Andrew Jones : andrew-jones.com

About Me

I'm a Tech Lead and Senior Software Engineer with over thirteen years experience. I'm currently working at GoCardless in London, where the team and I are building a best in class data platform to power our analytics, models and products.

Outside of work I enjoy being active. I've ran a number of half marathons (PB 1hr 40) and was previously a member of the Broxbourne Rowing Club.

At home I enjoy occasional baking and brew my own beer, when I'm not running round after my young son.

For more information see my bio or contact me via LinkedIn, Twitter, or at andrew [at] andrew-jones.com.

Featured Blog Posts

Improving Data Quality with Data Contracts at GoCardless

Over on the GoCardless Tech Blog I’ve written a post about how we’re improving data quality with Data Contracts. Check it out and let me know what you think! Also join the great conversation on LinkedIn.

A Data Platform is not just for analytics

Data is at the heart of every meaningful service, and it’s the effective use of that data which builds a product, and a business. It’s the data from one service that enables another, whether that’s a closely associated microservice, an anomaly detection pipeline, or any other data-driven service. A data platform has all the components we need to make effective use of this data, but so often we tie them to a specific use case or deployment, leaving the rest of the organisation to reimplement or go without.

Data contracts

Almost all data platforms start with a change data capture (CDC) service to extract data from an organisations transactional databases - the source of truth for their most valuable data. That data is then transformed, joined, and aggregated to drive analysis, modelling, and other downstream services. However, this data has not been designed for these use cases - it has been designed to satisfy the needs and requirements of the source applications and their day-to-day use.

The democratisation of Data Science

There’s a trend in the industry to make data science and machine learning more accessible, allowing engineers to build and deploy standard models without needing to have a strong data science background. Examples include BigQueryML (standard models in SQL), Ubers Ludwig and h2o.ai. BI Analysts and Data Engineers are the most ready to take advantage of these tools, as they have the expertise around data modelling and the domain knowledge of their organisations data.

What does a Tech Lead do?

I’ve been a Tech Lead for a few years now, though I’d say I’ve only been a good Tech Lead for about a year. So what, exactly, does a good Tech Lead do? The role of Tech Lead may not be exactly the same in every company, but there are certainly a number of things a good Tech Lead should be doing to help lead and enable a successful team.

Momentum

In the Michael Connelly books, Detective Harry Bosch often talks about the importance of momentum when working a case.

About Me

Featured Blog Posts

Improving Data Quality with Data Contracts at GoCardless

A Data Platform is not just for analytics

Data contracts

The democratisation of Data Science

What does a Tech Lead do?

Momentum

Recent Blog Posts

Using Terraform Registry modules with Terragrunt

Answer with docs

Improving Data Quality with Data Contracts at GoCardless

A Data Platform is not just for analytics

Data contracts