About

Hello, I’m Chris Atkin! I’m a senior software engineer in the North West of England, specialising in TypeScript and React. I’m passionate about leading teams to create well-built software, helping them solve challenging problems and advocating for better user and developer experiences.

What I’ve been up to

Senior Software Engineer - Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd, 2018 to now

I’m currently working as a senior software engineer for Sainsbury’s, building and maintaining products to help improve their customer and colleague experiences. As a senior engineer, I lead the team through the decision-making process, shaping the products we build. I help guide the business through discovering users’ requirements, emphasising where we can deliver the most value, and planning the tasks to get us there. I’m aware of the technical capabilities of myself and my team, and how best to make them shine to complete tasks efficiently.

I work across frontend and backend features, primarily using React and Node, both with TypeScript. I love writing appropriately tested, readable code, and advocate for this through peer reviews and mentoring. I believe strongly in teams owning the products that they create, and using technology to support that - such as automated testing and deployment, for both applications and infrastructure. I coach teams to use Agile methodologies through Scrum, leaning into small teams with great communication, iterative development and regular feedback sessions.

As a colleague, I make myself as open and approachable as possible, to provide technical support and business domain knowledge. I answer questions helpfully and without judgement, and will offer to pair or provide practical examples to help share knowledge. I can recognise my knowledge boundaries, and use the wider team and connections within the company to find the right person to solve a problem.

I’m invested in the products we build, and how they bring value and opportunity to the business and share this enthusiasm and ethos with my team. I feel confident in constructively challenging decisions if I can suggest a better way for us to deliver a feature, or if there is a risk to the team or the product that needs to be discussed. I am an advocate for better developer experiences and work for policy changes and projects that improve happiness, retention and efficiency.

Work I’m most proud of

• Delivery Routing Management and Optimisation: We needed to reduce the average miles per delivery in the home delivery operation and move away from legacy routing applications. This brought with it an enormous domain and many challenging points for integration and prioritisation. I led the team focused on colleague tooling and UIs, and we deployed a solution to allow the planning teams to observe and manage aspects of the operation and integration. This achieved a non-trivial reduction in miles per delivery, established better business controls and produced cost savings in fuel and labour.
• Sainsbury’s Google Hackathon: We wanted to improve developer engagement and retention, through a social event. I organised and ran a hackathon for 120 Sainsbury’s engineers in partnership with Google, hosted at their offices in London. The event was a great success, generating positivity and business ideas, and bringing together engineers from sites across the country as never before, kindling new connections.
• Open Source Contributions Policy: Through feedback, engineers had expressed uncertainty around existing contractual conditions regarding open source contributions. I authored and advocated for a people policy for contributing to open source projects while employed at Sainsbury’s, working with legal and HR policy teams, and providing education on open source licensing. The new policy was accepted at a senior leadership level and gave clear, software-focused guidance on intellectual property ownership and open source contributions.
• Vehicle Checks: Sainsbury’s needed to digitise a paper process for safe and legal checks on delivery vehicles. I systematised the process through a website, app and service for use by central and store teams, using web technologies for progressive mobile applications. From this, the risk and limitations of paper forms in stores were removed, allowing remote auditing and reporting.

Software Engineer - Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd, 2015 to 2018

I worked as a software engineer for Sainsbury’s in Manchester and Coventry, building products to support their business.

I was primarily involved with writing well-structured, testable applications and services with JavaScript and C# .Net. I was involved with the design and building of these, through to deployment onto AWS.

In this role, I got the opportunity to build large-scale, component-based interfaces with React, with a focus on interactivity, performance and accessibility. I worked with design teams and stakeholders to create wireframes and workshop features with users.

Work I’m most proud of

• Promotions Communications Tool: Sainsbury’s wanted to systematise a spreadsheet-driven process for promotions. I developed, launched and supported a complex React application, built on a Scala backend. I was heavily involved with the user interface and solution design, working closely with our promotions and buying teams to determine what was necessary and valuable for them. This new system reduced errors in the promotions process and provided routes for central approval and administration.

Systems Administrator - Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd, before 2015

I worked as a systems administrator for Sainsbury’s in Manchester, providing second and third-line support. This included supporting Windows Operating Systems and their ecosystem packaging and deployment, along with support for internal systems, user and device administration with Active Directory across a large domain, and hardware maintenance.

Skills Highlights

• TypeScript, JavaScript and Node.js
• Web technologies, semantic markup, styling and Web APIs
• React, Next.js and ecosystem
• Agile methodologies and team coaching, mentoring
• Git, GitHub and version control
• Jest and other methods for UI testing
• Accessible and responsive design
• Open source licensing and policies
• Data architecture and storage design
• Testing and deployment automation
• AWS, Terraform and infrastructure design
• JWT, Azure AD and authentication
• Linux and OSX Operating Systems
• Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator

Education

University of Hull, 2007 to 2011

• BSc (Hons) Physics - 2:2

Ackworth School, 2000 to 2007

• A2 Level Mathematics, Physics & Music Technology
• AS Level Music & Further Mathematics
• GCSE 10 A*-B, Math’s - A*, English - A, Physics - A

About me

Within the tech community, I contribute to open source projects, attend conferences and meet-ups, and provide support on technical forums, such as Stack Overflow and GitHub.

I’m involved with community outreach projects and have built tools to support learning and engagement in schools and events, such as “Emoji Code” for Ada Lovelace day.

Outside of tech, I’m an avid gamer, a volunteer at a cat shelter, and an active member of the queer community, working to organise and run large events. I love whisky, animals and unusual food.

🏳️‍🌈 🐈 🥃