> 2019
Great lightweight editor.
WebPack FTW
Some notable projects over the years ...
An angular2+ application tthat provides both an assessor user experience and an applicant user experience backed by the Relie Assessments web API. The application is designed to guide brokers\lenders through the process of assessing a single or joint applicants ability to service a loan amount they are applying for. This web app focuses on an applicants transaction history where all transactions are intelligently categorised by the Relie Assessments platform and any data insights found are surfaced through the interface allowing the broker or lender to make informed decisions around whether or not adjustments are required in order to determine an applicants realistic financial position. All aspects of this web app can be themed and\or white labelled which have made it attractive to many broker and lending organisations.
A highly configurable API platform that provides functionality around all possible assessment operations. Manages all aspects of the assessment process with behaviours that can be configured depending on client needs. Responsible for modelling all asssesment data (categorised transactions + manual adjustments + data insights). Provides a set of API's that service a variety of different Opica web applications and services. Provides a set of segregated API's that are used specifcially for 3rd party client integrations. It tracks the entire lifecycle of an assessment and its applicants and can trigger of a variety actions off the back of certain events (i.e. assessement status changes, report generation events .. etc).
A data normalisation tier and intergration layer. An important part of the Relie eco system which brokers integration between 3rd party services via a configurable connectors. This extensible system allows us to connect to several different banking data providers and normalizes the data so that it can be consumed by downstream systems in a consistent manner. Direct integrations to this platform is also an option for Opica clients for instances where they justw ant access to the normalized data without all the extra Relie Assessments functionality.
A collection of systems that forms a set of centralized Authentication and Identity Management services. The system enables SSO access to all of our systems and environments. It consists of an Authentication Server (STS server), an API server and an administrative application (used for managing OAuth2 clients, Users and External IdPs for federated logins). It provides a number options for implementing federated logins using external IdPs that support either the SAML2 or OpenID protocols.
A platform that provides data analytics and data transformation services. Primarily responsible for the region based categorisation of banking transactions it also provides additional services around detection of key data points in data using python data analysis libraries.
A spin-off product that uses same Relie Assessments platform in manner which is tailored towards assessing the prospective Rental applicants.
An app written specifically for BT's customer relations consultants that provided them with personalised offers for customers. Potential offers per customer were predetermine in terradata\SAS backend using propensity modelling among other techniques. Outcome resulted in a direct tangible net effect which saw high conversion rates, and high customer restention.
Numerous SharePoint content and customised app migrations over the years.
A company I started to provide SharePoint utility products. 3 products in total.
Business critical cash flow management tool. Governed the cash flow balancing process of BT's managened funds and other investment strategies. Built on top of SharePoint using standard SharePoint development techniques, .Net UserControls WCF, client side scripting technologies.
Ground up design and implemantation of both large and small scale full farm SharePoint implementations.
Built on top of SharePoint, this portal was used as our main channel for BT\Westpac financial planners and external BT\Westpac licensee advisers for distribution of subscription and non subscription content. Several upstream and downstream dependant systems\sub systems. Ended up being quite critical to business and the value chain of their Advice business.
The core Single Page Application (SPA) is written in TypeScript \ Angular9 however we have a family of shared modules that are compiled seperated and linked using the UMD Module bindings. In adidtion to the inhouse built libraries the app incorporates many mainstream libraries as well some more obscure ones. Witten with DI in mind the code implements the MVC pattern with many services, view models and views all neatly organised by their respective logical function.
The SPA is hosted in an AWS S3 bucket behind a CloudFront CDN. The solution also uses Lambda@Edge functions to re-write certains headers such as CSP and Allowed Origins allowing us to dynamically control this critical security aspect per environment easily.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
Starting out as a POC to assess and measure the benefit of making existing customers aware of other products and services which according to their current customer attributes (e.g. financial, physical, lifestyle), would make them likely to be interested in. Used by front line staff during general interaction with customers, the benefit quickly become apparent which demanded the application be scalled out from initial pilot users to over 100 concurrent users. The customer modelling was aggregated in a seperate sub system using a number of BI systems (terradata and SAS) and sources, and refreshed weekly into the OP web app.
