I build things, deploy things and make sure things run smoothly.
> Sometimes I tinker with things, sometimes I break things, discovery requires experimentation.
Hi, I’m Sam, a PHP, DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer currently working at Global Initiative in Oxford.
I’ve always been interested in technology, electronics and computers from a young age, I still remember an old Macintosh we had with a flying toaster screensaver, and our first Windows desktop, Millennium Edition I believe it was, which made this funny noise when you connected it to the internet.
My first laptop ran Windows XP and my parents upgraded to boardband and WiFi, which was hugely exciting! A few years later I upgraded my laptop and then one Christmas, I asked for a Windows 7 upgrade disk as my Christmas present.
From here, things evolved quickly, I built my first desktop, setup a home network with pfSense and hosted various services, like PiHole, on some Raspberry Pi’s. Today, my passion for networking continues, I recently upgraded to a 12U rack to house the latest iteration of my network, consisting of a selection of Ubiquity UniFi gear and my Raspberry Pi cluster.
My career path has taken a few turns over the years, after leaving my A Levels behind, I took on an apprenticeship to become an electrician. However, during this time my passion for web development kept growing, so upon completion of my apprenticeship I enrolled onto a computing course at Buckinghamshire New University, in which I graduated with a 1st Class BSc in Computing and Web Development.
In my spare time I enjoy catching up on my favourite TV, tending to my plants, tinkering with my home network and server, going out on walks, making bread, playing games (both board and video) and spending time with family.
PHP, DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer
Global Initiative, Oxford
2018 - present
I joined the company as a PHP developer, working on various Laravel and Drupal websites, over the years I gradually became more involved with the DevOps side of operations.
Today, I run and maintain all of the office infrastructure both onsite and offsite, this includes the deployment pipeline, network and servers.
Because of the wide range of projects we work on, I've been able to touch a lot of different systems and hosting providers, from setting up single servers to full on cloud infrastructures in AWS.
PHP Developer (Work Experience)
BeSeen Marketing, Beaconsfield
Summer 2017
During my final year at university, I undertook some work experience as a PHP developer at a company in Beaconsfield, this was my first exposure to commercial web development and was working with the WordPress framework.
During the time I had there, I was working with another developer, this was great as I was working on the same codebase as others, so I learnt about version control and that good documentation is crucial.
I was even allowed to tweak some server settings via cPanel, I enjoyed this especially as I got some insight into how PHP projects are hosted and run outside of the development environment.
Apprentice Electrician
Lancelyn Theatre Supplies, Oxford
2011 - 2015
I was luckily enough to be offered an apprenticeship following work experience at the company, so I packed up my A Levels and began the path to be an electrician, I was mostly working in schools and lecture theatres around the country, I still remember my first day, we went to Wales!
Most of my time was spent on site gaining real world experience with block of collage spread through the year, it was exiting work as it was not the normal house bashing stuff, I'm gathering you have been to a theater, lecture hall or your kids play at school, the lighting and sound rigs may have been wired and installed my me!
This was my first proper job and if I'm honest, everyone should go through an apprenticeship, it gave me live long skills in communication, planning and problem solving and at the end of it, I received an NVQ Level 3 Electrotechnical Diploma and was a BS7671 17th Edition Qualified Electrician.
IT Support (Work Experience)
Aston Martin, Gaydon
July 2009
While at school we were required to do a weeks work experience, I secured a place at the car maker Aston Martin, during the week, I was tasked with responding to IT support tickets, upgrading laptops hardware and phoning an external supplier to collect hardware.
Became A Dad
2024
Brought A House
2021
IET Buckinghamshire Local Network Prize
Buckinghamshire New University
2024
BSc in Computing and Web Development
Buckinghamshire New University
2018
17th Edition Qualified Electrician
City of Oxford College / Birmingham AM2 Centre
2015
AS Level - ICT, Electronics and Mathematics
Chipping Norton Secondary School
2011
10 GCSEs Grade A-C (incl. English, Mathematics and Science)
Chipping Norton Secondary School
2010
Over the years I’ve developed a number of things, some of which are still being worked on, while others have been retired.
AccountBooks Online
AccountBooks Online was the creation for my final year project at uni, it's other purpose was to help out my father as this was the time when companies needed to "Make Tax Digital".
The project is a simple cloud based accounting system which provides features to manage estimates, quotes, invoices, credit notes and expenses. It also allows for a range of reports including a self ledger, which makes calculating VAT quick and easy.
C W Smith Builders
This is a simple website for my fathers building company, nothing special, just a simple one page site to display some previous work and contact details.
Coin Library
Coin Library is a place for you to keep track of your coin, banknote, bar or stamp collection. It is a user contributed database so if an item does not exist or the data is wrong, users can submit new or updated content.
Your entire collection can be viewed in your profile and has a breakdown based on various metrics like composition and weight, you can even see how much your precious metal coins are worth at base price.
There is also a social aspect as you can follow your friends collection.
LaraPi
My Laravel playground hosted on a Raspberry Pi cluster, this project is an experimental platform for me to explore and play with different parts of the Laravel ecosystem.
It is entirely managed with Ansible and consists of five Raspberry Pi's, one is the controller and hosts the data services and main nginx entry point, while the others are workers and just host an instance of the Laravel application.
Banbury Turf
This was a simple Drupal website for my Aunt's turf company, it was used to display contact details and turfing products they had along with various other garden and landscaping items.
TomLAN
Back in my younger years, me and a group of friends hosted an annual LAN party at my friends (Tom) farm, hence the name, TomLAN.
This website was a place to display images of the past LANs and to present information about the latest one, such as the timetable of events we had planned.
Alas we have now stopped this events as our lives become ever more busy.
Music Server
The music server was a really cool thing, I have used it at birthday parties and the LAN events, it allowed attendees to add songs to a playlist and they would be played.
We could control the playback via and admin panel so during the night we paused the music and resumed it at a set time the next day, we could also block certain songs from being added and also promote a song to play next.
NetGrab
This was a simple project aimed towards web developers who needed to debug issues clients faced when viewing a website. The idea was that you generate a link to send to the client, they will click on it and the website will automatically collect information such as the IP, screen dimensions and user agent.
PHueP
This was another uni project, we had to consume an external API, so since I have Philips Hue lights at home, I decided to write a PHP library to interact with them, it allowed me to turn them on and off as well as change the colours and recall scenes.