Hey!
My name is Steve Newman, I'm a full stack developer based in the North East of England.
You could consider my journey to where I am now a little unorthodox. Having spent the first part of my career in the leisure and hospitality industry, mostly in sales and marketing, I decided to turn a hobby into a career in 2010.
Starting out in frontend development I worked on a number of small projects before landing my first big role 3 years later...Frontend Developer on the British Airways website!! The transition from Wordpress to a multi million pound global website was pretty daunting but quite a milestone in my journey.
I soon became accustomed to working in Agile and even had a crack at being a scrum master, I worked with some incredibly talented people and it was the perfect start and springboard for the career I had been desperately seeking for many years.
Skipping forward a few years and a few promotions along the way, I'm now a Lead Solutions Developer, working for Capita Consulting and starting what I consider to be the next phase of my career, a little more focus on management and consulting whilst also making sure I continue to do what I love the most....write code!
Skills and interests
Like most developers I have a keen interest in all sorts of technology but don't often get a chance to use them all commercially. These are what I would consider my most frequently used programming languages and tools.
Having spent a number of years working with PHP I'm now making a bit of a switch towards full stack JavaScript. I've done a fair amount of Apex over 2020 as part of a Salesforce project and Python is something I dabble with from time to time in personal projects.
Its easy to consider HTML and CSS as simple go to aspects of frontend development, but as much as I'm fluent in both, there is always something new to consider and with the ever increasing need to acheive AA accesibility standards, there's always room for more knowledge.
Platforms and frameworks
I'm loving React right now, in fact this site is built in React, more specifically, using Gatsby. Next on the React list is Next.js.
Drupal has featured the most in my projects over the last 5 years and I enjoy working with it, being a framework it is extremely powerful and flexible to use.
I've used Django in my personal projects rather than professional, but its fun to work with and an ideal place to play with Python.
Having spent a lot of 2020 working with Salesforce I've grown to really like it, although I'm not sure how many of my future projects will have a demand for it.
My career highlights
As previously mentioned, its been a pretty varied career path, but all of it has helped me get to where I am now. When I joined Orange Bus in 2015 I began to do much more full stack development, it was also my first introduction to Drupal.
I have to say, Orange Bus was an amazing place to work, it was like the dream company for a developer. Although it barely felt like going to work at times due to the office environment and social life, we did work hard and I was able to start progressing up the ladder.
Orange Bus was taken over by Capita, so technically I still work there, but sadly Orange Bus is now a brand that is no more. Becoming part of Capita has seen a number of changes, some good, some bad, but its definitetly given me exposure to some very high profile clients that I wouldn't have had before.
The last 10 years now feels like a bit of a whirlwind in my career as a developer, but the groundwork is firmly laid for my path ahead and I can't wait to see what is next to appear at the top of my timeline...
July 2020
Lead Solutions Developer
January 2020
Lead Developer
January 2017
Senior Developer
April 2015
Developer
November 2013
Frontend Developer
April 2010
Freelance
Web Design and Development
April 2002 - 2013
Sales Executive
2001
Event
Built first website!
September 1995
Fitness Instructor
Key clients
I've worked on a number of projects over the years but there are some that I consider to be a little bit more special. Working with large brands and industry leaders is always a privilege and these are my favourites so far.
Please note Barbour, Joules, Racing Point, SGN and IOPC were all Orange Bus clients and British Airways a client of Leighton. I worked on these projects under their respective employment.
Blog posts
How I changed careers
January 9th, 2021
Lockdown Life and Beyond
November 19th, 2020
Nuts and bolts of this site
November 15th, 2020