Matthew Dingley

Google

During the summer of 2009, I was lucky enough to spend 3 months working as a Web Developer Intern in the Learning Technology department. I took an initial project idea, engaged with the Google community to find out exactly what was needed and designed an interface that was regarded by a number of engineers as "one of the best internal applications they have seen".

I was then responsible, along with another intern, for building the application with Javascript and Python on Google's App Engine architecture. Google's development process greatly strengthened my Javascript coding skills as well as giving me experience in communicating on a regular basis with stakeholders distributed around the world in a large company structure.

University of Cambridge

I am currently in my final year of a 3 year Computer Science undergraduate degree. The course covers material across a wide spectrum of subjects including theory, systems, applications and professionalism. I led my second year group project and was also responsible for the programming of a SVG based diagram editor in Javascript for the Sakai learning platform.

My final year project revolves around distributing biological simulations across a high power computer cluster network. The aim is to investigate network distribution topologies that result in the fastest processing of results. Unlike Google's MapReduce, the system retrieves initial results from the stochastic simulation immediately and places them into a graph as fast as possible (to allow scientists to see rough results quickly in order to minimise wastage of supercomputer resources). My project is being coded in Java and has to cope with a massively distributed environment.

It's not all work though. Whilst at university, I've been the president of the Queens' College Photography Society for 1 ½ years, spent a year on the university water polo squad, cycled 100's of miles in my spare time and dabbled in rowing, kayaking and ski racing! To keep me busy, I've also organised 2 annual photography exhibitions and a successful college computer science alumni dinner.

Task Tracker Project

I started working with Magnitude in Harrogate during my school work experience in 2003. Since then, I continued to regularly work for them during school holidays, becoming the longest serving member of a highly creative, double Webby Award winning team.

During my gap year, I was in charge of developing a hugely successful task management system allowing Magnitude to manage work submitted online from clients based all over the world. This gave me a great experience in managing a large project with a large number of stakeholders from the initial requirements and specification stage through to designing, building, testing and deploying it.

Leavers Book

I designed and built an online leavers book system for my sixth-form which has been used by students to send well over 50,000 messages to each other and leaving them with a book full of memories to treasure. One of the main factors of its success has been its clean and intuitive interface.

The project itself had to be put together quickly but solidly enough to cope with the constant barrage of hits by students at key times during the day. The system has been successful enough that it has now been used for 4 years in a row.

Café Rouge / Bella Italia

Working for Magnitude, I was lead backend developer of websites for a number of local and high profile national clients including Café Rouge, Bella Italia and a PC World microsite as well as advising and guiding the architecture of a number of projects for the international restaurant chain Wagamama.

Whilst working at Magnitude, I was responsible for running my own projects, meeting high pressure deadlines and introducing the latest technologies to both the team and clients. The job has also regularly involved helping clients personally and dealing with ongoing maintenance.

Other Work

My first experience of commercial web development was running a website to distribute a number of small PHP scripts I had written on a free for non-commercial use basis when I was 14. These scripts were used by thousands of websites around the world in over fifteen languages. Paying customers included the US Government's National Weather Service and various other organisations. During this time I also built a number of successful websites for local businesses including the Langdale Dental Practice.

As well as this, as a student I spent a total of seven weeks work experience at Harrogate Theatre over three consecutive summers (2001, 2002 & 2003) involving all areas of technical theatre including the high pressure sound technician job during a professional youth show.