SIMON DEVENISH
Summary
Principal engineer and consultant with 20+ years delivering secure, production-grade software across backend and full-stack web. Backend leaning with Go and Node.js, building APIs and services backed by PostgreSQL, Redis, queues/stream processing, and real-time messaging. Strong React and Next.js delivery for product interfaces, admin portals, and internal tooling. Known for owning outcomes end-to-end in product-led and consultancy environments, from ambiguous problem space through build, release, and production operation. Recent work includes large-scale platform migrations with performance instrumentation, and security/integrity hardening that reduces abuse and operational risk.
Overview
15
15
years of professional experience
Work history
Senior Server Engineer (Contract)
MYTHICAL GAMES
08.2025 - 01.2026
- Engaged to deliver platform migration work and harden live systems against abuse.
- Platform migration: Delivered a repeatable player/account migration from a legacy backend to a newer internal Platform API (inventory, resources, off-chain items into local DB, on-chain custom data, account version updates), using batching and throttling to protect downstream services.
- Performance and observability: Implemented granular instrumentation to separate upstream API latency from database time, with per-operation breakdowns used to locate bottlenecks and drive targeted optimisations.
- Full-stack delivery: Updated React-based admin tooling to support new backend workflows and operational requirements (migration visibility, support workflows).
- Security and integrity: Refactored client-authoritative flows to server-authoritative execution to reduce exploitability and improve integrity of critical outcomes.
- Abuse prevention controls: Implemented request signing with nonce anti-replay, server-side validators, and audit logging to support prevention and investigation.
- Test infrastructure: Built an integration test harness to simulate multiple concurrent clients locally, improving reproducibility and reducing regression cycles.
- Tech: Node.js (cluster), Express, React, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, Docker, Kubernetes, GCP, FusionAuth, Snowplow, Photon, Centrifuge, Google Play and Apple receipt verification
Lead Software Engineer (Contract)
JECO
09.2024 - 07.2025
- Architected and delivered an end-to-end telemetry ingestion and processing platform from MVP to production readiness.
- System architecture: Designed a decoupled ingestion pipeline where uploads are accepted quickly and parsing/processing runs asynchronously via Kafka for throughput and resilience.
- Backend delivery: Built Go services for ingestion, authentication, job creation, and processing orchestration, with clear APIs and operational visibility.
- Extensibility: Implemented registry-based routing for Protobuf packet types to minimise hard-coded mappings and enable new message types without service rewrites.
- Production ownership: Established deployment workflows, monitoring, and reliability practices; worked directly with founders on roadmap and execution; hired/mentored engineers and ran reviews/workshops.
- Tech: Go, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Protobuf, Docker, AWS S3 (plus Windows agent in C/C++)
Lead Programmer (Contract)
FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS
10.2022 - 09.2024
- Technical leadership on a large production codebase with a strong focus on reliability, performance, and disciplined delivery.
- Owned complex delivery planning, risk management, and cross-team coordination across multiple stakeholders and dependencies.
- Drove improvements that reduced operational risk and improved stability through tighter engineering practices, profiling, and review discipline.
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
VOICES PROJECT
03.2022 - 04.2022
- Retained to deliver specific full-stack product features to a deadline, covering backend endpoints and React UI changes in a product-led environment.
- Tech: Node.js, JavaScript, AWS, React, MongoDB
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
PIX
01.2022 - 02.2022
- Developing microservices in Python and AWS
- Architecting cloud infrastructure, writing CloudFormation and AWS Sam templates
- CRUD/REST API Design and implementation
- GraphQL API design and implementation in AppSync
- Developed local testing environment using Docker Network
- Working with overseas teams in UK, Europe and USA
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
IO.TT
10.2021 - 12.2021
- AWS services integration for iOT micro website services from SNS, automated CI/CD
build pipelines and deployment of apps to production/staging environments - Fullstack web development - Javascript, React, Next.js, Go
- GraphQL and CRUD REST API design and implementation
- Helping improve Engineering process for company - reusable package repository, unit
testing methodology, standardisations for engineering - Security Vulnerability analysis against OWASP top ten using Zap and basic pen test methods.
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
POLYSTREAM (acquired by Mythical Games)
02.2019 - 07.2019
- Built client application features for a performance-sensitive cloud streaming platform, focused on fast and reliable session start and connection lifecycle management.
