Software developer and AWS consultant
Martin is a Principal Consultant and co-founder of Si Novi. He has spent over twenty years building for the web, from native mobile apps and open-source developer tools through to cloud-native platforms on AWS, and works across the full stack, choosing the right tool for the job.
From BASIC to the web
Martin grew up in South Manchester and started out programming BASIC on the family's Amstrad 6128. His first career, though, was in music. He studied computer-driven music production at Leeds College of Music, and began building websites for the bands he worked with. The timeline-based tools he already knew - Flash and Director - turned out to be a natural way in to web development.
So he retrained. He joined a Manchester agency building bespoke websites and content management systems, and took a Computer Science degree at Manchester Metropolitan University alongside the work, graduating with first-class honours.
Mobile, and the Telegraph Clearing app
When the iPhone and the App Store arrived in the late 2000s, Martin moved into mobile. He built apps with Appcelerator and PhoneGap, wrapping web technology in native shells, for clients ranging from start-ups to large publishers. The one he is best known for is the Telegraph's UCAS Clearing app, which he produced from 2011 to 2017. It reached number two in the App Store, behind only Facebook Messenger, and helped over a million students find their university places.
Serverless, DynamoDB and open source
The scale those apps needed pushed Martin towards AWS. He was an early adopter, moving from EC2 and Elastic Beanstalk to serverless by 2016, building on Lambda, API Gateway and DynamoDB. He took to infrastructure as code early too, using OpenJS Architect to make deployments repeatable, and occasionally sending bug fixes back upstream.
DynamoDB became his default data store, and designing access patterns for it became a speciality. That work took him into open source: he created Dynoxide, an embeddable DynamoDB engine written in Rust that runs natively, in Docker, and in the browser via WebAssembly, along with a conformance suite that scores emulators against live AWS. At Si Novi he is building Nubo, a native DynamoDB client for macOS, Windows and Linux.
Today at Si Novi
Martin co-founded Si Novi with James Galley in 2018. He works directly with clients: designing the cloud architecture, building the application, and helping their teams get comfortable with serverless and infrastructure as code. Si Novi is a member of the AWS Partner Network, and Martin holds the AWS Certified Developer - Associate and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certifications.
Outside work, Martin lives in Manchester with his wife and two children. He coaches two football teams, runs, and still listens to a lot of music.