The OP web app employed a SOA approach consisting of server APIs which consolidated the business layer with the authentication\authorisation layer. Whilst these 2 layers were app domain seperated, we hosted them under the same web app for simplicity. As this was an intranet based app, we leveraged windows auth, but used it as an external provider of our OAuth2 (implicit flow) auth layer implmenentation. This allowed us to utalise OAuth2 concepts such as scope, resource and\or client based authorisation, opening the door for easier up\down stream systems integration at a later stage. Usage of the open source OAuth2 compliant IdentityServer4 framweork allowed us to accomplish this relatively easily.
The OP web client was completely server decoupled and implemented as wholly client side. It was written in Typescript2, and incorporates a number of open source framworks (to accomodated MVC, UI, OAUth2 token management ... etc). We made good use of MS's reactive library (i.e. obersvable based streams) to ensure a fluid and well performing UI. The web client was packaged and further optimised using WebPack2 and associated plugins.
Performance was paramount for this app as front line staff have KPI's amounting to seconds per customer. The OP app was querying millions of rows so the database design, and infrastrutcure implementation had to be initially solid with capacity to scale into the future. This called for an optimised database and highly available load balanced infrastructure.
Have performed many SharePoint migrations\upgrades which have spanned pretty much all versions and each ranging in their complexity ...
In a more recent project I tackled a web app which had been left neglected to grow organically, in a self service capcity for over 10 years.
As you can imagine the result was a highly complex site structure, with little or no site ownership, with an enormous amount of stale and redundant data.
We tackled this by devloping a set of custom tools that scanned the data and then modelled the data based on a set of parameters suggested (e.g. last item modified \ accessed date > X years).
Using the same data we were able to determine a set of the most likely site owners, and then poll those owners for someone to take ownership (else lose their site).
This appraoch worked well and we were able to reduce the amount of data that needed to be migrated from 7 TB down to 2 TB. A massive win for the business, and rediuced the overall migration timeline\cost significantly.
WideBrim SP Indexer
A dotnet based windows service that crawls a SharePoint farm and indexes all key metadata.
This metadata is stored in a normalized relational schema which can then be surfaced for a variety of needs.
WideBrim SP Migration Manager
An AspNet based web application which leverages the metadata generated by the WideBrim SP Indexer.
It will gain insights into site ownership and then automates the lifecycle of change management tasks associated
with the migration of individual sites.
Features include ability to configure custom migration lifecycles, the triggering of actions at certain points in
the lifecycle (i.e. such as sending notifications to sites owners, injecting content into sites, redirecting site
traffic or altering site permissions) and also contained an email templating solution allowing for highly configurable
and tailored site owner notifications.
WideBrim SP Redirect
Mainly leveraged by the WideBrim SP Migration Manager solution this product allowed for the templating of and injection of
custom content into SharePoint sites.
If you wanted to roll out personalised\audience targeted alerts or notifications in the form of a message in the header of the SharePoint site, or
have perhaps have certain users get completed redirected to another site, this product made it possible.
This solution was designed to govern the daily balancing of all funds under management of BT Investment Solutions. They have appromiately 50 actively managed funds at any one time and all finds must have their total value accurately balanced across all assets according to what is outlined in the corresponding PDS associated with each managed fund.
To achieve this we put in place a series of ETL processed to collate data form various sources including internal ledgers, external data providers (S@P, Morningstar and more). We then surface this data via AspNet web controls embedded in SharePoint pages which required them to review daily time fund asset positions, and then allowed them to re-allocate investments across assets in order to keep each fund accurately balanced accoridng to conditions outlined each funds PDS. This system ensured BT Investment Solutions had a clear and transparent record of the daily cashflow and balancing operations and ensured they met their regulatory obligations.
A highly customised customer facing SharePoint Publishing web built to facilitate all of the BT's liceneces advisers and dealers. This was a multi-branded initiative where content have to tailored and personalised based on what they were legally allowed to see.
Also included in this solution was a subsytem which incloved ETL process and Data Anlaytcs to produce monthly reports informing licenced dealers what funds their licence allowed them to sell (i.e. BT recommended funds). The system enusred BT met their legal and licenece obligations.