Chris Rimmer
I'm a programmer and general nerd in the UK who wants to write
JavaScript.
Phone: +44 7990 031337
Email: work@rimmer.wtf
LinkedIn
Stuff I know (and how many years I've been doing it):
- Javascript: Typescript (3y), React (5y), Preact (5y), Node (5y), Deno (2y)
- GCP: Cloud Run (1y), Cloud SQL (1y)
- Postgres (5y)
- Redis (2y)
- Linux: Shell scripting, service management, system administration,
all the other goofy stuff you have to know to daily-drive this
disaster of an operating system (many years)
- Agile philosophy / principles (not the cargo cult kind) (6y)
- ISO 3103
Stuff I kinda don't know well or am not happy doing:
Work experience:
Machine learning | Hugo | Deno | LeanIX
- Prototyped a documentation search and retrieval system using a multi-stage LLM-powered pipeline to try and make our hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation more explorable by architects and developers
- I've been here 3 months and it's a government job so that's about it so far
2023 Adaptive Web Ltd - (Freelance, short contract) Architect + Lead prototype Engineer
Preact | Deno | Postgres | Google Cloud Run | Google Cloud SQL
- Worked with stakeholders to specify requirements of a proposed
security-as-a-service product to be prototyped
- Selected suitable technology with which to build the prototype to
test assumptions about hosting infrastructure, performance, and
scalability
- Developed a fully-working rules-based-security engine in 3 weeks
with more features than any commercial offerings the company could find
- Ongoing - Developing a crude but complete (in the spirit of being a
proof-of-concept) administration panel and UI over the top of the RBA engine
to trial with customers
- Tested and selected a cloud-based hosting environment for the program,
using Google Cloud Run as the execution environment and Cloud SQL as the data
store to ensure scalability and reliability against potentially unknown and
variable load levels of the deployed system
2021-2022 TK Events UK Ltd - System architect, senior full stack engineer, dev team lead, client technical contact, wearer of many hats
React | Deno | Node | Postgres | Elastic
- Worked with client account managers and event designers to design and
build a self-service interface that our clients' clients could use to
manage their content at events. This reduced a process wherein data
went through three handoffs across four different people at three
organisations to zero handoffs, massively reducing both effort and
latency involved in building an event
- Got the dev team away from hand-writing HTML by designing and
building a framework and an accompanying component library
containing React implementations of all our virtual venue features
as well as several new ones that were made feasible by the departure
from hand-written HTML.
- Designed and built microservices to handle various small and
isolated pieces of functionality for each of several different venue
services, including drop-in social video calls (intended to emulate
the ad-hoc nature of social rooms etc found in live events), session
attendance tracking for CPD points, and synchronisation of our
attendee's registration data with our clients
- Designed a self-service event management system with input from
stakeholders in all areas of the business, capable of interfacing with
several different registration platforms (starting with Swoogo and
Cvent), with the intention of onboarding new clients who already run
their own events through any of those services. Unfortunately this is
still in-development as of my departure so I can't vouch for its
effectiveness!
- Coordinated on an ongoing basis with our most demanding clients to meet
their needs at our virtual events, designing tools and systems based on
continuous feedback
2019-2020 PCCW Global - Full stack developer, scrum master
React | Storybook | Redux | Node | Postgres | SAFe
- Built another Storybook component library, apparently I seem to
enjoy doing that kind of thing
- Designed and built a custom domain-specific form builder that allowed
junior devs and non-technical staff to build configuration forms for
complex Broadsoft VOIP feature configuration based on ongoing
consultation with front-end engineers elsewhere in the team
- Worked with VOIP SMEs, POs, BAs and support staff to design and build a
configuration management system for various VOIP hardware
platforms
2017-2018 NIO Formula E Race team - Infrastructure engineer, trackside IT specialist
- Built automation tools using Windows task scheduler and some batch
scripts to handle telemetry extraction from the car whenever it was
connected, easing the workload for mechanics and engineers
- Deployed and managed Resilio to improve telemetry data sync
performance from the very bandwidth-limited track environment to HQ
for strategy analysis
- Designed and built a custom "gaming" computer to power our on-site DIL simulator to accomodate some fairly strange IO and performance requirements
- Fixed a lot of printers
Laravel | Angular
- Built small + simple marketing landing pages etc using Angular JS,
usually on sub-1-week timescales
- Maintained + improved our internal SaaS product,
PartnerMarketing, which was a
Docker-hosted microservice-based (though I would call it a set of
miniliths
as the services weren't even remotely isolated or independent)
2014-2016 Multiplay UK Ltd (now Unity and Player1 Events) - Junior developer
Django | Knockout | PHP | MySQL | Golang | Azure Cloud | FreeBSD
- Built a benchmarking suite to periodically produce matrixes of deployment
times of different VM types across various different Azure regions, which
we used in our automated autoscaling hybrid tin + cloud game server hosting
platform
- Built the automated deployment and provisioning system we used to order,
provision, monitor, and deprovision Azure cloud instances based on current
demand. Or rather, which we would have used if we actually ended up
hosting on Azure.
