ryanbigg.com/work.html at master · radar/ryanbigg.com · GitHub

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
---
title: Ryan Bigg is not currently looking for work
---

{% include head.html %}

<body class="resume">
<div class="flex flex-col md:flex-row min-h-screen">
  <div class='bg-emerald-400 w-full md:w-1/3 py-4 px-8 text-slate-900 md:h-screen md:sticky md:top-0 md:overflow-y-auto space-y-4 break-after-always'>
    <div class="text-center">
        <h1 class="text-2xl font-bold mb-4">Ryan Bigg</h1>
    <div class="text-sm mb-4">
      <p>Lead Developer at Fat Zebra</p>
      <p>Author of several books on Ruby, Rails and Elixir</p>
    </div>
  </div>
    <div class='flex items-center'><img src="/images/me.jpg" alt="Ryan Bigg" class="rounded-full mb-4 w-48 mx-auto">  </div>
    <p class="leading-8 relaxed">
      I've worked as a tech lead for a decade, but have worked as a developer for two decades. I'm comfortable with working with people all across the business from a brand-new junior all the way up to the CEO. I'm known for my ability to quickly nail down a problem and to work well across a variety of tech stacks and applications. I love helping people learn, and learning from them in return.
    </p>

    <p class="leading-8 relaxed">
      I've worked most recently across applications that handle payment processing. I have also worked in customer engagement surveys, internet-of-things, and developer training. I have a long history of writing documentation and technical books, and I have a passion for writing and teaching.
    </p>

    <section aria-label="Skills" class="pt-2">
      <h2 class="text-sm uppercase tracking-widest font-semibold text-slate-800 mb-3">Skills</h2>
      <ul class="flex flex-wrap gap-2">
        <li class="skill">Technical Leadership</li>
        <li class="skill">Mentoring</li>
        <li class="skill">Ruby on Rails</li>
        <li class="skill">Ruby</li>
        <li class="skill">React</li>
        <li class="skill">TypeScript</li>
        <li class="skill">JavaScript</li>
        <li class="skill">Go</li>
        <li class="skill">GraphQL</li>
        <li class="skill">Design Systems</li>
        <li class="skill">Documentation</li>
      </ul>
    </section>

  </div>
  <article class='md:w-2/3 py-4 px-8'>

    <section class="mb-12">
      <div class="flex items-baseline justify-between mb-1">
        <h2 class="text-base font-medium text-emerald-400">Fat Zebra <span class="font-light text-zinc-400 ml-1">— Customer Experience, Lead Developer</span></h2>
      </div>

      <p>Led a team that grew from 2-12 people, maintaining a handful of merchant & customer facing applications with strict uptime requirements. Collaborated on building the design system and rolling that out across the company. Led the tech implementation of an acquisition (another payment gateway) with an extremely tight deadline.</p>
      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light">2021</h3>

      <p>
        Started in August 2021, working under the Acquiring team, working on payouts and merchant money movement.
      </p>

      <p>
        Switched over to working on the Merchant Dashboard team with a designer. Was given a lot of free reign with project direction and uplift of the Merchant Dashboard's design. Updated the design to be more modern and to align with the rest of the company's branding.
      </p>


      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light mt-4">2022</h3>

      <p>
        Brought on two new developers, one mid-level and one junior, and mentored them to become productive members of the team. We also brought on a new designer here. We took over ownership of the PayNow stack, which handles millions of transactions per month for household brands. This included a JavaScript SDK and its relevant documentation.
      </p>

      <p>
        We also led the development of Zeal Design System, a React component library adopted across all Fat Zebra products.
      </p>

      <p>
        We adopted GraphQL for the API layer of the Merchant Dashboard, and I was responsible for mentoring the team in GraphQL best practices and patterns.
      </p>


      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light mt-4">2023</h3>

      <p>
        Brought on another junior developer to the team in April. Worked with them to upgrade our statementing system in Acquiring, which was a cross-team effort. Continued to mentor them throughout the year.
      </p>

      <p>
        Took over maintenance of our SSO integration and supported merchants as they integrated with it. This included writing documentation and troubleshooting issues with the integration.
      </p>

      <p>
        Led the development of the React SDK as an alternative to our JavaScript SDK.
      </p>

      <p>
        Led the development of PayNow V3, a React-based rewrite of our payment processing forms to modernise the look & feel.
      </p>

