Read my profile on the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/jun/15/bbc-crystal-hirschorn

Technical Team Lead / Principal Engineer @ I was the Technical Lead for the General Elections 2015 fully responsive website (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015) which successfully served record breaking traffic of over 37 million visitors during the course of the election period. It reached a load of 1.6 million concurrent users during peak traffic with 100% uptime. As a BBC Tier 1 event, it was the single most important BBC project for 2015. The stats showed that the product was used heavily on mobile, tablet and desktop receiving a positive reaction which could be seen on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. The product excelled in showing near real-time election data using attractive graphs and charts using some of the latest CSS3 and Javascript techniques powered by real-time data being received at API broker endpoints with pushed updates using AWS’ SQS queues. I managed a team of developers and test engineers, both technically and as their line manager. I oversaw all technical aspects of the delivery including outlining the technical architecture. I was responsible for relaying that to all other dev team leads and Technical Architects within News. I directly developed core features, mentored developers, was in charge of code design decisions, ran morning scrums, lead whiteboarding sessions, signed off pull requests via Github, outlined and helped develop testing strategies, wrote bash scripts for processing data, set up policies and IAM roles within AWS, wrote technical guides and documentation, as well as oversaw any features being delivered by other teams. The technical stack included advanced skills in: RWD, Ruby, PHP, JS, Sass, CSS3 techniques, AWS (S3, DynamoDB, SQS, EC2), Vagrant, Chef, Bash Delivery of the complete re-build and design of the Business section (Market Data) to be fully responsive, including the display of Stock Market data and graphs in near real-time. From 2014 to Present (1 year) Senior Web Developer @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/vote2014 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/events/scotland-decides In 2014, I lead the technical architecture and implementation of a fully responsive, real-time, linked-data driven web component for BBC News that surfaced relevant articles, playable media (audio and video), Tweets, and Correspondent writings for a given topic. The product was included on nearly 180 pages during the Local and European Elections gaining more than 30 million page views. It was very resilient, performant and scaled well during the entire elections period. Our user stats proved that users were keen to interact with the product and that it was highly engaging with visitors staying on the page to see content as it came in. Due to it's success, there are plans to integrate the linked-data driven "stream" further across BBC News and the wider BBC. Skills included in my role: - Designing and architecting very large, and complex systems using OO, TDD and BDD - Advanced PHP (including Zend Framework) - Advanced Javascript (including jQuery) - Ruby - CSS and Sass - Advanced Git and Github - Unit testing frameworks such as Jasmine, Mocha, RSpec, PHP Unit - Virtualisation tools such as VirtualBox, VM Ware, Vagrant and Docker. - Writing utility scripts in Bash, Ruby (Rake), Grunt - Proficient with command line / terminal and linux tools - Proficient user of both Sublime and Vim. - Influencing stakeholders and requirements, with the ability to communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences. - Mentoring more junior developers. - Presenting on technical topics within my specialisms to different audiences. - Organising a monthly Web Developer Gathering across the whole of BBC News, including a diverse range of topics such as Cloud-based computing systems, software architecture, continuous delivery, etc. From September 2011 to Present (4 years 4 months) Technical Team Lead @ You can read the full profile of my work on the BBC Images project on the Guardian's website: http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2010/jun/15/bbc-crystal-hirschorn As Technical Lead of both front-end and back-end software of a team of engineers, I was involved with the recruitment of all technical staff on the project, and recruited other software engineers within my division. My main duties were to ensure the quality of the software and meet the deadlines of many stakeholders. My team followed an Agile approach with 2-weekly sprints and I was tasked with agreeing an Minimum Viable Product with the team's Product Owner. I ran the morning scrums, managed the backlog, spoke to stakeholders and translated their requirements into stories and technical tasks, and mentored my staff. The products were purely TDD driven alongside employing techniques and patterns to make the components highly reusable and extendable by other teams integrating them. The project produced many services and image-based reusable components there were incorporated in many big BBC brands such as Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who. From April 2010 to August 2011 (1 year 5 months) Web Developer @ Full stack development of core components and libraries used across the entire BBC. This involved managing multiple stakeholders, requirements gathering, API design, designing software that was extendable and usable in many different contexts. Active participation in developer support by fielding queries, troubleshooting issues, and pairing with engineers of all expertise across the BBC to integrate our products. I specifically implemented many of the client-side libraries which were integrated into big brands such as iPlayer and BBC Radio & Music. From 2009 to 2010 (1 year) Client Side Developer @ Development of client-side enabler libraries and websites. Writing libraries using CSS, Javascript, client-side templating and HTML that were reusable. I organised training and sessions for usability and accessibility as my previous experience focused heavily on these skills. I worked very closely with, and later on, BBC Glow which was the BBC's bespoke Javascript framework incorporated across the whole of the BBC. From June 2008 to May 2009 (1 year) Web Developer / Designer @ At The National Archives I was responsible for the development of its core website (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/) and many of the its project websites such as Prisoner4099 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/prisoner4099/) which went on to win prestigious accessibility awards. I was the only team member with any previous scripting experience (mainly in Perl, XML schema, XSLT) so was tasked with some of the client-side scripting. My role also encompassed wireframing, designing UI components, and the HTML and CSS to construct the site. I led many user testing sessions and was responsible for gathering the data to produce valuable reports and statistics based on those sessions. My role also included particular emphasis on usability and accessibility. I undertook research and user sessions to identify usability and accessibility problems. By addressing the issues from my research, we were seen as exemplary leaders in Government for producing accessible websites. From September 2006 to May 2008 (1 year 9 months) Website Technical Manager @ I lead the technical development of a key project within The National Archives with a £1m budget, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.movinghere.org.uk/ Responsibilities included: managing over 30 stakeholder organisations who providing data and original documents to the project for digitisation and transcription, managing 3rd party companies who provided CMS solutions and Flash interactives, line managing a small team developers, and overseeing the technical architecture and development of the website. Having 30+ stakeholders submitting data in various formats meant that I became skilled in advanced procedural Perl, XML, XML Schema, XSLT and other data transformation tools. From April 2004 to August 2006 (2 years 5 months) Webmaster @ I was responsible for fielding queries from the public, making updates and edits to the National Archives websites, being proficient with RedDot CMS, CSS and HTML development. From February 2003 to April 2005 (2 years 3 months)

Computer Science and Business Studies @ Kingston University From 2002 to 2003 High School, General Studies, GPA 3.4:4 @ High school From 1998 to 2001 Crystal Hirschorn is skilled in: Web Development, Usability, User-centered Design, PHP, CSS, Apache, User Experience, jQuery, JavaScript, Agile Methodologies, Semantic Web, Graphic Design, HTML 5, Test Driven Development, Accessibility