Base is growing — meet our lovely new team
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Base started out as just three people in a small Bournemouth office. We’re now very proud to say, on the cusp of our tenth year, Base has grown into a 21-strong team with (thankfully) much larger offices in Westbourne. We’ve just added eight new starters to that number, and we’d very much like you to meet them.
Next month, Base turns 10. We couldn’t be more proud to have reached this stage (especially so, considering that only 4% of new startups are said to make it past their second year!) We’ve grown from a three-person team to 21 hard-working individuals who are developing some truly exciting technology right as we speak.
Eight of that number comprises our Base’s new starters, who recently joined the team to develop and market our continually growing transport solution Passenger, share silly gifs on Slack and get together on Friday evenings for one too many drinks.
Our engineering team has grown by a count of five, and our client team has grown by three with key hires across product management, account management and marketing.
Just before we meet these lovely people, be sure to check out this blog from our Engineering Director Dave Hulbert, who ruminates on both the growing pains (and pleasures) experienced when expanding a dev team headcount.
Now that’s done…let’s get to know the new team.
Meet our new engineers
First, we welcome Senior Engineer Shane de Jager. He comes from a web agency background in native app and web development, backend APIs and server infrastructure. True to his South African routes he loves his homemade biltong…but hasn’t brought in any for the team yet???
Ryan Howell joins Base as an Engineer. He previously worked on financial/property management software, and has done plenty of devops work in improving server infrastructure and improving codebase maintainability. Just so you know, his favourite video game is Portal, his favourite movie is Ready Player One, and his favourite book is Cory Doctorow’s Homeland.
Beau Lovell also joins the team as an Engineer. He has a knack for mathematically intense problem solving across full stack and PHP development, used to create Flash games with elaborate algorithms, and he likes to create spreadsheets to ensure he’s getting through games with maximum efficiency. We like his thinking!
The third and final of our back end engineers is Bryan Hutchinson. Bryan has an extensive background in PHP development, is a credited Magnolia developer and has great deal of experience working with platforms such as Drupal and Symfony. He’s also into blockchain and recently built a crypto miner that gave his girlfriend fire hazard concerns…
Finally, Callum Taylor is our Android Mobile App Engineer. He has a passion for great code, which has resulted in award-winning apps like this one for American Red Cross. He also has a black belt in taekwondo, has played guitar for 20 years, and runs an Instagram account for his two ridiculously photogenic huskies.
Meet Base’s client team
We’ve also grown our client and marketing team alongside our dev team expansion.
Richard Potter is Base’s new Technical Delivery Manager. He’s using his 18 years of experience as a customer-focused systems engineer, project manager and consultant to make Passenger a more efficient developing machine than ever. If you’re into sea fishing, kite surfing, skiing or (importantly) modified cars and track days, Richard’s your man.
Our talented Account Manager, Helen Connolly, is the new friendly face greeting our partners at Passenger. Fun fact: she trained to be a chef, so is something of a food connoisseur. The person to ask if you want to know which restaurants are good, and which really aren’t, in the local area…
Chris McMahon joins as Marketing Manager, following on from a career that has seen him drink rattlesnake blood in Hong Kong, visit LA’s Magic Castle, and play drums (in an admittedly peculiar way) with Coolio. He’ll be communicating things like new hires (hello) and all the other exciting things we have going on at Base. Follow our Twitter and Instagram for more.
Please join us in extending the warmest of welcomes to the new members of the team.
…and also in poking fun at these photoshoot outtakes.
Interested in joining Base and working on some truly exciting technology? We’re hiring!