- Collaborated on a tournament management system that would manage player +
team entries into tournaments and handled ranking + bracketing etc to try
and maintain a fun competition for our LAN party attendees
- Implemented numerous custom features including a proprietary SSO system for
various vBulletin based forums we operated for Telefonica
Non-work stuff I've done that I think is cool:
- Worked with a bunch of friends to design and build a combat robot
from scratch in 5 weeks ready for Robot Wars
- Wrote a low-level digital signal processor to convert conventional
RC control signals to some weird proprietary chinese motor
controller input signal format
- Wrote all control logic for the robot, converting twin-stick inputs
in both car-steer and tank-steer control schemes (to suit different
drivers' preferences) into raw control signals for the
electromechanical drive system
- Designed the power system for Doomba's control electronics,
propulsion system, and primary + secondary weapon drives
- Welded. A lot.
2016 - Monte Carlo Or Bust charity banger rally - The Nerd Herd
- Decorated a car (full paint job and decals) in 2 days with team
colours etc
- Took care of team fundraising (we managed to get attention from the
actual cast of the show we were dressing up as!)
- Prepared the car for a 2,500 mile road trip in unfamiliar territory
with no support once we left the UK
I don't really know how to turn this one into bullet points so I'll just
say a buddy and I are literally building an entire car from scratch to
our own design in his driveway.
2020 - ZF 8HP transmission control computer
Designed and wrote a transmission control program for the ZF 8HP automotive transmission. Unfortunately as a spare-time hobby project between two geopgrahically isolated non-engineers without test hardware, it never went anywhere but I did learn quite a bit about how to control a gearbox
Most of the project wasn't actually the control program, and was the prototype breadboard circuits and a simulator test harness I could use to validate the design. This test board pretended to be an actual physical transmission, simulating sensor outputs to the computer based on various control signals and real-world behaviour. It didn't model physics effects like hydraulic behaviour or rotating kinetic energy etc so it would have been of limited use for tuning, but was more than adequate to test whether the core behaviour around gear selection and solenoid control was correct.
Other notes about me:
I'm a nerd. I like learning new stuff.
I once built a 2D orbital motion simulator just to see if the 3D
equations from the real world compressed to two dimensions properly.
Turns out they sorta do but there are some weird singularities, so I
wrote new versions of some of the equations so they wouldn't explode.
I'm (slowly, between other projects) restoring and modifying a 1980s Rover SD1. This project is one of my more active ones and is very much in flux, so the state may change by the time you read this but as of now I've built a turbo manifold for it, selected a set of throttle bodies I can use for an EFI conversion, acquired an appropriately modest turbo, stripped the interior and done a very extensive 5 layer composite soundproofing treatment, 3D modelled new taillights to cast in resin, rewired various troublesome systems, and started designing an ait conditioning system
One day I wondered what might go into making rocket fuel so I destroyed
a wok making solid rocket propellant in my kitchen. I never made a rocket
with it, but I did encase an iPhone in the stuff and light it. The iPhone
did not survive.
I'm also working in my spare time on a cooperative multiplayer real time tactical space combat simulator. I could talk about this for hours.
I think that just about covers everything. Thanks for reading!