Phil Reynolds

Swansea, Wales, UK

07828170428 | [email protected] | Website | LinkedIn | GitHub

Proven engineering leader with a passion for leading teams to deliver effectively and helping people achieve their goals. A breadth of experience in both software engineering and outdoor leadership has led to a clear understanding of the importance of clear and effective communication in all aspects of any role. Excited to explore and solve challenging problems, leveraging the skills and tools available to find and deliver the best possible solution. Always looking to develop personal skill sets and improve ways of working and with a keen attention to detail to identify areas for improvement and growth both personally and in their teams.

Experience

Developer at Wodboard

April 2025 - Present

Head of Engineering at Ryalto

May 2022 - March 2025

Led the rebuild of Ryalto, taking it from an ageing collection of microservices to a modern majestic monolith using Rails 8 and Hotwire with propshaft and import maps. The new version of the app scaled to 50000 users at 1/10th of the cost of the previous infrastructure.

Designed and implemented the majority of the new features, including:

Instant messaging with Hotwire (Turbo Streams and WebSockets with Action Cable).
Event booking system.
Social News Feed and Announcements systems with post creation, reactions, comments and interaction tracking.
Lightweight bespoke analytics system.
Admin Dashboard with user controls and granular admin controls to allow customer admins to follow the principle of least privilege.
Notifications using the Noticed Gem (I’m still one of the top contributors to that Gem).
Automated API Docs using the OpenAPI standard and Redocly. The docs use the same JSON Schema to test the endpoints and provide examples.

Implemented modernised developer tooling:

Error monitoring with Honeybadger.
Performance monitoring and logging with AppSignal
New CI/CD processes using GitHub Actions and Hatchbox to automate deployments to a cluster of workers on Digital Ocean.

Additional Achievements and Responsibilities

Responsibility for managing and scaling the infrastructure as required.
Worked extensively with partners to design and implement multiple complex cross-platform integrated solutions.
Implemented the Ryalto Developer page using Jekyll.rb with a detailed feature overview.
Grew the development team from 4 to 10 members.
Led the iterative improvement of existing features, planned and led the implementation of new features including Surveys, CSV Import & Export and VoIP Calling.
Responsibility for management of full dev team, technical budget and tooling payments.

Lead Software Developer at Legal Innovation Lab Wales

March 2020 - April 2022

Led the software development team as part of the Legal Innovation Lab Wales project, including:

Recruitment, onboarding, development and management of team members,
Creating, developing and evolving all the processes, tooling and infrastructure,
Developing and delivering 9 different software projects in our first year,
Building and managing the developer page

With full responsibility for software development on the project I implemented processes and methodologies that led to an extremely happy and productive team, delivering a wide range of projects which well exceeded all of our aims and targets.
As I was leading a small team, I had to be involved with every part of every project. Leading the full stack design and development of each project, contributing to the development of many and reviewing code to ensure its quality. I was also responsible for stakeholder engagement, and helped on a broad range of other areas of the project outside of software.
Primarily used Ruby on Rails deployed via Heroku’s PaaS using Cloudflare’s CDN and DNS with GitHub for code repos and some CI/CD. Jira was used for task management and Notion for non-project related documentation. Jekyll was also used for our developer pages hosted on Netlify. These were chosen with the aim of ensuring the team’s happiness and productivity.

Outdoor Guide at Savage Adventures

March 2019 - Present

Part-time multidiscipline adventure guide including Gorge Walking and Coasteering. Created marketing website.

Cloud Consultant at Mobilise Cloud

September 2018 - March 2020

Working as a DevOps Engineer specialising in AWS Cloud Architecture and a Full Stack Software Engineer. Working with large enterprise clients to ensure the stability, efficiency and cost effectiveness of their cloud infrastructure. Developed and contributed to several applications in Python and Ruby.

Developer Advocate at Veeqo

July 2017 - August 2018

Primary focus was to get more developers building more apps on the Veeqo APIs. Helped extensively in other areas of the business. Launched the Veeqo Marketplace with 12 apps. Acted as a partnerships manager and product manager for the Veeqo Marketplace and other products. Responsible for developing, managing and maintaining developer portal, the developer forum and the API documentation.

08/15 - 12/16 Brand Ambassador at Supersaturated
09/15 - 08/16 College Rep for College of Science at Swansea University
07/15 - 12/15 Community and Event Manager at TechHub Swansea
07/13 - 10/15 Estate Agent at John Francis (Wales) LTD
10/11 - 10/13 Director and Co-Founder at Decent Descent.co.uk
07/11 - 03/13 Warranty Manager at Tredz.co.uk
06/06 - 11/10 Various Bar and Hospitality Jobs

Education

2013-17 BSc Computer Science - First Class Honours - Swansea University

Final Year Project was building a digital climbing guidebook called RockAdvisor

2007-8 GCE A-levels - Physics (C), Maths (C), Chemistry (D) - Old Swinford Hospital

Projects

Further Details

Battery Payback Calculator > A tool that calculates the return on investment of residential battery storage based on actual energy usage and battery options.

