James Palmer
| Experience | Education | Projects | Certifications |
I am a Mathematics graduate who moved into software after finding inspiration in the Computational Modelling section of my course. A functional programmer with 6+ years of professional experience, I specialise in backend development with Scala, Java, and Go. I have a strong focus on event-driven architecture and real-time systems, with extensive experience in Apache Kafka and streaming technologies.
Experience
Conduktor, Software Engineer (04/25 - present)
Software engineer, primarily working in Scala and Java services.
ITV, Software Engineer (08/24 - 04/25)
After a secondment and interview process, I made an internal move to the Video department within ITV. Here my role involved software development in both Go and Scala. We worked on the edge of the application, delivering live streaming capability to the customer. In this cross functional department, I was the sole backend engineer. A large part of my responsibility involved working with a tech lead to design a new system for our ad replacement, a project contributing millions of pounds in revenue. This project was written in Go, the first of its kind in the department, whilst maintaining and tweaking functionality in our wider existing Scala estate.
ITV, Junior (08/19 - 04/21), Core (04/21 - 08/24)
Upon joining ITV, I worked on a new image rendering service for ITV Hub using ZIO and Elm. After 5 months I moved to our SVOD team to work on Britbox, delivering a number of third party billing integrations and reshaping our image pipeline using Apache Kafka.
My role extended to microservice architecture and supporting fellow engineers. I worked on content third party streaming integrations, helping to design Aggregate - Transform - Load solutions. We delivered new functionality for Britbox in line with our product team requirements, including promotional video content which could be uploaded from our CMS system. This time included an early adoption of Scala 3, which I had prepared for by studying Dotty.
I was then made part of a small cross functional team, where we were tasked with implementing a new streaming feature for our live streaming strategy. This involved integrating with a third party video streaming platform, building a traffic tolerant EPG service behind AWS CloudFront, and providing an API for our advertising server.
As part of a pathway to Senior developer, I led projects on behalf of the backend department in our cross functional team. This included a large internal project in which I worked with architects on a redesign, before mapping out a full quarterly plan with product, along with a third party project in which I was the backend representative.
Education
Newcastle University (09/15 - 06/18)
- Mathematics, with a focus on Calculus
- Final modules include Quantum Mechanics, Computational Modelling, Coding Theory, Topology, Relativity & Cosmology.
Makers Academy (02/19 - 06/19)
After enjoying the Computational Modelling section of my university course, I spent 08/18 - 01/19 learning to code from home using resources such as Safari Online, Underscore, and Coursera. I joined Makers Academy (a 16 week intensive bootcamp) to dedicate myself to software development.
Projects
Pulseboard (Go)
github.com/jpalmerr/pulseboard
A lightweight, embeddable Go library that provides real-time health status dashboards for monitoring HTTP endpoints. Originally developed during an ITV hackathon to replace noisy Slack health notifications, later abstracted into a production-grade reusable library.
- Real-time dashboard using Server-Sent Events (SSE)
- Three deployment options: CLI (YAML config), SDK (programmatic), Docker container
- Functional options pattern throughout for clean, composable API design
Technologies: Go 1.23, GitHub Actions CI, Docker, GoReleaser