Hey Laravel team,
I'm Josh! 👋

I’m Josh, a 26-year-old Full-stack Laravel Developer living in North Wales, UK, with my partner and our two dogs, Nala and Belle. They love long walks, sleeping, and jumping in puddles, which is common here due to the dull weather. I've been working in the music industry now for over 7 years and I think it's time for a new challenge!

Josh

That's me!

Why me?

I’ll just cut straight to the chase. Here’s why I think I’d be a great addition to the Laravel team:

  • I love working with Laravel, VueJS, InertiaJS and TailwindCSS. I have extensive experience with MySQL and find great satisfaction in optimizing queries and making speed improvements.
  • I love working in the front-end and back-end and understand the trade-off between delivering a great user experience and maintaining a performant application.
  • I have experience with AWS, specifically EC2, RDS, S3, and CloudFront. I’ve also used services like MediaConvert and DataSync. I’m comfortable with the command line and have experience with setting up and configuring servers. I've also managed on-premise servers and have some experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
  • I thrive in remote work environments, understand the importance of good communication, and consistently deliver high-quality work on time.
  • I love to talk with customers and understand their needs. I’ve spent countless hours on support calls and have a knack for explaining complex technical concepts in a way that’s easy to understand.
  • I use Notion to organize my life and work and have a strong belief in documenting everything. I’ve created a design system for Colonize Media within Notion and have written extensive documentation for our platform which is used by the team daily.
  • I’m really detailed oriented and believe in sweating the small stuff because it’s crucial. Users are central to everything we do, and systems should be as frictionless as possible.
  • I love getting my hands dirty, whether it’s creating a front-end design framework or troubleshooting logs. I’m not afraid to dive into the unknown and figure things out.
  • I’m self-motivated and love to learn and I prefer to figure things out independently before reaching out for help.

My Experience

I’ve spent the past several years in the music industry, most recently as a Lead Developer at Colonize Media. I was the first developer hire and transitioned the company from reliance on third-party systems to a custom-built in-house platform using Vue, TailwindCSS, and more recently, Inertia. This platform streamlines client onboarding, operational processes such as deliveries to stores like Spotify and Apple Music, and financial and compliance tasks.

I’ve used tools such as Laravel Forge and Envoyer to configure infrastructure but have also spent countless hours searching through AWS documentation to configure services such as MediaConvert and DataSync as well as managing various private connections to our VPCs. I've led projects involving complex data migrations, such as moving from MySQL to SingleStore, implemented industry standards like DDEX and CWR and integrated with various third-party providers. My role also included designing pipelines for processing daily stream and revenue data and reimplementing the front-end using a design system I developed which sped up the process of building new pages.

In addition to my technical skills, I have a strong background in client support, writing solid documentation, and handling diverse tasks, from preparing data for legal purposes to optimizing client onboarding processes.

Personal Ventures

I’ve also been working on a side-venture called Spare Music which I co-founded in 2019. It’s a bootstrapped and profitable distribution company supporting a few hundred indie artists and labels to get their music onto distribution stores. I often use this as a playground to try out new technology and tools and just have fun! I’ve also learnt a bunch of stuff from filling out 1042 tax forms, handling copyright and infringement claims and providing support to people across the globe.

Outside of work

  • I'm a huge fan of Lego. I love their architecture sets and have a few of them in my office. Also a fan of their modular sets, I have everything from the Jazz Club to the Bookshop.
  • I play the piano; I’m classically trained but much prefer playing pop songs. My favorite artist is Taylor Swift. I was supposed to see her in concert last year, but a house move got in the way. I’m still not over it.
  • I love to read business and personal finance books. I’ve read everything from Rework to Atomic Habits.
  • I also like to watch Netflix, specifically The Office—the US version is better than the UK version and you can't convince me otherwise!
  • I love going to the cinema, enjoy sweet popcorn (not a fan of butter popcorn) and Dairy Milk chocolate – specifically Caramel Nibbles.

  • Beach walks are my favorite, especially at sunset. I love the sound of the waves and the smell of the sea. The dogs love it too!

  • Pineapple on Pizza is my thing.
Dogs

The dogs, Nala and Belle.

Dogs

A snippet of the Lego collection.

There’s so much more I wish I could talk about, but hopefully this is enough to start a conversation. I look forward to hearing from you.

- Josh