C. Oliver Godby

Software Architect, Developer and Team Leader · 24 years' commercial experience

Inversnaid, Scotland, UK oliver@scholanoctis.com · scholanoctis.com · github.com/maleghast

Personal Statement

Software engineering has been, for the last twenty-four years, a rewarding way for me to contribute to a wide variety of businesses and organisations. At the heart of what I do is the idea that by bringing my skills to bear I can solve problems and create opportunities for the people I work with to achieve the goals of the organisation we are building together.

The greatest feeling in my working life is shipping code that my team and I can be proud of, not only in the moment but as we evolve and maintain our applications in the most efficient and agile way, continuing to bring value and make a tangible, positive impact on our shared enterprise.

Beyond that, I love collaborating with commercial and creative people to carry an idea from specification, into launch and then ongoing development, using the powerful technologies, both proven and emerging, that are now at our disposal.

Skills

Languages: Clojure / ClojureScript, Python, Ruby, JavaScript (Node.js and browser), PHP
Practices: TDD / BDD; Agile and Lean approaches (Scrum, Scrumban, Kanban)
APIs and services: Web services and API development (REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and others)
Containers: Docker, Docker Compose, AWS ECS / EKS
Cloud: Experience of the majority of AWS services, including EC2, ELB, ESG, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Lambda and EMR; CloudFormation, Terraform (IaC) and the AWS CLI as well as the Web Console. Reasonably well versed in Google Cloud and Azure.
Data stores: Datomic / XTDB, MySQL / PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra
Markup and web: XML / XSD / XSLT, HTML5 / XHTML / CSS
Tooling: Git, Subversion, Mercurial (very comfortable on the command line)
Systems: Linux administration for development environments; familiar with enterprise and esoteric Linux alike, the BSDs and macOS

Programming interests: XTDB, Haskell, Elixir, Rust

Experience

Senior Software Engineer (Staff / Permanent) - The Social Gaming Group

April 2026 - Present · Remote, UK Clojure · ClojureScript ·Babashka · PostgreSQL · LavinMQ · Linux · Ansible

Since becoming a full-time member of staff at the start of April 2026 I have been working on four streams of work so far:

Continued work on the new server architecture / back-end system, known as mono-v2
Internal tooling for deployment and providing functionality for resilience / disaster recovery
New puck detection and trajectory modelling code for the Shuffleboard games, adopting numerical solvers in Clojure
Compatibility layer for running the new v2 Shuffleboard game server withint the existing v1 estate and connecting to the v1 GameCore

In March 2026 the comany approached me about the possibility of transitioning into a permanent staff role with the IT / Engineering Team, and I was pleased to do so from the start of April 2026. My work has continued to be predominantly focused on the new generation of back-end / server software with a view to completing the new mono-v2 system. In amongst that work I have also worked on some other minor projects, from updating the puck detection for Shuffleboard, to working on the Operational Resilience by building tools for those requirements and doing some dry-run testing of disaster recovery.

Senior Software Engineer (Freelance) - The Social Gaming Group

October 2025 - March 2026 · Remote, UK Clojure · ClojureScript · PostgreSQL · LavinMQ · Linux · Ansible

Joining the IT / Engineering team at The Social Gamin Group as a freelance contributor, I worked on two projects:

Upgrade to the Metrics capture and storage system
The start of the reinvention of the back end system, working on the first parts of mono-v2

The Social Gaming Group uses Clojure and ClojureScript as a holistic stack for running and managing games and game state across its estate. I was involved in creating a new, more robust system for capturing, storing and managing metric data from the distributed game-rig fleet, installed all over the World, between October and the end of the year in 2025. Then between the start of 2026 and the end of March I worked in collaboration with the Lead Engineer on beginning the process of designing and doing the initial implementation of the new server architecture that will replace the current versions of central servers and game-rigs over time.

Solutions Architect — Incentive Games

October 2024 – March 2025 · Remote, UK AWS · Lambda · Docker · Node.js · JavaScript · React · PostgreSQL

As a member of the Architecture Team, I prepare the ground for engineering teams to start new internal and customer-defined development projects, within the accumulated best practices of the existing Incentive Games framework.

Technical Principal — AND Digital (Club Almeida)

September 2023 – October 2024 · Hybrid, Glasgow, UK AWS · Lambda · Docker · Java · Node.js · JavaScript · React · Python · PostgreSQL · MySQL

As a Technical Principal and member of the Practice Group, my work was wide and varied: client engagements as a senior technologist, supporting the technical side of delivery teams, fostering best practice and continuous learning within the Club, and working with other Technical Principals and Practice Group members across the business to secure the best possible technical outcomes for clients and the company.

Worked on a large engagement with the UK Cabinet Office (Find a Grant).
Assisted on a number of bids and proposals, and met prospective clients in a technical advisory capacity to support the Club Exec.
Mentored and coached fellow technologists, and became involved with the Software Engineering Chapter.
Coordinated internal "bench" activities, including oversight and mentoring for two major internal training initiatives.

Senior Staff Engineer — Sidekick Money

March 2023 – July 2023 · Remote, London, UK Python · gRPC · Flask · AWS · Lambda · Docker

Contributed to API development for the back-end services driving the Sidekick platform, and to the ongoing technical design.

Senior Staff Engineer — Grail Biotech

December 2022 – February 2023 · Remote / London, UK Python · TypeScript · React

Contributed to API and UI development on an internal laboratory automation project, and provided mentoring and counsel on software engineering and best practice for the team.

Head of Data Engineering — Kleene

March 2022 – December 2022 · Remote / London, UK Clojure · ClojureScript · Kafka · PostgreSQL · Debezium · Python

Kleene.ai fully automates data ingestion, transformation, dependency management, modelling and version control, so that analysts can access data and provide insight at the speed of thought.

I combined team leadership, delivery against productivity targets and innovation on the data ingest and engineering side of the technical group. I managed a team of engineers who connected to third-party data on behalf of Kleene's clients, prepared that data, backed up a canonical copy and loaded it into the client's data warehouse, working predominantly in batch ELT. I also worked with the other technical leaders to drive the overall software architecture, ensuring sustainable and compatible choices across the application estate.

Head of Platform and Systems Engineering — Cervest Ltd.

April 2017 – March 2022 · London, UK Clojure · ClojureScript · R · Python · JavaScript · Kafka · PostgreSQL · TileDB

Joined as the first practical technologist and helped shape the technical direction of the company throughout its growth, as a key member of the technology leadership team and as discipline lead for infrastructure and systems engineering. By the time I left, my team was responsible both for the running infrastructure the business needed and for the software that brought the Data Science and Data Engineering functions together: applications and APIs integrating the two, and tooling for each discipline.

Our domains included geospatial data, climate data, data science pipelines, message and event systems, databases, and the APIs that drive data through the Cervest platform.

Head of Engineering and Technology — Zipmatch.com

February 2016 – February 2017 · Taguig, Metro Manila, Philippines PHP · Python · Java · Swift · PostgreSQL · AWS · Lambda

Responsible for day-to-day technical delivery across the company and for the ongoing planning and development of a platform serving both real estate professionals and homebuyers. At our height I managed 28 developers across front-end web, back-end systems and APIs, and native apps.

Replaced the lead-generation section of the original monolith with a modular pipeline of Python microservices, radically improving performance and halting the loss of leads that had been plaguing the platform.
Led the technical design of the following phases of the platform's modernisation to a fully service-based architecture, before the company downsized owing to a shortfall in operating capital.

CTO — CompareAsia Group

January 2015 – December 2015 · Makati City, Philippines AWS · Java · PHP · JavaScript · MySQL · memcached · Redis · Ruby

CompareAsia set out to offer the best price comparison services in personal finance, insurance and communications across South East Asia. As CTO I was responsible for the engineering effort and for implementing best practice across the group to ensure stability and quality for all our web properties in the region, leading 36 engineers across several disciplines and two permanent offices (Manila and Hong Kong), plus occasional remote developers in Europe.

I introduced a culture of quality-driven engineering excellence and agile engineering practices, and put the business on the road to DevOps.

Technical & Development Lead — BBC World Service Responsive

November 2013 – January 2015 AWS · BBC Forge · PHP · JavaScript · Ruby

Lead engineer on the World Service Responsive website property, setting the technical direction for twenty-seven international sites and two UK non-English-language sites through a platform migration driven by contract end-of-life and the organisation's move towards continuous delivery.

My role covered technical design and planning at both application and system-stack level, particularly for new cloud-based components. I mentored and guided the other engineers and ensured we worked to the engineering practices at the heart of the BBC engineering ethos: TDD and BDD, pair programming, code review and rotating release management responsibility. I was part of the senior team plotting the course of the group, while contributing code and experience back to my own team.

European Engineering Lead — Vivastreet

September 2012 – October 2013 PHP · MySQL · MongoDB · JRuby · Clojure

Ran the London development team and drove change in process and architecture, working at all points of the SDLC on both maintenance and new projects. I led the adoption of more powerful and better-suited technical approaches and strengthened the uptake of TDD across the business, driving quality up from the coalface of the code rather than leaving it to an over-worked test team.

Owner / Lead Consultant — ScholaNoctis Ltd.

July 2010 – September 2012 · Freelance consultancy (still trading) PHP · Python · Ruby · Clojure · JavaScript · MySQL · PostgreSQL

Selected projects:

BBC Forge Platform (PAL), Radio and Music team: OO PHP5 / Zend Framework, PHPUnit, Cucumber, Jasmine, QUnit, RESTful web service integration, JavaScript / jQuery. Provided holiday cover for the tech lead and led a couple of side projects.
BBC Forge Platform (PAL), iVote project: OO PHP5 / Zend Framework, PHPUnit, RESTful web service integration, JavaScript / jQuery.
LBSIC Ltd.: Codebase evaluation and audit; inspected and reported on an existing PHP codebase.
Ambition Creative: ExpressionEngine to Salesforce integration (OO PHP5, SOAP, Salesforce API).

Earlier Career

Dates	Role	Notes
Mar 2009 – Jul 2010	Web Architecture and Development Lead, RiverMuse Ltd.	Network management software. UI (JavaScript / jQuery / ExtJS), middleware (PHP / MySQL / Zend Framework / Doctrine) and custom web applications (Django / Python).
Feb – Mar 2009	Freelance PHP Developer, Favorit Ltd. (Tweetmeme.com)	Covered a resource gap to hit a release deadline; delivered on time and on spec.
Jul 2008 – Feb 2009	Contract PHP5 / OO Web Developer, RightNow Technologies	EMEA Application Engineering Team. CRM customisation: data modelling, bulk import / export, web service integrations, UI customisation. PHP, JavaScript.
Apr – Jul 2008	Contract PHP5 / OO Web Developer, Playphone EMEA Ltd. (formerly Pitch Media)	Built multi-territory websites on Zend Framework with an OOP / MVC approach, plus front-end work and code review / refactoring.
Aug 2007 – Apr 2008	Technical Lead / CTO, Crowdstorm Ltd.	Prepared public-facing and internal web applications for launch and funding rounds (PHP5, REST / SOAP). Managed one offshore developer and external suppliers.
May 2005 – Aug 2007	Application and Middleware Developer, SpinVox Ltd.	Maintained and extended internal and external web applications through the company's growth from start-up to mature business (PHP 4/5, JavaScript, Python, Perl, C#, PostgreSQL, Informix).
Aug 2004 – May 2005	Web Developer, Sthree Management Services	Designed and built a new web application framework using defensive programming and XP practices; test-driven with PHPUnit and a bespoke page-render testing system (PHP, XML / XSLT).
Mar 2002 – Aug 2004	Application Developer / Technical Director / Proprietor, semioticaNewMedia Ltd.	Technical consultancy, development and freelance training. Built enterprise resource management tools for distributed web-based working; prototyped web-based control of monitoring equipment and online distribution and audit of digitally signed pharmaceutical documentation (PHP, Python, Perl, MySQL, XML / XSLT).
Oct 2001 – Mar 2002	Web development training, eCampus Ltd.	Six-month tutor-led course in Manchester (PHP, ASP, XML / XSD / XSLT, JavaScript / DHTML, standards-compliant HTML, web design), including internship-style work for real commercial clients.
Apr 1997 – Oct 2001	Media sales and consultancy	Career with major UK publishers. Training in sales, negotiation, presentation skills, and Excel / PowerPoint for management information reporting.

Education

B.A. (Hons) English and American Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1993
A-Levels: English Literature (A), French (C; Oral Grade A), Economics (C), Sedbergh School

Languages

English (native) · French (fluent) · German (beginner)

Interests

Digital photography, creative writing, skiing and snowboarding, board games, roleplaying and live-action roleplaying, theatre, cinema, live music, reading.

Full UK driving licence.