Career Profile.

Adelaide, Australia - hello@danherbert.io - LinkedIn

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Employment

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Notable projects

[2024] REST API + White label React Native application for Iugo's pro-level association management platform.

Lead developer for a bespoke REST API, and an inherited React Native mobile application.

The white label React Native mobile application consumes the REST API, providing an interface for users to interact with their association's website and its features. The application can be easily rebranded via theme/environment settings at build-time.

The application source was inherited with room for improvement. Significant performance improvements were implemented for a range of concerns, such as image compression and caching, and much better handling of memoization and UI refresh. A lot of duplicated code was also refactored into reusable components, along with improvements to code/syntax patterns and the service layer.

[2024] Iugo's new association management offering for low-to-medium level associations

Lead developer for core functional components.

Iugo's new entry into their association management line-up is a WordPress based solution, rapidly scaling out to several clients within a short period of time, with more on the way.

There are a core set of third-party plugins in place, however a lot of bespoke development was required for:

• Improvement of stability and trust between third-party plugins
• Implementation of complex business logic into existing behaviours
• Enhancement and expansion of various integration
• Bespoke functionality and client-specific requirements

Core aspects also cover:

• Adopting more up-to-date paradigms and patterns within the code base, while respecting WordPress standards
• Efficient CI/CD pipelines to deploy to n sites in the shortest possible timeframes
• Deliberate decisions and approaches to preempt future growth and scale issues within the code base
• Graceful failure handling and increased stability with third-party dependencies

[2021] White label application form front-end for SATAC

Lead developer for a bespoke application form management system.

System provides the means to have complete control over structure and behaviour of application forms, served from custom domains for client customers, while respecting business rules and requirements determined by the client's application processing API.

• System acts as a "front-end" for client's application processing API
• API interaction handled via driver based data service layer: auto caching, swappable for new API drivers with no changes to the rest of the application, communication chaining and retry mechanisms, error and reporting mechanisms.
• Management interface for customers, their forms, and users
• Client can build completely custom application forms, individually branded and served from different domains
• Applicant UI and application form behaviour can be influenced by user properties and API driven requirements
• Responsive and dynamic UI built with Blade components, Alpine.js components
• Developed with consideration for very high traffic volumes based on time requirements for course applications at education institutions

[2019] Hertz Trucks website

Lead back-end developer for a new Laravel based website to replace a very old site built with ASP.

Website communicates with the Hertz API to facilitate high volumes of location based vehicle searching and booking.

• ~500-1800+ booking conversions per week (seasonal, as of 2018)
• Management interface for vehicles, customers, bookings, emails, and facets of site content
• Error and reporting system
• SEO management
• Analytics and A/B campaigns (Google Optimize) to facilitate implementation of value-add changes/features

[2017] Shiels website

Lead developer for a Magento 2 website to replace a Magento 1 website.

Website sees a high volume of traffic and sales across thousands of products and product variations, supported by deployment to various AWS services. Utilizes internal and external APIs to facilitate stock management, delivery consignments, and payment processing.

• Fully custom theme built on Magento 2's theme system
• Bespoke Magento 2 extensions to satisfy behaviour and UI requirements
• Automated product importers/processors capable of handling differential updates across thousands of products
• On-request image thumbnail processing via AWS Lambda, backed by caching with S3
• Coordination with national in-store stock levels via client CRM APIs (an intermediary to Microsoft platforms)
• Automated delivery consignment handling with AusPost APIs. Consignments created where required, with shipping tags, labels, and status slips aggregated into PDFs which are emailed to picking teams for processing and courier delivery.

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Extracurricular/Previous projects and activities

Running

Running has become an important part of my life late-2023 - slowly scaling things up. Looking to participate in several events in 2024 & 2025, and considering a half-marathon early 2025.

Programming

I have a persistent interest in programming and interactive technology.

Laravel is an excellent framework. It's always a joy to work on projects and concepts with this framework, whether it's a small experiment or something larger such as a persistent game.

As of 2024 I am adopting Rust for some personal projects - I believe it's important to expose yourself to other patterns and ideas for growth. Rust's approach to memory and data structures has had a positive impact on how I write PHP.

Game development is always a temptation!

Music and audio production

Sound and music production is something I really enjoy. Over the years I have worked on a number of personal and commercial projects.

• Soundtrack for Hexiled on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hexiled/id881274996
• 2017 Sound design for Streaks App: https://streaksapp.com/
• Ongoing Personal music as a creative outlet. A selection of old works: https://soundcloud.com/phoenix-forgotten/tracks

Effect Zone - Post Process Effects with Volume Blending

Solo developed a comprehensive suite of camera effects for Unity3D, with intent to bring features from a competing game engine (Unreal) to Unity3D.

• Visual camera effects to satisfy a wide range of creative requirements for different game genres
• Layerable, animatable and blendable camera effects
• Notable effects: depth of field, bloom, colour channel split/scale, exposure, ambient occlusion, etc
• Prioritisation of performance, considering memory allocation and render passes on the GPU

MegaSphere video game - Contributed world tile management and generation code

Developed code to efficiently generate optimized meshes for grids of world tiles in runtime, improving performance and the game's procedural generation of levels

• Concise and logical API to create world objects for collections of tiles
• Optimized mesh generation, including correct normal and UV handling to work with Unity3D's pixel lighting
• Caching system to recall and reuse previously generated meshes