Lathan Britz

I eat and sleep Drupal, its potentials are endless to the point that if you bring me a problem I can probably solve it with Drupal. I have been an active member in the Drupal community for the past 5 years. Building modules, fleshing out custom designed themes, guiding project to fruition. I know the ins and outs, what are the best practices, modules to use and not. How I work. I adopt an iterative approach to design & development using methods such as Scrum. I work in quick iterative cycles, producing working prototypes that we can test with. Doing this makes sure we're on the right track every, single iteration. I'm a web consumer I know how to design applications for the web because I use them myself every day of the week. You won't find a copy of Office/Word anywhere in sight; I'm more at home in Google Docs.

I not only can code and configure Drupal, I have a good eye for design as well.

Making a beautiful site shouldn't be skin deep. I enjoy a hands on approach when writing code (an old school text editor) HTML, jQuery, drupal templates and CSS every line is an obsession I prefer not to make pictures of websites. The web is an interactive medium so I use techniques and tools such as paper or HTML prototyping to make sure your design is true to the medium. I excel at creating beautifully crafted websites and applications for the modern web. Much of that success relies on a deep understanding of traditional design practice applied in a relevant and appropriate way.

Instrumental in successfully delivering a high-risk project, which had previously been considered a failure. This was achieved by picking up unfamiliar technologies within a limited timeframe, redesigning fundamental aspects of the system, prioritising and resolving defects and ensuring the customer received a fully functional and stable product.

Tech lead assuming technical accountability for the development and delivery of an analytical charting system used by research analysts.
Involved in the design, development and implementation in a research distribution system.
Extremely adaptable becoming productive in unfamiliar languages within a very short period, providing skills that would be difficult to source under normal circumstances.
Involved in requirements gathering, research and the development of proof of concepts for new projects that require the use of unfamiliar technologies.

Pivotal in successfully delivering a J2EE Third party funds administration system. Focusing on guarantee PDF generation and delivery via EJB's. Timely delivery of the project earned me a four month position in Amsterdam at Clear2Pay.

Additional role with a focus on front-end usability and multi-language support within the New Business Online system.

New Business Online, a cross border payment system currently being deployed throughout Africa. It is the largest active program of work within Standard Bank. During the first faze of this project I worked on customisation of the Clear2Pay product in the J2EE layer in Amsterdam and later on swing screen development back at the bank. My current role within this project is a mixture between front-end and mid-tier development, this has worked to my benefit allowing better end to end integration of the product.

Provide technical advice and support to team members and co-workers. Monitor industry trends and standards and provide advice to superiors based thereon.

Essential in gathering a hands-on inside-out knowledge of the Clear2Pay BPH product (Bank Processing Hub is a Amsterdam product which was written using J2EE technologies) to allow front-end customisation back in South Africa. Thus I was successfully able to provide training and assistance when the customised product was introduced to other employees.

Spent four months receiving training on the custom framework in the Netherlands at the Amsterdam office.

From mentoring of staff, dabbling in sales through to development this has been a challenging role leading Web Builders. Managed development team, hired contractors, and planned for staffing requirements. Determined technology direction for clients and worked with systems administrator to manage internal infrastructure. Hands-on development of web applications and e-commerce sites within a Drupal Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP environment. Integrating many start up services API's usually via REST in to the flow and management workflows of a client.

Managing multiple projects while, keeping a hand on the quality assurances we had specced up front is a major, task.

Core Responsibilities At WebBuilders.

- Finding new work on a daily basis, client interaction, expectation management, marketing and sales. I have learnt a lot freelancing.
- Project Management as with any freelancer there are time where work is bountiful and others where its quite managing this patter is key.
- Integrating quickly into international teams, offshore projects require that you hit the ground running, communicate well over VOIP and can be trusted to be left alone to get the job done.
- Design the web is an interactive medium so I use techniques and tools such as paper or HTML prototyping.
- Photoshop to compliment any web design this is a must and I have years experience and a keen eye.
- Drupal theming a different beast to a static web page I have many examples in my portfolio.
- Drupal configuration setting up any CMS requires a wealth of knowledge with the correct modules to use especially in Drupal as there are thousands, this is where experience is key.
- Drupal module development, the mantra is to first try and configure the requirements via modules supported in the drupal community. Only then can should one look at a custom / new module. I have a wealth of OO development skills.
- Server setup and configuration from linux & Apache through to Varnish & Memcache there is a lot to be gained with a little know how.

Responsibilities included teaching, mentoring and assisting students with database design and development skills. Additionally, the role required significant research into the information science industry with the intention of advising and guiding students on real world IT situations and scenarios.

Other responsibilities included the development and maintenance of the Department of Information Technology website. I was chosen to represent the department on an academic content management system course, where we acquired the relevant knowledge and skills to provide rich media to students, automated marking systems and publication of articles and the latest news.

Designed and developed a multimedia application for sharing academic research presented at the information science conference with other universities.

This position is very recent, I need to fill this description out.

Main responsibility lie with custom Drupal module development, theming, configuration. On average a new module a week. With a heavy dependency on git.

- High personal integrity, and an effective team member always making a positive contribution.
- Provides effective feedback to help others achieve their full potential.
- Ensure that best practises are followed ensuring systems are developed using technologies that are widely accepted and supported in the industry.
- Actively involved in the development, support and maintenance of several community websites always providing flexible approaches to meet their different needs.
- Flexible approach in ensuring the shared goals of the business, immediate team and customers are delivered as required, while maintaining the highest level of quality.
- Perform extensive research in personal capacity on the latest technologies and trends in the market.
- Completing BSc IT degree.

My technical background.

Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux, HTML5, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3, CSS, mobile web applications, SQL, XHTML, XML, XML-RPC, REST, Ajax, Subversion (SVN), CVS, Git, mod_rewrite, regular expressions, load testing tools, monitoring tools, SEO, web analytics.

Java Software Development
Java 1.4, 5 and 6, J2EE, Swing, Midtier, Eclipse, Netbeans, Ant, Maven, Ivy, JUnit, JSP, Struts, Tomcat, JBoss, IBM Websphere, PostgreSQL, bash-scripts, UML, Log4J, Xdoclet, doxygen

Operating systems
- Mac OS X / Linux (Ubuntu) more than comfy on the command line.

Referencers on request.