Nathan Bamford

About Me

I am currently a full-time employed software developer with over 2 years experience. I studied Computer Science with Web Development at the University of Salford and achieved a first-class BSc/honours overall. I am extremely proud of this grade as it reflects my hard work and dedication whilst working on my university projects. Over the years of studying and working I have been building up both my technical skills and communication skills whilst working in many group projects one of which was teaching assistant work at University. I have a strong passion for learning new skills and I continually strive to improve them. I actively enjoy working in groups on large projects. My core values are centred around having strong work ethics, great learning skills as well as being kind, friendly and patient towards colleagues and for services to customers and consumers.

I am a very detail orientated person and I look to produce work to a high professional standard. I always attempt to put 100% into the work I produce and I am more than comfortable with time constraints such as deadlines or personal work gaps. I especially enjoy working as part of a team since it gives me a great sense of work ethic. I fully appreciate and am happy to take instructions and guidance from other members and am always wiling to try to provide help and support myself back to others if needed.

Furthermore, my technical abilities include having experience in front-end web development with a major understanding of HTML5, CSS and plain JS as well as moving on with popular front-end frameworks such as Vue and React as well as backend php work with Laravel and Symfony. I also pride myself on my communication abilities and teamwork since I enjoy actively working alongside other members on project and I find satisfaction in helping and being helped by other members with difficult problems. Some of my modules and personal projects involved working with other members in an AGILE method so I feel I have some experience in the workflow of an average team however I am eager to learn more.

Hobbies & Interests

Many of my hobbies and interests centre around my enjoyment with friends & family. I love playing games and big social events that involve everybody coming together and enjoying themselves. Even though I would not classify myself as an extrovert, I still appreciate the social gathering times with colleagues and friends.

I enjoy actively watching and even participating in some game events online as in the right places I can be very competitive in the gaming sense. However, I choose to hold myself at a professional standard when working and actively try to engage with the content I am producing as well as communicating with the team I am working with.

Out of university and social events, my personal interests take me towards the gadget side of computer science. I have great interests in tinkering with computer hardware as well as functional hardware programming such as Ardruino boards and raspberry pis. I enjoy the challenging aspect of gadget programming and love making small devices and taking my skills outside my comfort zone. A recent example involved programming some LED's for a custom party light show that played in time with the music that was currently playing.

Experiences

One experience that I would like to portray is my time taking part at Hack Manchester 2019. 3 other students and myself took part in the Co-op Hack Manchester 2019 Challenge to create a system that would encourage youth in our local area to do some good. The event was 48 hours of programming, sleep and food and I enjoyed it more than any other event. It was amazing with my friends at my side working throughout the night creating a hacky (but workable) solution to a problem with the hope of winning the challenge. Watch our interview on youtube

My team SaltSesh came up with the idea of a Pokemon GO styled game whereby people could be awarded points via an API system that could then be spent on game packs in the game and could collect "game cards" that could be used to battle and win against other players or NPC's. It was heavily inspired by collector card games and we thought it was an amazing idea to encourage youths to collect points by attending voluntary events, recycling points and more!

With our idea in hand, we set out to develop a Laravel API for points to be awarded to our users. This was one of my first times developing with Laravel and our more experienced teammate was extremely helpful in pointing us in the right direction. We went on to win the Co-op challenge over 13 other teams and was an amazing experience all around. I was deeply saddened to hear the end of Hack Manchester due to covid since I would love to participate in something similar in the future. Check out the Git repo!

Watch the award ceremony here! (timestamped at win)