Hi, I'm Chester

A full-stack developer who likes building things properly.

Me smiling in a green herringbone suit
Current position
Lead Full Stack Developer at Tangent
Everyday stack
Next.js · PHP · Symfony · .Net · Docker · Kubernetes
Education
BSc Computer Science, Newcastle (First)
Open to
Lead / Senior roles, UK remote

About

“I build across the stack, from Next.js on Vercel to PHP on Kubernetes. I choose the cloud services for new projects and optimise existing ones to cut costs. I work with clients directly to scope the work, estimate it and plan it into sprints with the team.”

  • 6+ Years in industry building websites / webapps
  • 37 Websites and web apps released
  • 4 Cloud Platforms used for various projects
  • 8 Developers led at Tangent

Featured work

All projects

Website

Reed

2021–20265 years

A job board, storefront and marketing site for the largest family-run recruitment company. I built the Next.js front end and the Python APIs behind them, and led their maintenance and support for a number of years.

  • Next.js
  • Python
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • Contentful
  • GCP

Web app

Wishlist

2023

A application for people to create and share wishlists with their families. I created the site using Symfony with Twig templates and a Valkey caching layer to support the site with higher demand.

  • Symfony
  • PHP
  • Valkey
  • Kubernetes

Web app

SAP

2021–20254 years

A training site that allows learners and businesses to purchase training for SAP products. I worked on general maintenance as well as rewriting the entire project to modernise the underlying framework.

  • Symfony
  • React
  • Go
  • MySQL
  • RabbitMQ
  • Azure
  • Kubernetes

Website

Tangent

2020–20222 years

An agency that designs and develops experiences and digital products for enterprise. I helped maintain the site by creating new components, implementing integrations and handling content migrations.

  • Next.js
  • Contentful

Website

Brave Bison

2020

Brave Bison are a media, marketing and technology company. I worked on their marketing website by creating components with various scroll, hover and click animations as well as overall security maintenance.

  • WordPress
  • ACF

An internal system used by a window-cleaning business to track their customer addresses, rounds, cleans, staff and payments. I approached the company to offer a solution to modernise their workflow and reduce administration costs.

  • Symfony
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Kubernetes

Experience

  1. 2020–present

    Lead Developer at Tangent (opens in a new tab), Newcastle

    Lead multiple accounts and completed many projects from the initial client requirements through to estimation, sprint planning and finally go-live.

    • Integrated with several Content Management Systems such as Contentful, Umbraco and ContentStack
    • Optimised client's cloud platforms to ensure the best fitting services were used to save on cost without compromising performance.
    • Introduced Sentry to the team and rolled it out to highlight issues that were previously hidden to developers.
    • Next.js
    • .Net
    • Symfony
    • PHP
    • Python
    • MySQL
    • Docker
    • Kubernetes
    • Azure
    • GCP
    • Vercel
  2. 2019

    Full Stack Developer at clean-my-windows (opens in a new tab), Grantham

    Built the internal operations platform the business runs on, in a team of two.

    • Saved over 50% of weekly admin time by tracking every clean, round sheet and customer account in one system.
    • In daily use since September 2019, and estimated to save a further 50 hours on tax-return figures.
    • Worked directly with the director, shipping in short iterations against their specification.
    • Symfony
    • PHP
    • MySQL
    • Kubernetes
  3. 2018

    Full Stack Developer at Arbicon (opens in a new tab), Peterborough

    Rebuilt the company website to optimise for performance and SEO best practices.

    • Rewrote the site in a three-week pair-programming project, improving load times and search rankings.
    • Introduced a custom CMS to allow staff to manage the site's content themselves.
    • Configured and maintained the underlying services to ensure they are kept up to date with the latest vulnerability patches.
    • Symfony
    • PHP
    • Valkey
    • Kubernetes

Technologies

Languages

  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript Python
  • Bash
  • HTML
  • CSS

Frameworks

  • Next.js
  • React
  • Symfony
  • .NET
  • Twig

Data

  • MySQL
  • Elastic Search
  • GraphQL
  • Redis
  • Solr

Infrastructure

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • nginx
  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI/CD
  • Linux
  • Azure
  • GCP
  • OVH
  • Vercel

Training, conferences and certifications

  • Certification

    Umbraco Professional

    2026

  • Certification

    Claude Certified Developer - Foundations

    2026

  • Training

    People Management

    2024

  • Conference

    React Advanced

    2023

  • Certification

    Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

    2023

Education

  • 2017–2020

    BSc Computer Science

    Newcastle University

    Result
    First Class Honours
  • 2015–2017

    A levels

    Sleaford Joint Sixth Form

    Computer Science
    A
    Electronics
    A
    Extended Project
    A*
    Maths
    C