Dan Bradley works in our Product and Technology team as Head of Software Development.
What do you do at LBR?
I head up the Software Development team at LBR which builds and run the software behind LBR’s online products. While management is a big part of my role, I try to keep up to date with my technical skills. These days, however, I’m more likely to be found building deployment pipelines, writing Kubernetes manifests or infrastructure as code than developing new features.
My attitude has always been “whatever it takes”, be that PoCing a new technology or product, making architectural decisions or pitching in to investigate and fix production issues.
With a team of over 20 developers working on a number of different products, co-ordination across teams is important and I spend a lot of time making sure the team is working together as effectively as possible.
What are you working on now?
My big project for 2021 has been performing cloud migrations for our products. This has involved me getting up to speed on Infrastructure as Code techniques, Kubernetes, Cloud Security and various cloud technologies and working with our Engineering team to get the products cloud-ready with the minimum of disruption to the business.
A lot of my time is spent on hiring. I interview most candidates during the selection process as I think it is really important to keep in touch with the new developers coming through the process and to build a team that can work well together.
Another important part of my role is being involved in new projects early on in order to provide input from a tech perspective at an early stage.
Tell us about your background.
I was interested in computers from an early age and started by copying games out of books onto a ZX Spectrum 128 and then moved on to breaking and fixing PCs. I became a fan of Linux and spent a lot of time trying to get drivers built to support my components, which taught me a lot about problem-solving and the obscure configuration and commands that Linux uses. I went to university in Manchester to study computer science and then, after a short first job elsewhere, joined Globe, which has now become part of LBR, so Globe/LBR has been a big part of my life.
What do you like about LBR?
I like the fact that there is always something new going on – a new product, a new requirement which requires a new technology or a big project that needs to be delivered.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to use a number of different technologies, ranging from .Net, through Elastic, React, AI/NLP libraries to Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes. I have no doubt that I’ll be learning more over the coming years.
What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
I love swimming and try to get to the pool every day if I can, which is great for my mental health. I also enjoy helping my daughter to build games in Roblox and playing along with her.
How have you and your colleagues adapted to working remotely?
Remarkably well. In the beginning it felt like we were missing some of the face-to-face contact but, as time has gone on, remote has become the de facto way of working. We have been hiring fully remote developers recently, so remote is now baked into our working practices. Pull requests were widely used before we worked remotely and are now even more important a way for us to collaborate and improve, and, for most meetings, Teams works well.
