Peter Torr Smith
About Me
Full Stack Web - Tech strategy and architecture
Ruby and Rails
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
HTML and CSS
Javascript, Typescript
Vue
React & Redux
Bootstrap
GIT
Atlassian Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket/Pipelines
Node.js, Express
Data, Databases, SQL
Heroku
Data Dog, Sentry, Splunk
Sidekiq, Cron, async jobs
Stripe Payments
Business and UX Analysis
Product Ownership
Agile & PM practices, tooling, delivery
Technology Management, Architecture, Strategy
Business Management
I've been living in Wellington since 1993 and for much of that time have worked in IT delivery for private-sector, Government and start-up businesses in technical, analytical and management/support roles.
Most recently I've been contracting to Culture Amp as a senior engineer for their 'Performance' product. For much of this I was primarily focused on back-end performance and enhancements: APIs, DB query optimization, asynchronous job processing, and code restructuring to support domain isolation, laying the foundations for extracting domains out from the Ruby on Rails monolith. More recently the team and I focused on architecting and prototyping a React application with a serverless/Lamda backend talking with various in-house and external services.
Previously I've had the privilege of doing a short contract with the Resn Digital team as one of their Technical Directors. Here I've helped scope out and investigate technical approaches for a number of digital projects in the pipeline, and to help make the GOOD Meat launch experience a reality :-)
2019/2020 I did a number of upgrades for HireThings.com / .co.nz / com.au towards a more appropriate style and focus required of a modern useful online service. This included upgrading from Ruby on Rails 2 to 5, re-architecting the application and shifting onto Amazon Web Services, enabling continuous deployments, and giving the service a full mobile-first refresh based on the Bootstrap framework. I've also mentored a couple of younger developers during that journey.
2011 - 2018 I worked with the Ministry of Social Development on IT business projects & programmes for a wide range of business services and applications. These have been mainly web applications and the shift to mobile-first web.
To refresh and modernize my technical skills and prepare for the upgrade work on Hire Things, I did the excellent Enspiral Dev Academy Bootcamp over the last quarter of 2018. Here with a great bunch of students and coaches we were immersed in a world of Javascript, frameworks, modern web app development with React, and team challenges. The EDA Graduation Letter covers it quite well
I then spent several weeks completing this fantasic and challenging Rails Professional Udemy course. It was very detailed, and the result of my efforts was this website (hosted on Heroku), ptorrsmith.com, built from scratch with Rails 5 (I've since upgraded this to Rails 6).
With my time with Culture Amp at an end, I'm keen to take on some new challenges with some great people, and help make things better :-)
I enjoy business, technology, governance, finance & economics, food and fermentation, swimming, yoga, art, living in Aro Valley, my friends and family
I love helping others learn new things, as well as digging in and helping make a product, business, team, technology or process work.
Culture Amp
Analyst Developer Engineer
From: 2021. To: 2022.
Performance Camp, Team KISS. Ruby on Rails API monolith decoupling. Scalability, Performance and simplicity focus. Microservice / domain grouping. Serverless/Lambda with React (Typescript) RSpec / TDD. Sidekiq / async jobs. AWS. BuildKite. Data Dog. 100% Remote. Good online teamwork, agile. Highlights: Shift all exports async to RDS replica. Find and fix slow performing endpoints. Async and GDPR deletion. Technical debt for UX and performance. Domain Driven Design code rework. Monads. Query Repository pattern. React admin application with serverless backend and integration with Launch Darkly SDK and APIs
Resn Digital
Technical Director - Development, Infrastructure, Integration & Operations
From: 2020. To: 2021.
Technology investigation and solution design, scoping and sizing - pre-sales, pre-development. Development, Cloud Infrastructure & services admin, deployments and operations. Scoping, sizing, infrastructure architecture and implementation for https://goodmeat.co, a Vue, ThreeJS & WebGL digital experience. AWS hosting - S3, EC2, CloudFront, ACM, Lambda, Route53, AWS Organizations, IAM, Docker. Git, BitBucket pipelines for CI/CD, branch/tag/release management. Daily scrums, workflow management and kanban boards. Burn up/down tracking. Remote teams. Systems and Security audit and practices guide.