- Implemented session orchestration flows including retries/timeouts and defensive handling of partial failures under real-world network conditions.
- Instrumented and profiled end-to-end behaviour and fed back issues and improvements to core platform teams to improve responsiveness and reliability.
- Tech: C#, .NET Framework, REST APIs, WebSockets, Git
Principal Engineer
MBDA
Bristol, UK
02.2016 - 01.2019
- Managed a team of engineers across UK and France to develop a Mission Planning & Control platform for the F35 aircraft.
- Designed and developed an algorithm chaining tool to convert Matlab code written by physicists into C++ that links input and outputs to display a LAR (launch acceptability region) in the MP&C platform.
- MISRA code compliances.
- I won a company-wide Robotics competition in the software faculty for writing Computer Vision algorithms in Python for a four wheeled robot to detect and avoid obstacles.
- Maintained physical server stacks in test lab and containerised Docker instances of test environment in Linux CentOS
Senior Software Engineer
BAE SYSTEMS DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE
Gloucester, UK
01.2014 - 01.2016
- Working on high performance C++ Threat Intercept Systems for use by national agencies.
- Low-level programming on custom network processing hardware operating on network packets.
- Heavy reliance on performance and stability of code.
- Mentoring more junior programmers
- Took lead on the Software Integration & Test software team and won the Innovation
- Champion award for my technical vision and improvements on the team
- Network packet traffic and bilateral comms data inspection with network tools such as Wireshark. Heavy use of TDD and CI.
- Helped manage and maintain complex federation of CI/CD/test/validation infrastructure written in Python, Ruby and CMake using Kubernetes and Docker
Software Engineer (Contract)
PSYT LTD
01.2013 - 01.2014
Software Engineer (Contract)
GEOPALZ
01.2011 - 01.2012
Education
BSc - Computer Games Technologies
University of Portsmouth
Skills
- Languages: Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, C#
- Frontend: React, Nextjs, Tailwind CSS, Material UI, Admin and internal tooling, dashboards
- Backend: Nodejs, Express, REST APIs, service-oriented and microservice architectures, Background processing, workers, schedulers, batch jobs, Idempotent job design, WebSockets, real-time messaging
- Data and streaming: PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch, SQLite, JSONB, Time-series and event-style modelling
- Cloud and delivery: GCP, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Secrets and configuration management, Logging, metrics, dashboards, alerting, Incident triage and root cause analysis
- Security and integrity: Authn/authz, JWT, request signing (HMAC) with nonce anti-replay, tamper/modified-client detection signals, audit logging, abuse and fraud telemetry, entitlement verification patterns
SELECTED PROJECTS
Koggs (Release Pilot), Full-stack SaaS https://www.koggs.app/ Tech: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Go, Stripe, PocketBase (SQLite), Docker, Vercel, Hetzner, Designed and built the product end-to-end including UI/UX, frontend, backend service, billing, and deployment pipeline.
InvoicePilot (InvoiceIQ), Full-stack SaaS https://www.invoicepilot.ai/onboarding/welcome Tech: React, TypeScript, MUI, Tailwind, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, background jobs, Prometheus, Grafana, Stripe, PayPal, Built the platform end-to-end including UI/UX, backend, multi-tenant data model, background processing, and monitoring.
Affiliations
- Audio Production
- Electronics
References
References available upon request.
Timeline
Senior Server Engineer (Contract)
MYTHICAL GAMES
08.2025 - 01.2026
Lead Software Engineer (Contract)
JECO
09.2024 - 07.2025
Lead Programmer (Contract)
FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS
10.2022 - 09.2024
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
VOICES PROJECT
03.2022 - 04.2022
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
PIX
01.2022 - 02.2022
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
IO.TT
10.2021 - 12.2021
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
POLYSTREAM (acquired by Mythical Games)
02.2019 - 07.2019
Principal Engineer
MBDA
02.2016 - 01.2019
Senior Software Engineer
BAE SYSTEMS DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE
01.2014 - 01.2016
Software Engineer (Contract)
PSYT LTD
01.2013 - 01.2014
Software Engineer (Contract)
GEOPALZ
01.2011 - 01.2012
BSc - Computer Games Technologies
University of Portsmouth