Meet our Senior Technical Architect

Today we are chatting to Wayne Gibson, Senior Technical Architect of the *shopt app!

Hi Wayne! Please start by telling us: What is your job title, and what does your role involve?

In a nutshell, my role is to work closely with the *shopt team and brands that we work with, to take ideas for new features and enhancements and make them a reality! From concept, I then work out how to best implement those features, including breaking them down into releases so we deliver new versions of the app often.

What are the key technical challenges unique to working on a retail-focused app like *shopt?

The vast range of smart phones out there and constant evolution of the operating systems on these. It’s a huge job to keep up to date with app and data compliance rules, changes to operating systems. On top of the new features, we add to the *shopt app, there is a lot of behind the scenes work we have to do to keep the app up to date to work with the most possible devices. If you find an issue on your device, we sincerely apologise about that – the quickest route to us rectifying the issue is to tell us as much about your device as possible – make, model, version, OS version etc – we can then emulate the issue on your exact device.

What are your main priorities when designing and maintaining the app’s backend and infrastructure?

Making sure the service has the maximum uptime – we do this by leveraging the power of the cloud. Ensuring your data is safe – i.e. knowing that when you make a Claim in the app, we’ve got that data safe and secure, so you get your reward. Application security is always at the forefront of an architect’s mind too.

How does your work contribute to the overall success and growth of *Shopt?

By taking ideas of things we want to include in the app, and listening to feedback from the user community to constantly add new features to the app. My philosophy is to deliver new features often and listen to feedback when they are launched and be prepared to tweak them accordingly. Our user’s voice is important – we want the app to be the best for them.  I’m always on the lookout for quick wins too – someone might have an idea and we may be able to squeeze it into an upcoming release with minimal effort – who wouldn’t want to benefit from that?

How do you ensure *Shopt remains a fast, reliable, and secure app for users?

We host the app in the cloud to take advantage of specialists in data-centre hosting capabilities to give high availability and performance. This also means we can scale quicky as demand grows.

What’s the most exciting technical improvement or innovation you’ve implemented recently?

We’ve recently launched a new algorithm to automatically issue rewards to retailers – the logic was quite complex to implement – always a good opportunity to give the brain some strenuous exercise!

How do you ensure *shopt’s architecture is future-proof and can scale as the user base grows?

There are lots of techniques we use here. For every new enhancement I assess the changes to make sure we’re not limiting our options for the future – i.e. not creating challenges for ourselves in the future. For scalability, a term architects like is ‘Distributed Architecture’ – this means spreading workload across lots of servers. It can seem counter-intuitive – surely its faster to process everything together – but when there are lots of users all interacting with the app at once, spreading the load helps us scale. Architects also like batching and queuing work to help spread workload to quiet times.

How do you work with developers, product managers, and business stakeholders to align technical solutions with business goals?

I meet with the *shopt team at least once a week – we discuss new features, any current issues and then we agree priorities. We have a daily meeting with the developers to make sure we’re working on the right things and to keep things on track for each release.

How do you balance delivering new features with maintaining existing systems?

Its all in the planning! Before the start of each year, we plan out maintenance, upgrades and an approx. plan for new features. The latter is more dynamic, but we start the year out with time put aside for both areas – so we can all have our cake and eat it!

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned while working on *Shopt?

A great team can deliver great results – the entire team working on *shopt from all disciplines have built a huge amount of trust in each other. This means we can openly challenge decisions with each other, raise half-baked ideas, discuss issues in a safe space. This allows us to come up with some fantastic ideas and execute them quickly.

How do architecture decisions directly impact the experience of *Shopt users?

Put simply, a badly architected app wouldn’t scale and could jeopardise users data.

What’s a feature or improvement you’d love to implement in the future?

The buzz-word of the decade is Artificial Intelligence. We’re already using AI to deliver content in the app. I’d love us to have an AI interface for retailers to interact with it – imagine getting real-time feedback on the photos you are taking or being able to ask the app with your voice for what you want! It's on our thinking board 😊

What’s the most unusual or unexpected technical challenge you’ve faced while working on *shopt?

Being able to replicate some reported issues on phones we simply could not get hold of a physical device for (e.g. no longer sold). It’s really difficult to fix an issue when you can’t readily replicate it and for that sometimes you need the exact device. We’re now using a provider that gives us access to thousands of different phone makes/models via the cloud.

What’s one piece of tech advice you’d give to someone just starting their career in app development?

Concepts are more important than specific coding languages. The former will stick with you forever and are largely transferrable between platforms. Coding languages come and go.

Oh, I’ll sneak another piece of advice here – don’t cut corners to save time or try and re-invent the wheel – you’ll spend more time in the future sorting things out!

Fun round! 

If *shopt was a type of building, what would it be (e.g., skyscraper, fortress, spaceship)?

A Skyscraper – it just keeps growing!

If you could have any famous tech leader join your team for a day, who would it be and why?

My choice isn’t someone generally associated with tech leadership – Gene Kranz, the Flight Director from Apollo 13. His leadership demonstrated determination, thinking outside the box and staying calm when the stakes were high. His and the team’s attitude of ‘there is always a solution’ is something we should all remind ourselves of. I don’t like the words cannot, impossible etc. – if anything they motivate me to prove otherwise!

If you could swap jobs with someone else at *shopt for the day, who would it be with and why?

Jemma Blaylock – Managing Director of *shopt. Jemma has given me and the team so much inspiration and freedom. I’d like to see what a day-in-the-life of Jemma looks like through her lens. It would be a challenging day as Jemma is always plate spinning and delivering so many awesome things.

Thank you to Wayne for taking part! If you have any questions for Wayne, please email us on marketing@shopt.co.uk.

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