Joseph James Smyth

• Full Name:Joseph James Smyth
• Location:Randalstown, N.Ireland
• Email:joe@jjsmyth.net
• LinkedIn:joseph-james-smyth-bb509a207
• GitHub:jjsmyth1984

Hello There!

I am a technically minded, solutions-driven Full Stack Engineer with a robust background in developing scalable web applications and managing full project lifecycles.

Over my career, I've garnered extensive experience in designing and optimising MySQL databases, implementing comprehensive testing strategies with PHPUnit and creating robust RESTful APIs.

My expertise lies in leveraging the Symfony framework to build maintainable and high-performing web applications, with a keen focus on API design, data security, and user-centered design integration. I have a proven track record of leading cross-functional teams, mentoring new engineers and driving projects to timely and budget-conscious completion.

Throughout my professional journey, I have demonstrated my ability to develop complex financial algorithms and maintain compliance with industry standards. I thrive on solving intricate technical challenges and am passionate about enhancing application performance and user satisfaction.

Work Philosophy

I am passionate about writing clean, maintainable code that delivers robust solutions for users. My approach to software development is grounded in the four pillars of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and the five design principles known as SOLID.

• Polymorphism using inheritance, a child method can then override the parent method to provide their own implementation.
• Inheritance Inheriting properties and methods from a parent class promoting code reuse.
• Encapsulation prevents direct access to class data from outside the class using private properties and promotes data hiding. Need to then use Getters and Setters to get and set the data in a controlled form.
• Abstraction Abstract classes cannot be instantiated directly but serves as a blueprint for other classes. It provides a way to define common properties and methods that can be inherited by its subclasses, which are regular classes that extend the abstract class.

To aid the 4 pillars, I also follow Robert C. Martin's 5 principles of Object-Oriented Design.

• Single-responsibility Principle this principle states that a class or method should have only one responsibility thus one reason to change.
• Open-closed Principle to design classes to be open to extension but closed to modification.
• Liskov Substitution Principle to ensure that subclasses can be used interchangeably with their parent classes (using inheritance and polymorphism).
• Interface Segregation Principle to create specific and small interfaces to prevent forcing classes to implement unused methods.
• Dependency Inversion Principle a high level class should not depend on a lower level class both should depend on abstractions (using abstract classes or interfaces).

Dependency Injection plays a significant role in my development process as it leads to decoupling components for better testability and maintainability.

I also apply the KISS i.e. 'Keep It Simple Silly' and DRY i.e. 'Don't Repeat Yourself' methodologies to avoid complexity and redundancy, keeping the codebase efficient and clean.

I strictly follow PSR coding standards, ensuring consistency, interoperability and best practices in my projects.

Additionally, I emphasise Test-Driven Development (TDD) inline with Domain-Driven Design (DDD), focusing on translating real-world concepts into software solutions.

Security and performance are top priorities in my work, with a focus on caching, Symfony Messenger along with RabbitMQ for asynchronous messaging.

I implement strong authentication using OAuth2 and JWT, ensuring data security across all APIs along with adhering to OWASP guidelines.