1. James Ascroft-Leigh
Experienced Python Developer, London, UK | jwal@jwal.me.uk
Experienced Python Developer, London, UK - A highly experienced software engineer specialising in
Python and open source technologies. I’ve worked across the stack, delivering both frontend and
backend projects, and supporting production systems using a number of technologies. My work has
been used commercially by many companies, including a top-5 technology company, 3 of the top-10
pharmaceutical companies, and passed the scrutiny of regulatory agencies.
I’m currently looking for interesting projects involving research and analysis, and a chance to bring
my knowledge and problem solving skills to a team that shares a common vision.
Experience
Imperial College London IBM Cmed Technology Renshaw Bay
MEng Computing Storage Software Clinical Research Asset Management
2000 - 2004 2003 2005 - 2015 2015
Skills
Python coding Distributed system design
o Over 10 years of experience
o Objected-oriented and functional styles
o Unit testing
o Socket and HTTP REST protocols
o Caching, databases and messaging
o Multi-master synchronization
User interaction design Web application development
o Wire-framing and low-fidelity prototyping
o Evaluation and user-satisfaction testing
o Conceptual, design and user models
o Django and Flask
o Javascript and Jquery
o Backbone and Bootstrap
Linux system administration Functional testing
o Bash shell scripting and interactive use
o Ubuntu packaging
o Apache, Nginx and Postgresql configuration
o Development of custom test harnesses
o Design of semi-automated test strategies
o Selenium, Behave, Saucelabs, Jenkins
Requirements analysis Technical writing and documentation
o Stakeholder workshops and interviews
o Use case and scenario descriptions
o Functional specification
o Clear writing style
o Effective use of diagrams and screenshots
o Reverse engineering of models
PDF subject archives
Software Engineer and Systems Analyst at Cmed Technology | Delivered 2014
I was the primary designer and developer for this challenging project to deliver high quality PDF
archives from a clinical research database. The documents could sometimes exceed 4000 pages and
therefore needed appropriate optimization, bookmarks and hyperlinks. They are used for long term
archive and need to meet the high quality requirements of regulatory agencies.
I worked on this project from a one-paragraph business objective through to the first client
deliveries for regulatory submission. I was responsible for the design of the PDFs, the design of the
software, the requirements analysis, highly automated functional testing, documentation and a large
proportion of the implementation. The implementation used technologies including Python, Flask,
HTML, CSS3 and Postgresql.

2. Maintenance of an investment strategy analysis platform
Software Developer at Renshaw Bay | Delivered 2015 and ongoing
At Renshaw Bay I have been working on the platform that is used to update prices and perform a
detailed risk breakdown. This model can be applied to current and proposed positions in financial
markets. My deliverables here have included:
o Extending Cython wrappers for a custom quantitative analysis library to support new
security types.
o Standardizing the reporting of multiple security types in the column-store analysis database.
o Implementing an alternative pricing model based on an Excel VBA prototype.
Web refresh of a clinical research database
Software Engineer at Cmed Technology | Delivered 2014 and 2015
I joined this project when it was moving from the initial development stage into being made ready
for production. The majority of the code had been written and designed by a single developer up
until this point. The project had an enormous scope so I was able to make valuable deliveries in a
number of areas including:
o Bringing automatic testing coverage up to 100% (!)
o Comprehensive design review with short and long term recommendations
o Security hardening based on automatic penetration testing (Burp suite) results
o Integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory and Google Open ID Connect for login
o Synchronization with external databases
o Implementation of a web UI for task-oriented workflow
Petabyte capacity testing of a storage appliance
Industrial Trainee at IBM, Hursley, UK | Delivered 2003
As an industrial trainee in the storage software division at IBM, I delivered a system for simulating
high capacity storage arrays in software. This imitation of a large SAN was used as part of the
functional testing of a storage virtualization appliance called the SAN volume controller. By using an
imitation SAN we were able to test the appliance at petabyte scale and resolve any functional issues
at low cost before moving on to the physical test.
M.Eng Computing undergraduate studies
M.Eng Computing undergraduate at Imperial College London | Graduated 2004
I studied in in the undergraduate masters computing programme at Imperial for 4 years. In addition
to several interesting and challenging modules I became keenly interested in the open source and
free software movements at this time.
Courses included advanced issues in object-oriented programming, distributed algorithms, models of
concurrent computation, network security, advanced computer architecture, simulation and
modelling and software engineering methods. Project work included an Eclipse plugin (java), a multi-
media group project (C++ and PHP) and an Elite-style game (PL/pgSQL!).