A senior engineer with over 13 years professional experience working in both Vancouver, BC and London, UK for a variety of different brands, including Lululemon, HBO, Santander, Heineken, Ferrero and Dior. I am a principled engineer who is solutions driven and has a keen sense for problem solving. I understand the needs of an evolving business, and will gladly pivot with them. I admire well written code, I enjoy working with other engineers, and passing on my knowledge to them. Outside of work, I also like to push myself, and pursue a number of passions including Road/Gravel Cycling, Mountain Biking, Skiing, camping and Off-Roading. I like to travel the world. I love cooking and can often be found stoking a fire. At home, I like to build things, cook, and code.
Nicholas Headlong
Software Engineer & Solution Architect
Career Highlights
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13 years working full-stack with clients such as Lululemon, HBO, Santander, Nike, Heineken, Idahoan, Roche and Ferrero.
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13 years working with stakeholders both external and internal, to at times tight deadlines and tense situations, with which I maintained both prefessionalism and delivered the highest quality product.
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Launched and maintained multiple applications and tools in both Europe, The US and Canada owning development lifecycle, deployment processes, quality, testing, scoping and RCA.
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7 years leading a software engineering team, being a key contributor to scrum ceremonies, road-mapping, feature discovery and implementation planning, RCA, delegation and mentoring.
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Have become very proficient in a range of front-end, back-end, and system based, languages, frameworks, tools, and processes as can be seen in the skills section below, including the latest AI tools.
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Architected and deployed cost-optimized AWS Serverless environments, utilizing SNS, SQS, and Step Functions for high-volume background processing, scaling to EKS/EC2 when necessary.
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Implemented lululemons first AI helper product for in store educators, using Azure AI Foundry, rolling out to 10000+ employees.
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Key Contributor to the 64 Bits Exhibition (London Olympic Park & Publicis HQ), which paired historic web pages with their original operational hardware. Featured landmark Canadian achievements like the first search engine on a CC, alongside the first webpage on a NeXT and the first e-commerce site (PizzaNet) on an LC2.
Skills
Front End
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JavaScript
15 Yrs -
TypeScript
5 Yrs -
Vue
5 Yrs -
React
10 Yrs -
Next.js
9 Yrs -
Astro
1 Yr -
Webpack
9 Yrs -
Stripe
9 Yrs -
Contentful
4 Yrs -
Sanity
8 Yrs -
Jest
7 Yrs -
Gherkin
7 Yrs -
Gulp
3 Yrs -
Rollup
6 Yrs -
Vite
1 Yr -
LESS SCSS PCSS
13 Yrs -
HTML CSS
16 Yrs -
Angular
2 Yrs
Back End
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Node.js
10 Yrs -
Python
2 Yrs -
SQL
14 Yrs-
MySQL
14 Yrs -
PostgreSQL
7 Yrs -
SQLite
12 Yrs
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MongoDB
4 Yrs -
AWS Lambda
7 Yrs -
RESTFUL Arch
9 Yrs -
Serverless Arch
7 Yrs -
GraphQL
6 Yrs -
PHP
6 Yrs -
Laravel
4 Yrs -
Express.js
8 Yrs -
Koa.js
7 Yrs -
Flask
2 Yrs -
FastAPI
2 Yrs -
Poetry
2 Yrs -
Pip
2 Yrs -
Pytest
2 Yrs
DevOps
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Bash
13 Yrs -
GitHub Actions
1 Yr -
AWS
10 Yrs -
Docker
10 Yrs -
Git
14 Yrs -
Terraform
6 Yrs -
AWS
10 Yrs-
EC2/EKS
9 Yrs -
Cognito
5 Yrs -
S3
10 Yrs -
CloudFront
10 Yrs -
Route53
10 Yrs -
IAM
5 Yrs -
CloudWatch
10 Yrs -
CloudTrail
10 Yrs -
StepFunctions
6 Yrs -
SNS
6 Yrs -
SQS
6 Yrs -
SAM
5 Yrs -
CloudFormation
7 Yrs
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Serverless Framework
7 Yrs -
Azure SSO
3 Yrs -
Azure AI Foundary
1 Yr -
Azure OpenAI
1 Yr -
Jenkins
5 Yrs
Design
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Figma
3 Yrs -
UI/UX
10 Yrs -
Adobe CC
16 Yrs
Procedure
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TDD
7 Yrs -
BDD
5 Yrs -
CI/CD
12 Yrs -
Jira
7 Yrs -
Confluence
7 Yrs -
Agile
7 Yrs -
Copilot
1 Yr -
Claude
1 Yr -
Gemini
1 Yr -
PagerDuty
2 Yrs -
Splunk
2 Yrs
Just For Fun
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Unity (C#)
10 Yrs -
Arduino (Java)
3 Yrs -
Raspberry Pi (Python)
8 Yrs
Work Experience
Senior Engineer 1
Lululemon AthleticaLed the development team on a number of retail technology projects.
