Stefan Nesbitt, Developer in Stirling, United Kingdom
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Stefan Nesbitt

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Stirling, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
February 26, 2016

Stefan started programming in 1983 and for the past 17 years he has run a freelance bespoke programming business called Turtle Design—geared towards online commercial enterprises. He signed up with Toptal in order to expand his horizons and to access a broader range of potentially interesting projects to hone his skills on.

PHPCSSYAMLSymfonyGitFlowApacheSQLMySQLFreeBSDjQueryREST APIsJSONGitHTML5Sublime TextXamppZFS

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Sublime Text, FreeBSD, Windows

The most amazing...

...project I'm working on is an open source, schema based, generic API SDK builder.

Work Experience

Partner | Senior Developer

1997 - PRESENT
Turtle Design
  • Created an eCommerce system from scratch, complete with full stock management and accounting facilities on the back-end.
  • Created a hotel booking system that, before being sold to TUI Plc, was the largest independent London hotel booking site.
  • Created a forum/help site for the British Telecom intranet in Perl (with the restriction that no external modules could be used), that, for a while, was the most used feature on their system.
  • Helped create and maintain a mortgage procurement system, including complying with the stringent regulatory requirements such systems are subject to.
  • Worked on dozens of website projects for clients ranging from a family renting out chalets on their farm to subcontracted development to support advertising campaigns for Pepsi and Budweiser.
Technologies: Perl, Angular, CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Symfony, PHP

Royal Mail PHP SDK

https://github.com/turtledesign/royalmail-php/
A PHP SDK I developed for connecting with the UK Royal Mail shipping API. It was written with the plan to extract the core functionality to create a generic API SDK builder, with connection specifications created using YAML recipes. Custom connectors and validation or structuring methods will also be a feature. It is written to allow TDD for the YAML recipe files, with comprehensive self-verification. The wiki page in the above GitHub link includes some starter documentation.

Languages

CSS, HTML, YAML, PHP, JavaScript, SQL, Sass, HTML5, CSS3, CoffeeScript, XML, Bash Script, Python, Ruby, Perl, SCSS

Frameworks

Symfony, Angular, Symfony 2, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ember.js, Bootstrap 3, Scrapy, PEAR, PHPUnit, CodeIgniter, Silex, AngularJS, Kohana, Compass

Libraries/APIs

Expedia API, Doctrine, jQuery, REST APIs, jQuery DataTables, RequireJS, OpenSSL, Backbone.js, PayPal API, jQuery Plugins, jQuery UI, AngularUI

Tools

Adobe Lightroom, Git, Apache, Exim4, Sublime Text, Sentry, Zabbix, Gulp, Composer, Redmine, PhpMyAdmin, Adobe Photoshop, NPM, ClamAV, Bower, Vim Text Editor, Hudson, Grunt, Travis CI, SpamAssassin, Google Analytics

Paradigms

RESTful Development, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Database Design

Platforms

FreeBSD, Windows, XAMPP, Joomla, WordPress

Storage

JSON, MySQL, Elasticsearch, CouchDB, MongoDB, MySQL/MariaDB, MySQLi

Other

GitFlow, APIs, Semantic UI, ZFS, Gitolite, ProFTPD, PHPDoc, BIND9, Dovecot, Angular Bootstrap, WordPress Plugins, SFTP, WordPress Multisite, Server Administration, FTP, PSD Slicing, HTML Email, Back-end, SDKs

2015 - 2021

Bachelor of Science with Honors in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Modelling

Open University - United Kingdom

1990 - 1993

Higher National Diploma (HND) Degree in Music Performance

University of the Highlands and Islands - Perth, Scotland

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