As a career-switcher, I write software from a user-first perspective. After a successful career in children's book publishing, I became a developer in 2015 and now have experience with enterprise-level software in procedural SQL, Rails and Javascript. I enjoy giving talks, creating events and doing demonstrations to teach publishing professionals, local children and their parents how to code.
- Engineering Manager at FreeAgent of the Marketing Platform Team using Javascript, Ruby, Netlify and Salesforce acquire and inform our small business and accountancy practice customers
- Full stack developer at Consonance using Rails + React to build intuitive enterprise software for book publishers
- Building xlsx-to-app importers with validations for bulk imports of client data to enable self-serve onboarding
- Creating logic checks on client's financial data, presenting a traffic light system for where data needs improvement
- Re-skinning the presentation and editing interfaces of business-critical financial information
- Covering legacy code with tests and fixing bugs
- Participating in strategy discussion and decisions
- Consultant at Exceedra using procedural TSQL to process and present millions of points of inbound and outbound financial data for brands like Ginsters, Weetabix and Dyson
- Tech lead on a new client project after only one year at the company (Oct 2016)
- Initial work transforming data via TSQL to XML for Telerik, instead of SSRS, to provide more flexibility and speed to standard and custom reports
- Bibliocloud Rails, gaining experience working through a large exisiting code base
- 3D skiing map Fatmap, building out ActiveAdmin for a greenfield app using RSpec, Cucumber, Cancancan, etc
- Professional experience with: Ruby, Rails, RSpec, Cucumber, Procedural TSQL, Javascript, Jest, XML, SSRS, HTML5, CSS, Agile, Jira, React
- Learning experience with: Swift, XCode, Angular, Karma, Protractor, Jasmine
- Other technical skills: Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, EPUB3, ONIX
- Other core skills: communication, diplomacy, project delivery, editing, marketing strategy, community management
BookPenPals pairs UK authors and illustrators with UK schools to make book recommendations via postcards, for free. Schools reply with postcards of their own. The Pen Pals pairings last for one school year, and the joys of reading, writing and drawing multiply.
Web app to host bingo night fundraiser at a local school for all ages, using numbers alongside the children's own images so the whole family can play together. MeteorJS is a Node-based framework, using Javascript client and server-side and a "reactive" MongoDB database for speed and flexibility.
Lead developer on the Rails API and Slack integration for a team Swift project. Also designed the UI for the iOS app to help visitors arriving at Makers Academy for interviews, also using proximity beacons and Google forms.
- Demo video: https://youtu.be/v1GVvMg1-Js
- Code: https://github.com/MakersApp
- Won special mention from Twitter and from the BBC in Personalised Experiences Challenge from BBC Connected Studio Challenge and Best Use of Twitter at Over the Air 2015 for Tweet Me News
- On the team that won the Hasbro Play/Hack hacking a Twister mat with burrito wrappers and a Makey Makey: http://holition.com/journal/archives/2014/10/pos#h-title
- Won the data visualisation category at my first hackathon with My Book is Bigger Than Yours: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/futurebook-hack-chooses-its-winners
- Produced iBooks Author product featured by Apple and mentioned in the Guardian: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/maggot-moon-multi-touch-edition/id557942824?mt=11
- Managed set up, input and output of large data systems of thousands of titles of bibliographic information (ONIX)
- Entertained and inspired hundreds of children for hundreds of hours with online writing community: https://www.thestoryadventure.com
- Makers Academy (Feb 2015 to June 2015 -- March Cohort)
- Master of Arts (MA), Children's and Adolescent Literature University of Reading, England (2000 to 2001)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Writing, Literature and Publishing Emerson College, Boston (1997 - 2000)
- High School Diploma International School of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1993 - 1997)
Prior to becoming a software engineer, I worked in children's book publishing for 13 years. My editorial experience gives my code and my communication precision and clarity. I work well with product owners and project managers, having been one myself, and enjoy being part of an ambitious team.
I've helped bring over 200 products to market, with four of them passing £1 million revenue (My Sister the Vampire; Dinosaur Cove; Quentin Blake and Friends 70th Anniversary Editions of the Famous Five; Undiscovered Voices).
- Fiction Digital Director Hot Key Books (Dec 2011 to Jan 2015)
- Senior Editorial Manager Hodder Children's Books (Nov 2010 to Dec 2011)
- Senior Commissioning Editor Working Partners Ltd (Sept 2004 - Nov 2010)
- Co-founder Book Bound (April 2013 - Feb 2017)
- Day of Code: teaching (pubishing to code)[https://2019.dayofcode.co.uk/] (Nov 2019)
- Speaker The Bookseller FutureBook conference, The Society of Young Publishers, Book Machine (2019)
- Coach + speaker on Harry Potter and the Magic of Ruby RailsGirls (Nov 2018, Nov 2019)
- Volunteer Institute of the Imagination, teaching kids to code in VR with (Cospaces)[https://cospaces.io/edu/] (Jun 2018)
- Mentor/Tutor/Speaker Mums in Technology (Sept 2015, June 2016)
- Mentor Young Rewired State, Festival of Code (July 2015)
- ‘If New York were to experience another blackout, I am convinced that the entire city could run on Sara’s energy and efficiency alone!’ - Megan Tingley, EVP Publisher of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent