Responsible for developing and maintaining the Board Portal web application and supporting services (Ruby on Rails, React, Clojure, Docker)
devised and implemented an email microservice to decouple the platform from the then only email service provider
devised and implemented new as well as significantly sped up (at least 400-fold) pre-existing data export (to MS Excel) functionality
sped up the RSpec test suite by about 23% by adopting a smarter database cleaning strategy
Tech lead and people manager of the Consumer team (8 – 10 developers); responsible for coordinating the development work across the Consumer function, managing processes and developer happiness (Ruby on Rails, AWS)
got promoted from Senior Software Developer to Head of Development after 11 months
managed to maintain an average of 99% uptime as the owner of the company's main consumer facing web service (complaint-app)
delivered the infrastructure for the first non-UK based operation (South Africa) while requirements kept shifting
helping translate business requirements into technical specifications as well as stories and tasks while making sure to continuously pay down the technical debt
coaching and mentoring the team of junior to senior developers, removing any impediments to enable everybody to do their best work, and shielding the team from unnecessary things such as office politics
Tech lead of the Tools team; responsible for automating and supporting core development processes, e.g., deployment and testing; later responsible for developing and maintaining the Hivebench web app (Ruby, Ruby on Rails, AWS)
devised and implemented the in-house cloud deployment solution as a Ruby command line tool that all of Mendeley's web teams have adopted
devised and implemented first version an in-house end-to-end testing service similar to BrowserStack
taken over the organisation and hosting of the monthly Hackday (see awards)
did the technical due diligence of the Hivebench web application that has lead to Elsevier's acquisition of Hivebench
Responsible for developing and maintaining XING’s Premium section as well as devising and implementing XING’s own self-booking advertising solution (Ruby on Rails, Perl)
helped increase traffic in the Premium section by 2.5% relative to total site traffic within four months
implemented a birthday e-card feature used by hundreds of Premium users every day
helped launch and run XING’s self-booking advertising solution that enabled all of the company's 14 million users to become advertisers on the platform
Responsible for the Calsync team; synchronising calendar data from partner websites and APIs with the Wimdu platform; building a reliable system of keeping calendar data for about 90,000 offers up to date, i.e., building a library to facilitate new integrations and an infrastructure to sync and monitor up to six syncs a day per partner; working closely with the Supply department to plan and prioritise new partner integrations; building and leading a team of four junior developers to integrate new partners and offers every day (Ruby, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, Jenkins, AWS)
set up and maintained a data synchronisation platform from scratch
improved the capture rate for the synchronised offers by 12.3% within six months, resulting in an additional six-figure turnover every month
enabled the Supply department to manage offers for already integrated partners themselves using tools tied into the Wimdu Rails application’s backend
guided and mentored seven graduates / interns in regards to Ruby idioms specifically and, more generally, becoming better developers
Responsible for acquiring new customers and maintaining customer relationships; gathering and analysing customers’ business needs and technical requirements; quickly gaining expertise to meet customer and project requirements; devising and implementing software solutions as well as technical concepts; training designated users how to use the newly created IT systems (Ruby on Rails, Drupal, .NET, MS Silverlight)
built a Rails based project management system for a consultancy in the housing industry and urban development sector
implemented several company websites based on the CMS Drupal
devised and built the prototype for a tactics teaching web app for ball games using MS Silverlight
completed all projects on time and budget
Responsible for maintaining and extending the product portfolio (Windows word processing components) as well as customer support; devising, implementing and developing new products and services in tight cooperation with product management; ensuring product quality through periodic software tests; supporting customers on the phone and via e-mail (.NET, ASP.NET, C #)
devised, developed and maintained the mail-merge web service ‘LiveDocx’ based on ASP.NET and built up a user base (5000 sign ups within the first 12 months without any marketing budget)
extended the TX TextControl Server product line by the MailMerge .NET component and Template Designer App, which played important roles in the product’s success
built up and established a part-time freelance software development business in parallel to excelling at this job
Develop best-in-class talent through the work on the Mendeley Hackday Team
“ Lucas Mbiwe was a permanent employee at Board Intelligence from April 2019 to April 2020. As a Lead Engineer Lucas was responsible for developing significant new client facing features.He was involved throughout the product development cycle, working closely with the product team on requirements, undertaking technical research and leading implementations.One of Lucas’ strengths is his attention to detail and diligence as a developer, he has a very strong technical understanding of development patterns. The core technologies Lucas worked with were React, Ruby on Rails, Clojure, Postgres, OpenStack Swift and Docker. Lucas got up to speed quickly after joining and was soon a very active and popular member of the team.Along with his normal work Lucas proactively contributed to the continuous improvement of the teams development tools and processes. Overall, Lucas is a very conscientious, hard working and professional employee who I would not hesitate to recommend or work with again in the future. ”
“ Lucas was one of my senior developers and eventually the head of the development team at Resolver. He has a number of characteristics that made it quite pleasant to report to him. He is a fair, organised, punctual, supportive, transparent, attentive and just manager. He would motivate me to work, without coming across as bossy or overbearing. Lucas was brilliant at helping my growth, being there for me and listening to my suggestions and areas in which I would like to improve. On the note of software development, his ability to break big problems into smaller ones, making me understand every part of the process when we would pair program has definitely impacted me positively. ”