Andrew Garner

andrew@andrewgarner.com
github.com/andrewgarner

Summary

I help teams understand and implement digital transformation in an agile, iterative and user‑centric way. I have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies. I’m able to converse easily with and translate between non‑technical stakeholders and technical practitioners.

Skills & Expertise

Projects

GOV.UK EU Exit

to Present

I’m helping the Government Digital Service make a resilient and easy to iterate faceted search product for EU Exit content on GOV.UK.

GOV.UK content pages

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I helped the Government Digital Service iterate navigational patterns to make it easier to find relevant content on GOV.UK.

data.gov.uk

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I helped the Government Digital Service redesign its open data platform, data.gov.uk.

  • I helped the team to make a beta ‘Find open data’ product
  • I helped to optimise Elasticsearch
  • I helped provision environments on AWS using Terraform and Puppet
  • I helped define a strategy to decommission legacy infrastructure
  • I helped design new operational processes for the service

GOV.UK content tools

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I helped the Government Digital Service make tools to support publishers across government allowing them to audit and measure the performance of content published to GOV.UK.

GOV.UK topic taxonomy

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I helped the Government Digital Service validate its topic taxonomy for GOV.UK using machine learning and natural language processing.

GOV.UK publishing platform

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I helped the Government Digital Service rebuild its publishing platform to ensure that GOV.UK is scalable, secure and easy to work on.

Pension Wise

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I helped a multidisciplinary team take HM Treasury’s Pension Wise service from Discovery through to Live. The service provides web, telephone and face‑to‑face pension guidance. It has a customer satisfaction rating of 88%.

  • I helped build and operate the service using agile methods
  • I helped the team to continuously improve the service guided by data
  • I chose technology and appropriate security measures for the information the service receives, processes and stores
  • I helped with user research activities:
    • identifying assumptions to test
    • building prototypes
    • observing lab research sessions and creating transcripts
    • field visits
    • taking part in analysis
  • I set up development environments to allow the team to:
    • develop rapidly and iteratively
    • experiment quickly
    • continuously test and monitor
  • I set up pipelines to allow frequent, low‑risk deployments
  • I set up monitoring systems and dashboards
  • I built applications and services using Ruby on Rails, Cucumber, RSpec, Go, Travis CI, Heroku, Twilio and Zendesk

github.com/guidance‑guarantee‑programme

Money Advice Service

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I helped the team that built the Money Advice Service’s responsive website with technical leadership, technical architecture, DevOps and hands‑on development.

  • I was responsible for the overall architecture. I established a modular design style that isolated domain and application logic:
    • code was easy to reason about and change
    • the domain could be tested in isolation from the application
  • I helped set up a living style guide and component library
  • I championed feature development from the outside in with declarative user stories and page objects
  • I enabled the team to release production code from the very first iteration using feature toggles

github.com/moneyadviceservice/frontend

White Label Dating push notification platform

Real‑time, message‑driven pipeline using Ruby, AMQP, RabbitMQ and Pusher.

White Label Dating API & Mobile platform

JSON API and responsive website with ~500 tenants backed by a service based architecture written in Ruby. Continuous deployments to a Rackspace Cloud infrastructure described and orchestrated with Puppet.

White Label Dating transactional email platform

High‑performance, high‑volume, message‑driven pipeline using Ruby, AMQP and RabbitMQ.

Me + My Workplace

A product to assist organisations understand what employees do during their working day, where they do it, and how. Supports property teams by enabling them to assess the suitability of existing/potential accommodation and determine environmental and work setting requirements.

Experience

Founder and Principal Consultant at SureFire

to Present

SureFire help startups, non‑profit organisations, enterprise companies and government make digital products and services.

I have worked with clients including The Government Digital Service, HM Treasury and The Money Advice Service.

Senior Software Engineer at Venntro

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Venntro are a Deloitte Fast 50 technology business. Their award‑winning service, WhiteLabelDating.com, provides market leading online dating technology for brands and entrepreneurs. The multi‑tenant platform caters to over 1.7k partners, operating over 25k sites, for 50M members.

I lead a team servicing a technology stack consisting of Ruby, Node.js, ColdFusion, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Redis, Memcached, Sphinx and Puppet.

Developer at iDEA

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iDEA are a design studio specialising in workplace consulting, interiors, sustainability and digital.

I worked with clients including The BBC, Birmingham City Council, Gensler, HP, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, Natural England, CallisonRTKL, Sheffield City Council and Unilever.

Developer at Lighthouse

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Lighthouse are a small marketing and technology services agency. I worked on accounts for ASSA Abloy and Siemens Energy Services.

Qualifications