Dexter Marks-Barber

Dexter Marks-Barber

Professional Problem Solver in Staffordshire GB, He/Him

About

Hey 👋🏻 I’m a Software Engineering Team Lead at Veson Nautical.

I have around 10 years experience in solving problems through software 🗓️. As of late I’ve been spending more and more time helping mentor colleagues, as well as getting my hands dirty in the wider choices and processes involved when making software ⚙️.

Contact

GitHub
Twitter
Calendar
Discord
Twitch
Substack

Projects

2024

Before starting my new role as a Software Engineering Team Lead I thought it'd be best that I create a small microsite that will help me management my priorities.

Currently board state is persisted through local storage so there's no database connection or user authentication. Just quick and simple access.

I may look into cross-device data syncing at some point but this would involve user authentication or database connectivity.

Work Experience

2023 — 2024
Newcastle-under-lyme

Shortly after joining GivEnergy I was given the opportunity to be acting-interim Lead Engineer for a team of three other engineers. I helped put in place processes such as a scrum-like workflow, testing methodology, and more.

When having clear requirements from the business it has also allowed me to make sure the team follows TDD to ship production ready code with high coverage.

I've helped create supporting services for an upcoming mobile application such as:

  • Framework agnostic theming package

  • Cloudflare Worker templateFile upload service [to Cloudflare R2]

  • Customer onboarding service [to Cloudflare KV]

  • Address lookup service

  • WiFi http dongle interface

  • WiFi dongle mock server

2022 — 2023
London

Joining Beyonk, who has a young engineering team, as a senior software engineer I put forward suggestions and ideas around processes to help meet deadlines and organise priorities:

  • Put forward moving to a sprint workflow rather than just kanban
  • Moved towards Linear, away from Notion, to help manage our workflow
  • Pushed for people to make draft pull-requests for early feature peer reviews

I also working on maintaining and creating documentation to help smooth over any handovers or retrospectively picking up features. This came in handy as I worked on integrating with thirdparty systems such as Redeam and Zapier while working on core features such as:

  • The App Store
  • Flexible discount restrictions
  • Broadcast messaging
  • Day/month overview
  • and much more

During my time at Beyonk we followed basic TDD practices due to the critical nature of the API to the business. Every minute of downtime would directly reflect in lower sales due to customers being unable to purchase experience tickets.

I also used my time to guide other engineers in how to effectively work and understand Tailwind, Linear, and attempt to help raise the overall level of the engineering team to produce higher quality work (e.g. converting the legacy dashboard to a newer Tailwind forward dashboard).

The codebase consisted of:

  • Frontend: Svelte, Tailwind, SCSS
  • Backend: Node, MongoDB, Google Cloud Platform, Vercel
  • Development: Git, GitHub
2021 — 2022
Birmingham

After joining Optima Health as an applications developer I ranked up to a senior applications developer.

During my time at Optima Health I spent time learning how to work with Appian (as I was previously from a web stack space) which is a low-code solution to help build complex maps and processes.

It was expected to take a 6 months to a year for me to get up to speed but it only took 3 months before I was able to tackle complex problems by myself. After this I then helped train two other junior engineers in Appian while dealing with feature requests and second line support.

While testing was not done in the usual method due to how Appian workflows work we make sure to test each stage during development to make sure we limited the number of issues released to production.

After this we then started to look at a legacy system for scheduling practitioners that used Bower to manage dependencies, and most of the dependencies were deprecated, so during the move to NPM I solutionised a new platform that made use of:

  • Frontend: NextJS (React), Tailwind
  • Backend: SQL, Appian
  • Development: Docker, Git, BitBucket

Which I also then spent time training juniors on how to use the web stack and interact with Docker.

2020 — 2021
2019 — 2020
Stafford

After joining Langley Foxall as an web developer I ranked up to a intermediate developer.

As Langley Foxall was an agency we constantly rotated on clients every few months which gave me a lot of exposure to different types of systems:

  • Freight scheduling and management
  • Machinery configuration
  • Industrial weighing dashboard
  • Automated farming
  • and more

With these different projects came different technologies:

  • Frontend: React, Vue, CSS/SCSS
  • Backend: Laravel, MySQL
  • Mobile: React Native, Swift
  • Development: Docker, Git, GitHub
2017 — 2019
2014 — 2017
Freelance Developer at Ninety Nine Limited
Lichfield

Before going into full-time work I spent my time contracting while finishing up my education

2017 — 2017
Stoke

During my time at ClickDealer as a PHP developer I helped implement new features while maintaining a series of features the legacy dashboard.

I implemented a "hot spot" tool for car dealers to highlight vehicle damage which could be stored and later looked at. This was written in jQuery before React or other frameworks had taken off.

  • Frontend: HTML, CSS, jQuery
  • Backend: PHP, SQL
  • Development: Git
2016 — 2016
Website Developer at Musk Engineering
Lichfield

Being brought on by Musk Engineering I was contracted to help create an admin dashboard to help keep track of various processes.

  • Frontend: HTML, CSS
  • Backend: PHP, MySQL
  • Development: Git
2013 — 2014
Website Developer at FMA Process Engineering
Lichfield

Being brought on by FMA Process Engineering I was contracted to help create an admin dashboard to help keep track of various processes.

  • Frontend: HTML, CSS
  • Backend: PHP, MySQL
  • Development: Git

Side Projects

2020

JavaScript, React, React Hooks

2018

PHP, Experimental

2018

PHP, EVE Online

2018

PHP, Collections, Experimental

2018
2018

Education

2016 — 2017
Degree in Applied Computing at Staffordshire University
Stoke
2014 — 2016
Higher National Diploma at Staffordshire University
Lichfield
2013 — 2014
Level 3 Diploma in Applied Computing at Staffordshire College
Lichfield
2012 — 2013
Level 2 Diploma in Applied Computing at Friary Highschool
Lichfield

Certifications

2021
Node.js from LinkedIn
2021
MySQL from LinkedIn
2020
PHP from LinkedIn
2020
HTML from LinkedIn
2020
React from LinkedIn
2020
CSS from LinkedIn
2020
JSON from LinkedIn

Volunteering

2010 — 2014
Member at Rotary club
Lichfield