As of September 2024, I am actively seeking new opportunities!
Read my full bio to learn more about me,
and if you think I could be a good fit for your team,
please get in touch.
Alicia Sykes
Accomplished Software Engineer with a over a decade of professional experience and proven track record of leading high-impact projects. Expert in optimizing performance, enhancing quality, and delivering user-centric solutions for top-tier organizations. Dedicated mentor, passionate open-source advocate, and active contributor to the developer community.
Experience
AND Digital
Principal Engineer Aug 2022 - Present
- Lead the development of a white-labelled app for Frasers Group, with 1M downloads and 4.8/5 rating (React Native)
- Planned and coordinated many mini projects to upskill a team of 8-12 associates alongside my client work
- Organised and hosted bi-weekly engineering guild and knowledge transfer sessions for 40 engineers
- Worked on large scale migrations to newer and more maintainable tech stacks for Lloyds Bank and International SOS
Galaxy
VP of Frontend Engineering Jun 2020 - May 2022
- Led the development of a high-performance OTC Electronic Trading platform which facilitated over $1b of trading volume
- Spearheaded a major refactor of the existing codebase, enhancing performance by 50% and reducing technical debt, resulting in faster load times and a smoother user experience.
- Collaborated closely with cross-functional teams, including backend engineers, UX/UI designers, and product managers, to ensure seamless integration of frontend components with backend services.
Freelance
Contract Software Engineer Jan 2018 - Jun 2020
- Engineering lead on the Shell Recharge app (React Native)
- Developed a high quality reusable component library, for a new challenger bank (React, TypeScript, Storybook)
- Developed a dashboard to calculate and display vehicle idling and CO2 metrics for Machine Max (Rasp Pi, Node, React)
Accenture
Developer May 2014 - Jan 2019
- Took lead on the 3D/AR work for the B&Q bathroom planner (Angular, A-Frame)
- Lead a team of apprentices on the Accenture UKI Innovation Programme (Google Glass, React, D3.js)
- Also supported with the roll-out of Universal Credit (Java), Boots NHS Prescriptions integration (Node.js), E.ON Next Smart Meter portal (React) and the Post Office Kiosk Terminal
Education
Oxford Brookes
Computer Science (BSc)
1st Class Honors. Winner of British Computer Society Best Final Year Project Prize. President of Computing Society.
Skills
- Frontend: React, Svelte, TypeScript
- Backend: Go, Rust, Node.js, Python, Java, PHP
- Mobile: Kotlin, Swift, React Native, Flutter
- DevOps: Ansible, Kubernetes, Prometheus, GitHub Actions
- Cloud: Vercel, Netlify, GCP, Azure
- Databases: PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB
Achievements
I'm among the top 100 developers on GitHub worldwide, with 50k stars and 10M Docker downloads. I maintain over 100 open source projects, attracting 1M+ annual unique users.
Outside of work, I actively engage in developer communities. I have 10k subscribers to my DEV.to blog, 10+ wins in global hackathons, and rank in the top 1% of contributors on StackOverflow. As a frequent open-source contributor, I have written over 1M lines of code.
This year I earned a place on the Open UK Honors list for contributions to the tech and open source sector. I was among 10 developers selected to take part in the prestigious GitHub Accelerator program, (in partnership with Microsoft's M12 fund), where I developed and launched an AI-powered security insights tool, being used by 10s of thousands of organisations world-wide.