Radius Contractors > An app to find builders recommended by your connections, inspired by a Google Doc used by our group of friends!

Ryalto V4 > Rebuild of Ryalto from microservices to a majestic monolith. Scaled the new application to 50000 users.

Ryalto Dev Page > Jekyll static site.

LILW Dev Page > Jekyll static site to showcase projects, blogs and information for dev team and collaborators.

Dragon-S > Two Rails projects. One which provides an interface to a ML classifier which identifies grooming tactics in conversations,. the other is a bespoke online learning environment tailored to provide learning to safeguarding professionals about the tactics used in grooming and how to offer better protection and support to victims.

Include Journey > Full Stack Ruby on Rails app which facilitates prison leavers on their rehabilitation journey. Led the project through a co-design process with stakeholders and end users. Delivered functional prototype in 12 weeks which won the Ministry of Justice’s Prison Leavers Innovation Challenge and £420k of funding for future development.

Scenario Platform > Full Stack Ruby on Rails application which allows admins to create non-linear branching scenarios where each answer a user selects influences a range of invisible parameters. Delivered the entire project, through problem discovery, research into existing solutions, design, development and deployment.

Members.Mobilise.Digital > Full Stack Rails application for managing a network of contractors. Designed and delivered full project..

PurpleRiver.dev > Jekyll site Hosted on Cloudflare

VanSpots.uk > First project built with Rails and runs at zero cost; leveraging the Heroku Platform as a Service (PAAS) for the infrastructure, CloudFlare for a CDN and DNS with other technologies including the GoogleMaps JavaScript API. Allows users to sign up, find, add and review spots that are good for camping in vans. Recently rebuilt on Rails 8

Savage-Adventures.com > Jekyll marketing website that runs on Cloudflare

summoner.purpleriver.dev > Serverless application that sends a text message from a website sharing the users location (with their explicit consent), leveraging Cloudflare workers and Twilio.

RockAdvisor.uk > Digital Rock Climbing guide book. Full stack project for University final project, back end built in PHP with the Laravel framework. Front end used AngularJS 1.6.

Qualifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Expired Nov 2021)
Rescue 3 White Water Rescue Technician - Professional (WRT-PRO) (Expired Feb 2025)
British Canoeing Foundation Safety and Rescue Training (FSRT)
Trail Cycle Leader (TCL) certified by MBLA recognised by AALS and British Cycling.
Two-day Outdoor First Aid with First Aid at Work (FAW).
Clean, UK driving Licence with D1 provisional.
Gold Duke of Edinburgh award.

Skills Matrix

Leadership / Software Engineering / Verbal & Written Communication / Project & Product Management / Ruby / Rails / Hotwire / StimulusJS / Git / HTML / CSS / Jekyll / APIs / Javascript / Software Architecture / Infrastructure / Python / AWS / DevOps / Company Culture / Full Stack Development / Public Speaking / Coaching / Stakeholder & Partner Management

Volunteering

2019/21 Western Beacons Mountain Rescue Team, Team Member.

Responding to call outs for people in need across the team’s area of responsibility.
Utilising diverse skills as an effective, efficient team member when locating, stabilising and extracting a casualty.

2015/16 Swansea University College of Science Student Rep.

Responsible for representing students at university meetings.
Communication between students and staff.

2015/16 Swansea University Canoe Club Anti-Faff Co-ordinator.

Responsible for ensuring meetings, training and trips run as smoothly as possible.
Helped manage, maintain and develop www.succ.me website.

2013/15 Swansea University Computer Science Student Rep.

Responsible for representing students at college meetings.
Communication between students and staff.
Implemented social media group for course to allow easier collaboration between students.

2010/12 Swansea University Cycling Team (SUCT) Captain.

Established and managed SUCT race team, competing in all disciplines of mountain bike racing across the UK.
Designed, implemented and managed www.SUCT.co.uk as well as the Facebook Group.
Successfully organised club sponsorships from local and national organisations.

Captain of College Hockey 1st Team.
House prefect and day student liaison at college.
Supervisor for Duke of Edinburgh’s Award - Bronze and Silver Level.

Interests

Climbing, Cycling (mountain and road), trail running, and other outdoor adventures.
Completed Rock Climbing Instructor (RCI) and Mountain Leader (ML) training. Completion was derailed by Covid
Reading novels, especially science fiction from authors such as Iain M Banks and Douglas Adams.
Working with technology, and constantly striving to improve knowledge of computer systems.
New technology and the way it impacts the world.

References

Mr Gary Drew
Group CTO
nGAGE Talent
[email protected]

Mr Ben Riseborough
Project Manager
Legal Innovation Lab Wales
Swansea University
[email protected]