DAVID FOSKETT

Senior Software Developer and Technical Architect with 25+ years of experience delivering high-quality software solutions using an Agile mindset and values. Strong background in frontend, backend or full stack software development using C#, .NET, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL Server, PostgreSQL and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Passionate about software craftsmanship, clean code, design patterns and best practices. Experienced in leading and mentoring teams, collaborating with stakeholders and delivering complex projects on time and within budget.

Skills & Expertise

Work Experience

As a Senior Software Developer in the Revenue Management System (RMS) team I am responsible for architecting, implementing, delivering and maintaining technical solutions that maximise flight and ancillary revenue ensuring prices are always optimal through the use of bespoke automated processes and an application that enables the trading team to analyse, monitor and adjust prices.

• As a domain and technical expert, I am leading the development team and working with product owners in the rebuild of the eco-system from C#, .NET, SQL Server and WPF to Python, SQLAlchemy, FastAPI, Databricks, PostgreSQL, React and TypeScript.
• Rewrote complex backend components in Python using FastAPI, Databricks and PostgreSQL. One of these components (the RMS Optimiser) is the backbone that enables easyJet to optimally price 500,000 flights per day.
• Contributed to the re-write of the frontend application using React and TypeScript.

• Successfully replatformed the complex RMS eco-system from on premise architecture to AWS. This involved replicating the three-tier architecture into two availability zones consisting of VPCs, subnets, EC2s, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch and a load balancer.
• Architected a modernised target state using AWS cloud native services (such as EventBridge, SQS, ECS, ECR, Fargate, Lambda and RDS) with a focus on API-first, event-driven architecture leveraging serverless, containerisation, events, messages, APIs and observability to improve resilience, reliability, performance, reduce cost and improve the agility and productivity of the development team. I also produced a roadmap of transitional states that would transform the architecture incrementally towards this target state.
• Re-architected, implemented and project managed a horizontally scalable solution to publish ancillary prices, in near real time, (averaging 30,000 prices per minute, an increase of 1333% over the previous solution) to a Datalex merchandising platform using EventBridge, SQS, Lambda, C#, .NET 7 and the AWS SDK.
• Designed, documented (using OpenAPI) and built high performant, scalable, APIs that are used from easyJet’s data analytical platform (Databricks) by data scientists to update flight prices. This was achieved through SQS, Lambda, AWS SDK, C# and .NET 8.

• Delivered several key pieces of capability for the Yield Management system which included a dynamic durational flight pricing report and also end-to-end functionality to enable free child places on holiday packages. These were built using Angular, TypeScript, C#, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core MVC, SQL Server and interfaced with an ATCOM reservation system.

• Designed and built the RMS frontend application using C#, .NET Framework, WPF and MVVM that is used daily by about 30 trading analysts to monitor, analyse and adjust individual or cluster level flight prices.
• Involved with the design and build of 60 microservices (.NET Framework, WCF and MSMQ) of which some support the application and others perform automated revenue generating tasks.
• Implemented SQL Server databases, from logical to physical design, writing stored procedures, improving performance through query plan analysis and implementing granular security.
• I was the lead senior developer and subject matter expert for the Revenue Management eco-system advising and supporting commercial teams, IT teams and the RMS team.
• Migrated the large source code base from Team Foundation Server to GitLab and now to GitHub.
• Recruited and then onboarded and mentored several team members.

On secondment from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and worked in a mobile telecommunications team.

• Maintained and enhanced a C# WPF user interface and a C++ server service that controlled and commanded complex telecommunication hardware.
• When the user interface was to be re-developed, I led on the design, architecture, frameworks and implementation of the re-design.
• Introduced and integrated code reviews (using Crucible) and pair programming to the team.
• Learnt how 2G and 3G mobile technologies work.

Delivered tactical technical solutions that solved operational business requirements or filled gaps in operational capability. This encompassed owning fast paced end-to-end delivery of solutions, from requirements elicitation, system analysis and design, build and test, through integration, deployment and support.

• Built numerous solutions using an Agile scrum methodology with technologies such as C#, .NET, WPF, MVVM, WinForms, Infragistics, Entity Framework and MySQL. These applications contained many innovative ways of visualising, analysing, grouping and aggregating data and were used daily by about 75 operational analysts.

Undertook research, blue skies thinking, developed prototypes and performed experiments on behalf of data analysts with the aim of discovering new capability, techniques and technologies that would empower them to search, extract and find patterns, connections and associations in huge volumes of data across many datasets and data sources.

• Developed middle tier services using C#, .NET Framework, WCF and Oracle Data Provider for .NET.
• Became a subject matter expert in geo-spatial information systems and utilised tools such as ESRI ArcGIS.
• Presented and demonstrated numerous experiments and research to a large data analyst community.
• Involved in project management which included gathering, managing and prioritising requirements, maintaining a project plan and delegating and monitoring colleagues’ work.

• I designed, developed and maintained, numerous bespoke desktop and web applications for the property services provider using C#, ASP.NET, IIS, SQL Server, C++, XML, XPath, XSLT, Crystal Reports, classic ASP, HTML, JavaScript and AJAX.

• For the fashion retail group, I developed bespoke, planning, merchandising and customer relationship management systems using Visual Basic, RDO, COM and SQL Server 7.

• I worked as a C++ programmer in a large multidisciplinary team on the AAA video game, Dungeon Keeper 2, which sold over 750,000 copies and is still available to play on Xbox Game Pass and purchase on Steam and GOG.

• I contributed to the development of a bespoke subscriber management system using Visual Basic and SQL Server 6.5.

Education

BSc (Joint Honours) Computer Science and Management Studies - Upper Second Class