Chris Northwood
Technical Leader and Author
Hello! This is the website and portfolio of Chris Northwood (I'm sometimes found online using the handle laser or a variation and I hold the radio callsigns M3NTW and 2E0NTW). I'm trans, and use the pronouns she/her.
I'm currently working as the Head of Development for Tech for Good startup Culture Shift and help run BarCamp Manchester.
I'm a campaigner in Manchester City Centre for the Liberal Democrats.
I use Twitter quite a lot, and I occasionally blog at Medium. You can also get in touch with me using the details below.
I've written a book: The Full Stack Developer, published by Apress. It's the book I wish I had when I started as a junior developer, and covers almost everything I've learnt in my career so far. You can buy it from Amazon.
What I believe
Delivery
- I believe in Continuous Delivery in a cross-functional product team embracing DevOps and design together.
- I believe in Agile projects and Kanban
- I'm a polyglot programmer, working across the full web stack, who believes in using the best tool for the job
Teamwork
- I work in cross-functional teams focussed on delivery: swarming on problems, rather than siloed roles and responsibilities
- I believe that software delivery should be integrated into the business, not a separate team
- I believe in effective code reviews
Development
- I build accessibility and security in from the start
- I use Test-Driven Development and Continuous Integration
- I believe in working at a sustainable pace
What I've done
Mosaic
Software Developer
The Trial Platform
Digital Transformation Project Lead
Object-based Production Tools In the Cloud
Technical Architect
Published works: Northwood, C., & Wadge, R. (2018). An Architecture for Cloud-Based IP Video Production Tools. SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, 127(5), 32-37.
Single Operator Mixing Application
Product Owner
Cook-Along Kitchen Experience
Technical Lead and Architect
Paradigm Shift
Full-Stack Developer
BBC Taster
Technical Lead
Manchester Tech Nights
Co-founder
Timelines
Technical Lead
BBC iWonder
Full-Stack Developer
BBC Bitesize
Full-Stack Developer
Connected Red Button
Full-Stack Developer
Games Grid
Back-end Developer
Mobile Oxford
Full-Stack Developer
Nouse
Technical Lead
Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux
QA Engineer & Intern Developer
What I know
MSc Computer Science with Speech & Language Processing (University of Sheffield)
Final result: Performance with Distinction
Awarded the Fretwell-Downing prize for performance in thesis: Temporal Expression Recognition and Normalisation in Python.
BEng Computer Science (University of York)
Final result: Second class honours, first division