- Initially leading a small group of designers, engineers and QAs building a back of house app that underpins a stores guest outreach strategy
- As the team gained traction, we also absorbed more projects including ownership over in-store monitors, ecom MFEs, source-of-truth APIs and data stores, and even Andriod touchscreen devices.
- As the project size grew, the team also grew. Peaking at around 15 engineers and and a host of analysts, project managers and other support staff.
- Mainly used AWS Serverless architecture for cost optimised environments, with a focus on processing heavier items behind the scenes with the help of SNS, SQS Step functions. In other instances EKS and EC2 based architecture was used when Serverless was no longer cost optimal.
- Other key technologies included NodeJs, Python, NextJs, Vue, React and Kotlin.
- Developed one-click, gated deployment processes unsing git and github flow implemented via Terraform, AWS SAM, and Cloudformation through CIs such as Jenkins and Gitlab.
- Ensured high quality and highly considered code was being added to code-base, and encouraged the team to take ownership and responsibility over their work and encouraged a test first culture with a high mature test coverage centred around BDD.
- Regularly held COP sessions and other more informal sessions to help keep the team abreast of changes to the team, org, and industry and ensure best-practice was always a fluidic discussion.
- Worked with Architects and product owners to realise product visions and create high quality solutions along with implementation plans that could then be handed down to various development teams to be completed. This also included tech-debt, EOL, and enhancement roadmaps.
- Lead RCA when needed and instilled a scientific and mature analysis culture within the team.
- Lead a rollout of AI integrated practices to the team.
- Regularly liaised with product and analysis stakeholders to prioritise work and establish or reestablish project priorities when needed both during sprint ceremonies and outside of them.
- Ensured that each team member felt like they belonged on the team, and worked with each member to ensure they were getting the most out of their time a lululemon.
- Built a series of AI tools to help stores manage and curate comms using the brand's voice and tone.
Full Stack Developer
Aesop AgencyLondon based integrated advertising / design agency that focused on a storytelling model to deliver compelling visual communications working with clients such as HBO, Idahoan, Roche and Ferrero.
- Delivered high-quality, scalable solutions for clients under tight deadlines and with constrained resources.
- Managed migration and evolution of the core tech stack from a PHP/Rackspace setup to a more modern Node.js/Express/React environment utilizing Docker and Digital Ocean.
- Notable work: 49s infrastructure rebuild, splitting a complex backend into various service layers all hosted on AWS EC2 load balanced servers, and the Mycelia “life of a song” data visualisation tool, which was shortlisted for a Webby.
- Defined project scope, provided technical planning, and led client communication for high-profile projects, including the prototyping of interactive Oculus VR experiences for the HBO Game of Thrones story universe.
Developer
Hogarth WorldwideA London based implementation agency under the WPP umbrella, with a global presence and record breaking growth.
- Maintained web presences for Dior, Heineken, Santander and Nike using Laravel, Codeignitor, TWIG as backend tools and and a front end of Grunt, LESS and JS.
- Initial work as a QC tester ensuring web and mobile applications were built to high standards.
- Trained a team of testers and rolled a series of standardised processes to hubs across the world.
- Later moved into the role of Junior Developer.
Education
Falmouth University
Falmouth, UKProvided a strategic and technical foundation for my career, specializing in Interactive Design/Development. Developed client multimedia packages while gaining expertise in industry software, media trend analysis, and a broad understanding of the industry’s historical, psychological, and business context. Project experience included early AI, touchscreen devices, and mobile application development.
Global Client Highlights
