John Taylor - Director / Senior Software Developer

I’m currently the director of JKTSoftware Ltd and also it’s first employee!

I’ve been involved in software development for many years having served my time developing software within the energy, engineering, education and financial market sectors before moving into contracting in 2016 and founding JKTSoftware Ltd.

Since then I've been delivering software solutions for my clients while also investigating further innovative technologies to add value to the software portfolio of our customers.

Current Assignment

November 2022 - Present Day

Working for a government agency on the following: -

  • Upgrade of an enterprise wide records management system. [Microsoft SQL Server, Niche RMS]
  • Enhancing tightly defined information synchronisation mechanisms to share information between external government agencies and the records management system. [C#, .NET Framework, PowerShell 7, Perl, Windows Bat Files, Microsoft SQL Server, Niche RMS, SSH/SFTP]
  • Providing consultancy services on an as needed basis regarding software development processes and environments.

Previous Assignments

September 2021 - September 2022

Working for a software technology provider on the following: -

  • Enhancing a single sign on mechanism to allow for mutual authentication on multiple product websites. [C#, .NET 6, Azure Functions, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Sourcetree, Slack, Sonarcloud, NUnit, FluentAssertions, Polly]
  • Enhancing an information synchronisation mechanism to share information between an Emergency Medical Services platform and a scheduling software platform. [C#, .NET 6, Azure Functions, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Sourcetree, Slack, Sonarcloud, NUnit, FluentAssertions, Polly]
  • Participating in the upgrading and porting of an Emergency Medical Services platform to a new software technology stack (.NET 6) hosted on Microsoft Azure. [C#, .NET 6, ASP.NET, Classic ASP, Azure Functions, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Sourcetree, Slack, NUnit, FluentAssertions, AutoMapper, Polly]
  • Migrating application reports to Azure SQL providing added performance and functionality improvements. [C#, .NET 6, ASP.NET, Classic ASP, Azure Functions, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Sourcetree, Slack, NUnit, FluentAssertions, AutoMapper, Polly]

July 2020 - June 2021

Working remotely for a government agency on the following: -

  • Performing enhancements on an agricultural payment distribution system. [C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server, SonarQube, Application Insights]
  • Performing enhancements on an agricultural payment calculation system. [C#, ASP.NET, MVC, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server, StructureMap, AutoMapper, SonarQube, Polly]
  • Developing out-of-band emergency payments scheme for businesses impacted by Covid-19. [C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server, SonarQube]
  • Performing enhancements on 'etl' import jobs for a payments batch processing system. [SQL Server Integration Services, T-SQL, Microsoft SQL Server]
  • Maintaining an external payments solution using message based security and web services. [C#, Mutual Authentication Using Certificates, WCF, TLS, OpenSSL, Azure DevOps Server]
  • Maintaining security for a green screen based solution, with a view to transitioning the existing software to a future .NET based solution. [RedHat Linux, Python, SSH, Putty, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server]

April 2020 - June 2020

Spent 3 months in Belfast working onsite and remotely for a government agency working on the following: -

  • Performing enhancements on an agricultural payment distribution system. [C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server, SonarQube, Application Insights]
  • Maintaining external payments solution using message based security. [C#, Mutual Authentication Using Certificates, WCF, TLS, OpenSSL, Azure DevOps Server]
  • Maintaining security for a green screen based solution, with a view to transitioning the existing software to a future .NET based solution. [RedHat Linux, Python, SSH, Putty, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server]
  • Participating in the support of a distributed team solution in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, primarily focusing on the setup and distribution of mobile and laptop devices for department employees working at remote locations due to social distancing requirements. [BlackBerry UEM, iPad, Microsoft Teams, Windows 10, Cisco Jabber, F5 VPN Client, Microsoft Remote Desktop]

September 2019 - March 2020

Spent 7 months in Belfast on a contract for a government agency working on the following: -

  • Performing enhancements on an agricultural payment distribution system. [C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Azure DevOps Server]
  • Upgrading and securing external payments solution using message based security to replace former single sign on based solution. [C#, Mutual Authentication Using Certificates, TLS, OpenSSL, WCF]
  • Securing green screen based application, moving it to SSH based connections and alternative keyboard definitions. [RedHat Linux, Terminfo, Infocmp, Firewall Configuration, Telnet, SSH, Putty]

January 2018 - August 2019

Spent 20 months in Belfast on a contract working in the financial services sector for a multinational investment bank performing the following activities: –

  • Refactoring prime finance software systems into a microservices orientated architecture and migrating those components to a new internal cloud based platform, this involves a rewrite of several windows based services and the modification of various testing frameworks as a step towards continuous integration and subsequent deployment. [C#, WinForms, WPF, WCF, MSMQ, NUnit, TeamCity, MSBuild, SQL Server, TFS]
  • Designing and implementing new features to accommodate business requests and changes with regards to the introduction of new and modified financial regulations.

January 2017 - December 2017

Spent 12 months (6 months + 6 month extension) on a contract based in the North West of England (Chester) working on the following: –

  • Enhanced and maintained software control and production planning systems for the nuclear industry, this involved the creation of several desktop based tools and the maintenance of pre-existing tools. [C#, WPF, WCF, MVVM, C++, MFC]
  • Contributed to the design and implementation of a security hardened network for a nuclear industry client, this involved configuring switches and firewalls and segmenting the production network into individual VLAN’s according to intended function. [Networking, Switch Configuration, Firewall Configuration]
  • Identified and analyzed changes to an Altera Cyclone V based embedded monitoring system using VHDL and embedded Linux. [VHDL, Yocto Linux]