Matt Platts

Full-Stack Developer & DevOps Engineer

Banking & Security experienced. Download CV.

About Me


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I've been a full-stack web developer, software engineer, and programmer since 1998, with humble beginnings writing games on a ZX81 (later an Oric-1) from 1983.

Initially specializing in bespoke e-commerce and content management systems based on my own platform, I later moved into banking and cyber security environments. I'm also experienced as a Team leader and Project manager.

I'm currently based between Gerrards Cross, near London, UK, and Silicon Valley, California, as a senior software and DevOps engineer for global cybersecurity leaders Symantec (now a part of Broadcom), a job I love.

Alongside all the standard web development work, gained through years contracting for agencies alongside my own projects (some of which have two decades of development behind them now), I've been involved in a number of interesting projects beyond basic web development including writing frameworks from scratch (in Perl and PHP), writing PHP language extensions in C, and creating my own templating language and parser which I have implemented in both perl and PHP, although I am now more focussed on Python.

Since 2016, I have been involved with DevOps using Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, CI/CD, etc.


Skills


Case Studies and Career Highlights

Some more in depth stories from my career over the years can be found here.

A few code samples can be found in here too along with a few choice links to github repos.


Career History

A complete career history from 1997 to the present day can be found here.


Featured Project: JavaScript Pacman Game

My JavaScript Pacman game from 1999 had a rewrite when I was between jobs in 2016, I'm still pleased with this as it's actually influenced from something I tried to write in Basic on an Oric 1 computer in about 1985 - the core code still runs on the same principles I came up with back then! Right now it seems to run best on Mac (and I haven't been near a Windows machine in years to test it unfortunately!) The game has seen occasional updates, with the last being in 2019 when I added an algorithm to generate random mazes.

Play it here. Some notes I once wrote on this are here.


Music & Studio

My tech career began in the music industry in 1997 when I was working for Delerium Music. I built and ran their e-commerce site for over 10 years - the once legendary and well repsected 'Freak Emporium' - and I also managed their in house database.

My music industry work has been an interesting sideline and creative outlet - I've also worked for and run other labels, I have been a guitar and stage tech, and have been heavily involved in event promotion. I have been a part of a number of bands over the years - initially as a guitarist and later as a drummer.

I also ran 'The Metal Farm' studios in Gerrards Cross where I lived from 2007-2022. You can view my musician profile here.


Contact & Social Links

Feel free to reach out or connect: