Joe Carstairs’ CV
Early-career software developer with broad interests, technical precision and deep thinking. Not actively looking for a job right now, but happy to hear from you about future opportunities.
Soft skills
- Thinks critically with precision
- Communicates clearly, especially in prepared presentations
- Better at engineering things carefully and reflectively than hacking something quick and dirty (though can do that too!)
Technical skills
Front end
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript/TS
- Astro
- React
Back end
- NodeJS
- Java/Spring
- Python
- C
Infrastructure
- Terraform
- Docker
- AWS
- DigitalOcean
Miscellaneous
- Git
- Bash
- Langchain
My engineering priorities
- I put the process before the product
- I put user needs before technical solutions
- I put resilience before features
What makes me tick
- I like straightening out chaos
- I like communities which share wisdom
- I value finding things out over making the perfect product
Experience
- Aug 2024 - present, Scott Logic. Building a fullstack application for a large financial institution. Java Spring Boot microservices on the backend, Angular on the frontend, with Kafka, MongoDB and Elasticsearch as supporting technologies.
- 2024, Scott Logic. Researched the potential of applying LLMs to automated accessibility testing of websites, using Langchain Python library, elementary prompt engineering techniques, and various scripting languages to knit all our data together.
- 2023, Scott Logic. Investigated the accessibility of the Scott Logic blog both manually and using automated tools, including pa11y and Lighthouse. Made several recommendations for improvements.
- 2023, Scott Logic. Built a social app with a React/Redux frontend and a Spring Boot backend, deployed via Azure Pipelines onto an AWS EC2 instance, as part of the Scott Logic Graduate Programme.
- 2021, FreeAgent. Analysed how front-end developers were consuming the FreeAgent design system for the Design System Team as a summer internship.
Education
Philosophy and Mathematics, MA Hons, Edin, 2022.
Full transcript available upon request.
Passions
- I would love to see ordinary people empowered to engage with Web technology as sovereign citizens, owning their own data, with the ability to choose freely between competing digital services. I haven't yet been shaken out of my naïve hope for the IndieWeb, though I recognise it has a long way to go before it is ready for mass adoption.
- I love Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world. Lots of people believe that there is some higher power behind the things we can see, and Jesus has revealed who God is by being made flesh, dying on the cross and by being raised to a new Resurrection life, in which we are all invited to participate. And I think that's pretty gnarly.
- I love hillwalking. A day in the hills is the best kind of rest I know.