Senior .NET software developer, Umbraco Certified Master and Umbraco MVP specialising in Azure based in Bristol, UK
With a positive attitude, communicating well with customers and colleagues, Joe is an experienced full stack .NET developer with extensive knowledge of Umbraco CMS and the Azure platform. He is enthused by building accessible, quality solutions and pushing the boundaries of what a project can achieve.
Having built and architected Umbraco and cloud solutions over the past decade, working within digital agencies and software consultancies for the hospitality, data, finance, start-up, charity and public sectors, his experience is varied. With a particular interest in accessibility and open source, regularly speaking on both subjects, Joe has been rewarded with an Umbraco MVP award since 2021.
Joe's currently part of the team of friendly, award-winning experts working with our clients to create flawless Umbraco and Azure solutions at Bump.
The Community Advisory Board was formed in August 2024 with the aim of helping figure out how best to interact and communicate together in the virtual space: both for existing community members, and for people just discovering Umbraco.
I'm passionate about open web technologies, discoverability of content and fighting link rot. All of which I believe will prove important for the future of the Community site and replacement for Our. I see great value in technology communities - the Umbraco Community in particular! - and I'd like to continue to do my bit to help the Umbraco Community flourish.
The Core Collaborators encourage and manage the community's pull-requests to the CMS. The team is passionate about assisting and supporting contributors.
Joe worked with the development team at Radley Yeldar to support and improve Umbraco websites for a range of clients.
Working with a team at Altius, Joe is helping deliver the web portal in a data platform project with a tight deadline. The project is an Umbraco CMS based solution with advanced JavaScript and numerous API integrations. The role involves working closely with the rest of the team at Altius, leading a small team of developers, collaborating with the third-party design team and liaising with the client.
The role was largely remote even before the COVID-19 lockdown and Joe has been making good use of remote-working tools to keep in touch with other team members and provide up to date progress reports.
At Etch, Joe has experienced life in a fast-paced digital agency handling numerous ongoing projects of varying sizes.
He has operated as lead developer on expansive agile projects for large financial clients; worked as a part of a team; and individually on a range of clients particularly in the hospitality, marine, eCommerce and finance sectors with equal emphasis on green-field and maintenance work as well as systems architecture.
Joe’s time at Etch has increased his exposure to Umbraco, .NET and Azure and introduced extensive knowledge of .NET Core, micro-services.
He has experience of managing development teams, assisting junior developers and managing an intern.
The role at a consultancy allowed Joe to spend more time working on a wider range of products and with newer technologies. He began to have more responsibility when it comes to project management as well as communicating with existing and prospective clients by email, phone and in person in meetings and presentation environments.
Working at Profound, as well as working with ASP.NET MVC, Joe had the chance to work with many technologies including: numerous Microsoft Azure services; CMS packages Umbraco, Sitecore and Kentico; Adobe PhoneGap/Apache Cordova; and new HTML5 and CSS3 features. He was also given the challenge of reforming front end development within the company, looking at developing their CSS and Sass/SCSS methodology and bringing in some JavaScript guidelines.
Late in 2015 he was given the opportunity to mentor of a newly employed graduate developer which has given him the rewarding opportunity to teach C# and JavaScript.
Profound worked primarily within the eCommerce and financial markets.
While at Furlong, Joe was exposed to in-house development and continuous improvement of the systems developed by the company within the education and data management sectors. The systems used included Windows Forms desktop applications as well as ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications with a lot of exposure to complex T-SQL queries and Microsoft SQL database management.
I had the pleasure of employing Joe not long after he completed his apprenticeship. He immediately sought out tough challenges, leveraged the benefits of the Azure platform early, focusing on both the micro-level detail and stepping back to explore the bigger picture / what the system or customer using the system is trying to achieve.
It's fair to say Joe is a tenacious developer. He demonstrates technical intensity, along with a challenger approach to push for the best technical solutions possible, all whilst being personable, amiable, and open to different ideas.
Joe's work spanned Azure SQL Database, ASP.NET web applications, through to a real passion for structured, framework based front-end development and the PaaS infrastructure design behind them all, earning him, in my opinion, a very genuine "Full Stack" moniker.
Joe is an experienced full stack .NET developer with an extensive knowledge of Umbraco CMS, which was used as part of the project we worked on together. He implemented complex integrations with other Azure components and was able to deliver a robust solution both in terms of performance, usability and accessibility. While mostly focused on the Umbraco implementation, he was able to pick up additional responsibilities when required such as leading less senior developers in his area of expertise and learn new technologies required by the overall solution. He worked closely with the business and the designers, proposing solutions and quickly adapting to continuously changing UI/UX specifications.
In addition to the above, Joe's positive personality makes him a great colleague and one of the key members of any team that requires his technical skills.
I worked as a Product Manager with Joe, in delivering a statistics website for a large government department. Joe was the lead front-end developer, shaping the solution, delivering it under tight deadlines, and working closely with the client. The public-facing website has now been live for 3 months, with little to no issues, hundreds of thousands of visits per month, and a delighted client. This outcome is testament to the high quality work Joe delivered.
As a product manager & scrum master, working with Joe is incredibly easy. Joe is able to convert high-level, often unclear, requirements into a well-defined user story, including clear technical steps and realistic estimates. Joe is then highly effective at delivering on requirements, producing high-quality outputs in record time. A recurrent ‘problem’ for me was keeping Joe busy, as he would get through his workload very fast.
Joe has extensive knowledge of government digital services standards, including accessibility and usability. This was key in our public sector project, and Joe was central in shaping our product to produce an accessible website, in line with GDS standards.
Joe works well with the client, advising on technical options in a confident, professional, yet friendly communication style. The client often specifically asked to speak with him, knowing he would provide the best approach to solve an issue. Joe also led a small team of developers effectively, setting the technical direction and pace for the team. As a team-member, Joe is positive, easy to work with, and has an infectiously good mood. It has a been a pleasure to work with him, and I hope I will again!
I worked with Joe over a number of years and found him to be an excellent developer. He has the ability to take a brief, a comment or a simple sketched drawing and extrapolate that out into a working product or feature, which is my view is a great talent to have. You can't always have a full tech spec available to build from.
He's also great with clients, and on numerous occasions I've fronted him up in all sorts of situations, some nice, some tricky, and he's always coped extremely well with these pressures.
I really can't fault his dedication, skill and willingness to push the boundaries of what we want to achieve. He's also a kind, friendly and happy person to work with, which goes a long way in this world.
I would certainly recommend him to others.