Bruce Blacklaws

Bruce Blacklaws

CEO and Founder, App Evolved | Open for freelance work | Learning about Buddhism

I create apps in PHP and JavaScript. This is my app portfolio.

Reviews of the books I've read

I'm always open to new opportunities

Preferably remote or Southern Suburbs, Cape Town

Request Interview

In industry since August 2008

CEO and Founder

App Evolved, November 2017 - Present (1 year, 4 months)

I'm building every aspect of the business and technical product myself. App Evolved is something I'll always be working on. Selling my apartment provided the initial capital I used to get the company off the ground and I am running the company on a very tight budget

I incorporated App Evolved as a limited liability company in two countries:

South Africa
United Kingdom

I ensured accounting was configured and that the company is tax compliant with the annual returns filed and I opened a business bank account. I work with accountants in both South Africa and the UK

Working well over 12 hours everyday is a routine occurrence for me

DevOps Engineer

Ringier One Africa Media, August 2018 - March 2019 (8 months)

Enterprise DevOps

Linux Systems Engineer

Aware Corporation, April 2015 - October 2017 (2 years, 7 months)

Linux Systems Administration
Server deployment and management
DevOps

Remote Linux Systems Administrator

35 East, April 2016 - June 2016 (3 months)

Web Application Development

Systems Engineer

Indaba Mobile, June 2013 - February 2015 (1 year, 9 months)

Linux Systems Administration
Server deployment and management
Network design and management
DevOps

Systems Administrator

i-Soft Networks, October 2012 until May 2013 (8 months)

Systems Administration
Field Support

Junior Operations Engineer

Thought Express, May 2011 until June 2012 (1 year, 1 month)

Operational support

Junior Engineer

Liberty Health Holdings, August 2008 - April 2011 (2 years, 8 months)

First line user and network support
Data center technician

Summary

You can hire me for full stack web application development or something in platform or devops engineering

I'm the founder of App Evolved. I created Task Complete, Code Jobs, The PHP Shop and Perfect Places in my spare time. I have plenty other examples of my work I can show you during an interview

The work descriptions and my skills listed here are only brief summaries. I can elaborate on the details and provide comprehensive information during an interview

Skills

Web Application Development
- Frontend
  - JavaScript
    - Versions
      - ES5
  - CSS
    - Box model
  - HTML
- Backend
  - PHP
    - Versions
      - 5.3
      - 5.4
      - 7.1
    - Design Patterns
      - Front controller
      - MVC
    - Paradigms
      - Procedural
      - Object-oriented
    - Frameworks
      - Laravel
    - Databases
      - Relational
        
        MySQL
      - Document based
        
        MongoDB
    - Caching
      - In-memory
        
        memcached
  - Node.js
    - Versions
      - 6.10
      - 8.10
- Architectures
  - Monolithic
  - Microservices
  - RESTful
- Stacks
  - LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
Platform and DevOps Engineering
- Linux Systems Administration
  - Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 LTS
  - CentOS 5/6
- Systems Automation and Infrastructure as Code
  - Puppet
  - BASH
  - CloudFormation
  - Terraform
  - Jenkins
- Public Cloud Architecture
  - Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    - EC2 Auto Scaling
  - Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  - Linode
  - Digital Ocean
- Platform as a Service (Serverless)
  - AWS Lambda
  - GCP App Engine
  - Heroku
LAN/WAN design, implementation and management
- IPv4
- Branch networks
- Cisco
Building Businesses
- Instantiating
  - South Africa: Companies and Intellectual Property Commission
  - United Kingdom: Companies House
- General operations
- Trying to raise capital
  - Bootstrapping
  - Lending money from my mom

Recommendations

Ringier One Africa Media (1 recommendation)
Indaba Mobile (5 recommendations)

"Bruce was the new guy in our team, but he quickly got down to business and within a few days he was pushing out complex Puppet code driven out of Hiera. Bruce also sunk his teeth into our Infrastructure AWS stacks driven out of Cloudformation code, and quickly managed to get familiar with it..."

Riaan Nolan, Head of DevOps Engineering - Ringier One Africa Media

"...And Bruce did very, often working under very severe pressure but still delivering the required assistance. I have complete confidence in Bruce and his abilities."

Ray Musvibe, Technical Lead - Indaba Mobile