HireThings.com
Full stack tech lead Ruby on Rails developer, AWS engineer
From: 2019. To: current.
Tech lead, developer, architect, cloud infrastructure engineer for site, platform and mobile upgrade and management.
Ministry of Social Development
Analyst, Project Manager, Agile manager, Mobile and User Experience capability manager
From: 2011. To: 2018.
Business analyst, project manger, programme manager and Web Team manager. UX and mobile capability manager. Agile tools capability manager.
Catalyst IT
Open Source developer, analyst and project manager
From: 2009. To: 2011.
Analyst, developer and project manager for a variety of open-source web based applications. Business analysis, Project & Client Management, UX & IA, Wireframing, PHP, Ruby on Rails.
HireThings.com
Co-founder, developer, General Manager
From: 2006. To: 2009.
Co-founder, developer and CEO for online hire and rental marketplace startup www.hirethings.co.nz (and later www.hirethings.com.au)
Intergen
.Net Developer and Database Administrator
From: 2004. To: 2006.
Developer and DBA for a wide range of windows and web based applications
eCentric
Developer
From: 2000. To: 2002.
Developer for eCargo freight marketplace, including early WAP based mobile web UI Support developer for eCentric government clients. Worked alongside founding TradeMe team and technology. Delphi, .Net, C#, SQL Server, XSLT
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry - IT
Analyst Developer
From: 1999. To: 2001.
Analyst developer for MAF IT systems. Year 2000 upgrades.
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry - Operations
National IT Projects manager
From: 1995. To: 1998.
Coordinating IT projects and initiatives across the MAF Quality Management
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF Quality Management)
Assistant to the National Director, Meat Services
From: 1993. To: 1995.
Support national activities for food safety inspection and auditing services
Kids TV
TV editor
From: 1992. To: 1992.
Editor for Kids TV teen show Short Sportz, and current affairs shows InFocus with Stephanie Tauevehi, and Suzy Kato's "You and Me"
Production Post
Editor, Camera operator, co-founder
From: 1991. To: 1992.
18 month venture to establish video editing facility for new Panasonic M2 tape format.
TV3
Video editor for news, current affairs, sports, promotions
From: 1989. To: 1991.
Video Masters
Video Tape Operator and trainee Video Editor
From: 1989. To: 1989.
Prepping video editing facilities, source tapes, final masters and copies. Backup Steve the main editor. Camera, lighting and sound assist
Ruby on Rails Professional (2019)
Udemy & DevCamp
As part of updating my Ruby on Rails skills I completed 226 module hands-on course "Dissecting Ruby on Rails 5". The result was this website built from scratch with Rails 5 (now updated to Rails 6), Javascript/JQuery, PostgreSQL, web-sockets, GIT and Heroku for hosting.
EDA Dev Bootcamp (2018)
Enspiral Dev Academy
Completion and graduation of Foundation and Bootcamp intensive mobile web development programme. Javascript backend (node.js) and front-end (React/Redux) focus.
Scaled Agile Framework (2017)
SAFe
Scaled Agile Framework practitioner exam and certification.
MSP - Managing Successful Programs (2015)
Axelos / CCLearning
Foundation and Practitioner/Professional exam and certification
Prince2 (2011)
Axelos / CCLearning
Projects In a Controlled Environment (Prince2) foundation and practitioner/professional exam and certification.
Certified Scrum Master (2010)
Scrum.org
Scrum master training and certification.
Microsoft Certified Professional DBA (2006)
Microsoft
SQL Server certified professional DBA exam and certification.
Post-graduate Diploma, Information Sciences (2001)
Massey University
6 years part-time extramural studies whilst working. Covered Management Information Systems, GIS, Object Oriented development and databases, scaling enterprise applications.
Bachelor of Commerce (1989)
Auckland University
Management, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Business Computing, Economics, Statistics, Property.