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John Callaghan
ABOUT ME
I'm a nerdy generalist and excitable problem solver. I'm excited and fascinated by all things digital. An avid gamer and fan of classic sci-fi literature.
I'm a confident, experienced translator of 'nerd' to 'normal'. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, with knowledge of development, design and an expertise in facilitation. I've spent over a decade working at SMEs pushing for innovation and I've learned success doesn't come from the tasks in the job spec.
I like to be very honest - I can bite my lip when I need to, but I thrive in an environment where honesty is valued even when it's not what we want to hear. I'm a firm believer of 'fail fast' and I think every brainstorm meeting needs a devil's advocate.
EXPERIENCE
I led a team of software specialists delivering public sector innovation projects with a mix of agency work and SaaS products. As the manager of a small team this role was incredibly varied.
As project manager I was the primary point of contact for all client relationships and used my experience in human centred design and facilitation to underpin all co-creation projects. I established formal processes for Agile project management and developed unique workflows for delivering innovation within the public sector that recognised the need for traditional reporting and budgeting.
I was promoted to COO, leading the transition to remote work during and following the pandemic. I was the information governance lead (SIRO) responsible for data security & governance and achieving NHS DSPT certification.
Alongside management duties I would actively deliver:
- UX Design / Co-creation / Engagement
- Frontend Development - React/Next
- Backend - AWS deployment, IAMs, etc
- Writing - bids, tenders, branding, marketing
- Management of operational tools such as Git, and development of bespoke operational tools such as an AI business analysis reporting platform.
Providing public sector engagement on highways safety speed reduction campaign using human centred design to refine public services and deliver behaviour change campaigns.
During this role I developed an expertise in event coordination and facilitation leading workshops and conferences for public sector clients.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
I delivered various React Native mobile apps for public sector clients. I held the Project Manager title for all mobile app projects and was the primary point of contact for clients. All products were recommissioned each year with glowing feedback from clients.
A syndicated content management system to improve large-scale public information sharing in the NHS.
This project idea originated from human centred design consultancy I delivered for NHS Liverpool that highlighted communication risks in Primary Care.
Damibu Feeds was commissioned by the NHS for all GP practices in Liverpool during/following the pandemic.
A passion project of mine, I secured SBRI Phase 1 & 2 investment to explore how NHS information could be improved for people of different cultures using technology & AI to improve confidence & uptake.
I Project Managed this £550k+ value R&D project, including management of external subcontractors & stakeholders.
EDUCATION
I completed this apprenticeship course as a professional development opportunity because the business analysis techniques align well with the human centred design and software development goals at Damibu. It provided a broader understanding of business analysis methodologies help support general business operations.
During my time working for a social care business support organisation I began learning more about business operations, particularly the crossover between private sector, social enterprise and third sector.
I passed this course which provided a varied overview of all aspects of computing but my focus at the time was on hardware and network engineering.
At A-Level I studied a double award in computing. GCSE: 3xA's, 3xB's and 3xC's (English A, Maths B).
SKILLS
I am a generalist, having worked across all disciplines within a software company to some level.
I was the primary line-manager at Damibu for 9 years leading the team through various agency projects and product development lifecycles.
I have experience of public speaking, pitching for funding both for large audiences and on camera.
I can confidently deliver Agile, I developed a tailored project management approach after recognising our public sector clients desired the benefits of Agile but were often using traditional waterfall methods within their own organisations.
Trained through IDEO & Design Council I've coordinated, and facilitated co-creation for products & services for public sector.
I recently completed an apprenticeship course in Business Analysis, having used BA tools for various client projects.
Strong frontend skills with React/Next, (Svelte & Flutter for personal projects). Prefer typescript/node. Good understanding of AWS. Moderate GCS. Good familiarity with Appstoreconnect & PlayConsole.
I've successfully secured funding through various bids and tenders as both the lead applicant and a subcontractor.
I'm familiar with Figma & the Adobe suite to demonstrate concepts & ideas but have no formal training.
REFERENCES
Contact information can be provided on request.
Dave Burrows, Damibu, Chief Executive Officer
Additionally I can provide client testimonials & I invite you to browse my LinkedIn and message any connections as I hope they will say nice things.
Portfolio
Frontend for the SmartContext product delivered as a 'chatbot style' interface. Strictly limited to commonJS as it was needed to be a client-side SDK built within a much larger, complex lambda function. I created the user interface, interactions & refactored elements of the lambda to improve the development & deployment experience/practices.
Damibu Feeds implementation within Umbraco for an NHS client. Due to their internal deployment processes a traditional plugin/package would significantly slow their delivery & introduce human-error risk. I developed a content syndication solution that could be implemented exclusively through MacroViews.
Obvious I guess, but visually I wanted something that directly replicates a paper CV. The website itself is self-hosted on a raspberry pi using ddns with Cloudflare for the domain &Nginx Proxy Manager for the reverse proxy SSL.
A portfolio website for a multi-medium artist. This was an interesting project because the visuals were the highest priority. As a personal goal I wanted to deliver the highest possible lighthouse score and leverage Next SSR for fast loads. A key element of this project was transitioning over to a more robust & dynamic CMS that could better curate the multiple types of art/writing required, using custom API calls for data retrieval.
Self-hosting this website created a unique challenge whereby the media assets provided by the CMS would be use problematic internal urls. to address this I created an image proxy within Next, which also allowed me to manipulate the meta-data attached to images where necessary making it possible to achieve subtle feature additions - such as artwork always being positioned and sized for the users screen to ensure art is always above the fold and never cut off-screen.
I was married in my wife's hometown in Poland, because of the logistical challenges for many guests I wanted to create a little webpage. My wife being an artist we wanted to match the website with the overarching theme of the wedding, and I was keen for the site to have a dramatic and unique user experience and of course be multi-lingual.
At the time, I was using Github pages to host my websites for free, so this project uses Eleventy and Github actions to generate and publish the pages.
An older version of this portfolio site in Svelte, I had an idea for a basic css animation to emulate a the pages of a CV falling onto a desk. This was an exploration of svelte, and what is possible in css. My favourite bit is the tape on the profile pic - it's basic css but visually works nicely.
Full UI/UX design for a SaaS product including a centralised payment processing & account management interface which needed to allow for product/brand switching. Design mock-ups created in Figma. Prototyped in Next.js so that React components & css modules could be provided to developers.
As part of a wider R&D project I was responsible for designing a user interface for language translators using Damibu Feeds. Co-created with professionals some mockups were created in Figma but the final UI was created through iteration. I was responsible for coordinating, facilitating and reporting on co-creation.