      <p>
        Worked with developers on my team and the Core Payments team to organise a major refactoring of our payment plans code.
      </p>

      <p>
        Led the implementation of Click to Pay in conjunction with Mastercard, Visa and American Express. Click to Pay lets customers store and use their card details without having to enter them in every time.
      </p>


      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light mt-4">2024</h3>

      <p>
        Integrated Apple Pay with PayNow V3 and provided support to merchants who were integrating.
      </p>

      <p>
        Took ownership of the Reseller Dashboard application and led a major refactor of its codebase.
      </p>

      <p>
        Promoted three developers on my team to mid-level (1) and senior (2) levels, and continued my mentorship of them and the rest of the team.
      </p>

      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light mt-4">2025</h3>

      <p>
        Was handpicked to be one of the technical leads for the integration of the SecurePay API into Fat Zebra's payment platform. Shipped the first phase of the integration in under 3 months, and the second phase before the end of the year.
      </p>

      <p>
        Hired three additional developers to the Customer Experience team, 2 seniors and 1 junior.
      </p>


      <h3 class="text-zinc-400 font-light mt-4">2026</h3>

      <p>
        Moved back into my role as Lead Developer on the Customer Experience team.
      </p>

      <p>
        Involved in conversations of promoting a senior developer on my team to a lead role, and the subsequent hiring of a new senior developer to backfill their role.
      </p>

      <p>
        Worked with the team to flesh out our hiring practices and interview process, and to implement a new hiring process for the company.
      </p>

      <p>
        Liased with banks around what features they require our products to support, and then working with project managers across both organisations to prioritise that work.
      </p>
    </section>

    <section class="my-12">
      <div class="flex flex-col md:flex-row items-baseline justify-between mb-1">
      <h2 class="text-base font-medium text-emerald-400">Various <span class="font-light text-zinc-400 ml-1">— Freelance Contractor</span></h2>
      <span class="text-zinc-400 font-light">Feb 2021 – August 2021</span>
      </div>

      <p class="leading-relaxed mb-5 font-light">
        Working as a part-time "mercenary for hire" across a variety of tech stacks, but primarily focussing on
        Typescript-based React with Ruby on Rails backends.
      </p>

      <ul>
        <li>4-days-a-week as a TypeScript / React / Ruby developer, working in a team of around 4 people. </li>
        <li>3-days-a-week as a TypeScript / React / Ruby developer at a small company, primarily focussed on improving
          their frontend code, upgrading jQuery componentry to TypeScript-powered React.
          <ul>
            <li>In addition to that: I research and implemented platform stability measures by working with other
              developers to add additional Ruby tests, a CI system, and monitoring through logging and AppSignal.</li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li> 2-days-a-week upgrading a Ruby on Rails application from Rails 5.0 to 6.1, and tidying up other deprecation
          messages / warnings in the build logs. </li>
      </ul>
    </section>

    <section class="my-12">
      <div class="flex flex-col md:flex-row items-baseline justify-between mb-1">
      <h2 class="text-base font-medium text-emerald-400">Various <span class="font-light text-zinc-400 ml-1">— Full-time Developer</span></h2>
      <span class="text-zinc-400 font-light">2007 - 2021</span>
      </div>

      <p class="leading-relaxed mb-5 font-light">
       Working as a developer for a number of companies across a variety of tech stacks, but primarily focussed on Ruby on Rails. Companies include Covidence, Culture Amp and LIFX.
      </p>
    </section>

    <section class="my-12">
      <div class="flex flex-col md:flex-row items-baseline justify-between mb-1">
      <h2 class="text-base font-medium text-emerald-400">Tech Books<span class="font-light text-zinc-400 ml-1">— Author</span></h2>
      <span class="text-zinc-400 font-light">December 2008 - Current</span>
      </div>

      <p class="text-xl">
        I have contributed extensively to documentation for Ruby and Rails and I wrote a few books about Rails, Ruby and Elixir. Your developers have probably read my books. Or perhaps you have!
      </p>

      <p>
        You can read more about these books over on
        <a href="/books">my books page</a>.
      </p>

      <p>
        To support writing these books, I wrote my own book review tool, called <a
          href='https://github.com/radar/twist-v3'>Twist</a>. Twist is in its third incarnation, currently living as a <a href='https://hanamirb.org/'>Hanami</a> application.
      </p>
    </section>
  </article>
</div>