Personal Details
Name: Craig Wardman BSc. (Hons.)
Date of Birth: 07/05/1984
Nationality: English, British
Work Experience
Mar 2010: - Current:
I am now back working at Kinetic Worldwide as a senior developer using ASP.NET in VB and C#. In order to fulfill some internal projects I am now also doing development in Silverlight using RIA Services and Entity Framework. Alongside this, I am getting more involved with supporting the overall development process in terms of design and system architecture, supporting a development team, aswel as providing expertise in key areas such as software architecture and database/code performance tuning. In addition, I continue to support and expand the HelpFindMeA.co.uk website in my capacity as IT Director.
July 2008 – Mar 2010: -
During this period I was working at WMG as a software developer, mainly building web based applications for external clients using ASP.NET 3.5 (VB and C#). Since joining WMG I have learned a lot about applying software development techniques in various real world scenarios, speeding up the development process using a code generator, as well as learning lots about the world of SEO and how it can be applied in ASP.NET development. I have progressed my n-tier architecture into a very robust, scalable and customisable code base which I have written in C#. I have worked more and more with the new features of .NET 3.5 such as extension methods and LINQ. I have worked on several large complex projects for external clients with several integrations, as well as building internal tools such as a desktop timesheets system and a system to mange HR. In addition to this I worked on a project of my own, HelpFindMeA.co.uk, as developer/IT Director; building the site, database and backend services.
Mar 2007 – July 2008: -
At Kinetic Worldwide I worked primarily in ASP.NET/VB.NET, building web based applications, services and occasionally desktop applications. I was responsible for my own projects, managing timescales, liaising with staff, designing and building solutions for in-house needs. Initially I did my development in Visual Studio 2005 (using .NET framework 2.0, AJAX Extensions and ASMX web services), but then moved onto working in Visual Studio 2008 (.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF services). I started to build my applications using ‘n-tier architecture’ and so gained experience designing and building modularised, scalable applications which provided segregated code for data access, business logic and user interface functionality. I also gained more experience designing and building relational database back-ends for my applications, which I built using SQL Server 2005.
Sep 2005 – Mar 2007: -
While working at Adtec I mainly worked with a database/RAD development environment called Equinox (by Compsoft). This meant learning a new language (the in-built ‘Equinox scripting language’. On a day to day basis the majority of my work involved writing imports/exports for various file formats including CSV, XML, fixed length etc. It was in my time at Adtec that I was also first introduced to development with VB.NET. As the company required new products which were better suited to an SQL backend, I was given the chance to learn and then use my .NET development skills to build a bespoke client/server archiving and data mining tool. As my role at Adtec was more database oriented I learnt a lot about designing relational and hierarchical databases and got a lot of hands on experience using SQL Server 2000/2005 in creating and managing databases and performance tweaks such as creating indexes.
Key Skills
.NET (2.0/3.0/3.5/4.0)
I have been working in .NET for several years now. I have become habituated to its methodologies and feel comfortable developing any application. I have developed both desktop and web based applications, using VB.NET / C# / ASP.NET languages.
SQL
I have extensive knowledge of creating and maintaining databases in Microsoft SQL Server, including creating users, roles, tables, indexes, stored procedures and setting permissions. I have knowledge of using simple and complex SQL statements, both DDL and DML. Having been interested in the performance tuning aspects of MS-SQL I have learned a great deal on how to optimizate databases and related code. I have also briefly used Oracle and MySQL.
HTML / CSS / JavaScript / VBScript / AJAX / Silverlight
I have built several websites over the past years and also continue to build them in the .NET environment. I am a proficient coder of HTML and like to stick to using W3C compliant code. Although I tend to avoid clientside code, I use JavaScript especially with the revival of AJAX. As well as using the Microsoft AJAX component library I also use custom JavaScript to connect to web services for asynchronous interaction. More recently I have started working with Silverlight via RIA Services, although this is not a preferred development tool.
SOA/Web services/WCF
I have built SOA applications using WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) for use with AJAX client-side code and also secured for business to business communications. I have used WCF data contracts to serialise proprietary classes and have also used XML serialisation for transferring binary files between servers. I now feel proficient at creating SOA applications using WCF.
N-Tier Architecture
After discovering the benefits of n-tier architecture several years ago I have progressed my own architecture code base through several stages and have finally reached a highly robust, scalable and easy to implement de-coupled n-tier architecture which I have written in C# with templates for CodeSmith.
C++ / Visual C++
C++ was essentially my first language and is where I retain my object oriented roots. I used it mostly in my final year project at University, where I used Microsoft Visual C++ and the Win32 API to create a GUI application using Win32 API.
Visual Basic
I used Visual Basic predominantly throughout my college studies. I have developed many applications/utilities in this language, such as a remake of the TV game show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’, a chat server relay application and a multimedia file browsing utility.
ASP
I have used classic ASP for several websites before the dawn of ASP.NET. I have made a photo gallery site for my personal use, as well as a dynamic credit/debit card payment system while at Adtec.
x86 Assembly and Win32 API
Due to my interest in ‘Windows Internals’ I have an in-depth knowledge of the Win32 API and how Windows applications work ‘under the hood’. I have also learnt to read/write assembly mnemonics, a little in macro driven assemblers, such as MASM but mostly directly in executable files using an assembler/dissembler. I have also written chunks of assembly code to integrate into C++ applications.
Equinox
I have used Compsoft Equinox extensively in the past for creating databases, GUIs, reports and scripting exports and imports.
Misc
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 + SourceSafe and Team Foundation Server
• Microsoft IIS
• XML
• ADO (ADODB / ODBC)
• Regular Expressions
• OOP (Object Oriented Programming)
• Lifecycle Methodologies (Waterfall/DSDM)
Education
2004 - 2005: Bradford University
2002 - 2004: Bradford College, Higher Education.
2000 - 2002: Bradford College, Further Education.
1995 - 2000: Royds Secondary School, Oulton, Leeds.
Qualifications
1st Class BSc (hons.)
Software Development Applications
Higher National Diploma
Software Engineering
AVCE
Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Misc
• ISEB Intermediate Certificate in Enterprise and Solution Architecture
• City & Guilds C++ (Level 3)
• City & Guilds Java (Level 3)
- 11x GCSE's:
Interests
My interests include most aspects of IT, especially programming, performance optimization and security/reverse engineering. I am a member of an IT help website, experts-exchange.com, where I like to help other users when I can, offering my IT knowledge and expertise and continually learning from my fellow experts. Outside of IT, I enjoy attending Taekwondo martial arts classes, for which I am in regular attendance and am now black belt grade. I am also a big car/driving enthusiast; from F1 to Sunday drives or organised skills days to Santa Pod, I enjoy watching and taking part in automotive activities and completed my IAM advanced test in 2009. I also enjoy other activities including 5-a-side football and photography.
Employment History
• Kinetic - Senior Developer (Mar 2010-Current)
• WMG - Software Developer (July 2008-Mar 2010)
• Kinetic - Software Developer (Mar 2007-July 2008)
• Adtec Software - Software Developer (Sep 2005-Mar 2007)