Chris Boyle
Twenty-five years of writing software, roughly twenty-four of them spent explaining that yes, it can be done, but no, not by Friday. Founder of Nimble IO in Grantham, CTO of TyreOps, and still the one writing the code.
The Short Version
Still the one writing your code
Chris wrote his first line of commercial PHP in 1999, which means he has been building software professionally for over twenty-five years - long enough to have shipped production systems in Oracle Forms, and to have survived several industry-wide certainties about how software "should" be built.
The route here was the long way round. Oracle PL/SQL developer, then team lead, then greenfield R&D, then Technology Director at CodeSky Media running in-house and offshore teams, then Technical Lead at Paylink Solutions building customer onboarding platforms for mortgage networks and consumer banks. Somewhere in there he also spent seven months at Drone Defence writing software that watches the sky for drones, because that is the sort of thing that happens when you say yes to interesting problems.
In August 2019 he did the thing most technical leads only threaten to do over a pint, and left to build it properly. Nimble IO was founded on the unreasonable idea that the person you speak to about your project should also be the person who writes it.
That's still how it works. No account manager translating your requirements into a Jira ticket via a game of telephone. No offshore handoff at 6pm. If you're talking to Chris about your build, you're talking to the person whose name is on the commits.
What he actually does all day
Bespoke software. Custom CRM systems. Mobile apps. Websites that rank rather than merely exist. Across the financial, aviation, tyre, hotel and manufacturing sectors, which is a sentence that sounds made up until you look at the case studies.
He's also CTO of TyreOps, which digitised a corner of the commercial tyre trade that was, until fairly recently, run on carbon paper - and the person behind Pipeline, a lead-to-invoice platform for UK service businesses that have outgrown the spreadsheet, the shared inbox, and the WhatsApp group optimistically named "IMPORTANT JOBS - USE THIS ONE".
There is also a fleet tyre inspection system he built for Continental Tyres' 360 division that is still used daily by over a thousand inspectors across 37,000 vehicles, which is a reassuring number of people not to have heard from.
Strong opinions, loosely held
- Plain English beats jargon. If a developer can't explain it to you, there's a reasonable chance they can't explain it to themselves either.
- Build it right the first time. "We'll fix it later" is the most expensive sentence in software, narrowly ahead of "it works on my machine".
- You own everything. Your code, your data, your accounts. No vendor lock-in, no proprietary traps, no hostage situations dressed up as a support retainer.
- Estimates should be honest. Including the uncomfortable ones.
Outside of work he's a member of Grantham Round Table and Grantham 41 Club, which between them involve rather more fundraising and rather less sitting down than either name suggests.
Experience
Where the last twenty-five years went
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Managing Director
Nimble IO Current
Your web and application development partner - without the lengthy contracts. Nimble IO builds robust, tailored solutions for businesses that have outgrown whatever they are currently holding together with spreadsheets and hope.
- Customised CRM platforms and bespoke software development services.
- Work delivered across the financial, aviation, tyre, hotel and manufacturing sectors.
- Creator of Pipeline, a lead-to-invoice platform for UK service businesses.
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CTO
TyreOps Current
TyreOps is the only software for tyre businesses to manage all of their tyre operations - retail tyres, commercial fleets and specialty vehicles - in one place.
- Designed and implemented the TyreOps web and mobile platform.
- Collaborated with stakeholders and customers to gather requirements, define technical specifications and ensure on-time delivery.
- PHP, Symfony, Python, Angular, React Native, MySQL.
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Chief of Cloud Development
Drone Defence
Seven months spent teaching software to tell the difference between a drone and a seagull, which is harder than it sounds and considerably more important when superyachts are involved.
- Designed and developed AeroTracker, which monitors airspace for all aircraft including drones.
- Integrated hardware sensors and radars for real-time drone tracking in the interface.
- Integrated software feeds for real-time aircraft tracking.
- Provided standalone hardware controllers to communicate with sensors and radars, displaying live drone activity near superyachts.
- Mentored junior developers, running code reviews and providing technical guidance to lift overall team performance.
- Worked across hardware and software teams to gather requirements, define specifications and hit delivery dates.
- Set up and managed the AWS environments.
- PHP, Laravel, Angular, React, Python, MongoDB, MySQL, AWS.
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Technical Lead
Paylink Solutions Ltd
Technical Lead for all new digital products, driving technology and best practice across the teams. Part of the senior management team, with a hand in business and technical strategy - and rather a lot of compliance paperwork.
- Heavily involved in the compliance side of development, including preparation for ISO 27001, GDPR, Cyber Essentials and PCI.
- Worked closely with board-level management, senior product owners, clients and development teams to shape requirements for digital products.
- Designed and led a co-located team building a flexible customer onboarding platform (Angular 2, PHP, MySQL/Oracle, AWS), which won customers including the UK’s largest mortgage broker network and one of the UK’s largest consumer banks.
- Integrated third parties for bank statement scraping, categorisation and analysis, consumer credit reports and ID verification.
- Agile evangelist - helped the team follow SCRUM properly, using JIRA for sprint boards and Confluence for documentation, including attending client sprint rituals on site.
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Technical Lead
Totemic Central Services Ltd
Brought in to work closely with the newly appointed CIO to define the technologies and methods used for new development and the enhancement of existing internal applications - working within the limits of the skill sets already in the building.
- Played a key role in leading the Agile transformation using SCRUM.
- Helped introduce JIRA, Confluence and BitBucket, and provided staff training where needed.
- Encouraged best practice through coding standards, code review, release management processes and the correct use of version control.
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Technology Director
CodeSky Media
Responsible for web design and application development across CodeSky Media’s client base, leading a team of in-house and offshore developers to deliver on time and on budget.
- Led the technical effort for ISO 27001 and FCA certification (CodeSky & TMS), and produced detailed technical documentation for offshore developers.
- Designed and developed a client-facing hybrid mobile application (Ionic, Angular 1, PHP, Oracle) for the UK’s largest debt management provider.
- Designed and developed a fleet tyre inspection system, web and mobile, for Continental Tyres’ 360 inspection division - used daily by over 1,000 fleet inspectors covering 37,000 vehicles and around 500 customer fleets.
- Designed and developed an online aerial photography mapping tool for drones using the Google Maps API and Angular 1, which won a Digital Innovation Award.
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Technology Director (Web)
Totemic Managed Solutions Ltd
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Team Lead | Greenfield Software Development R&D
Totemic
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Team Lead - Oracle PL/SQL, Forms and Reports Development
Totemic
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Oracle PL/SQL, Forms and Reports Developer
Totemic
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Technical Director
My Charity Page
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Senior PHP Developer
Federated Credit Ltd
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Project Manager / Technical Designer
GWP
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PHP Developer
WWWatt.com
Where it all started, back when "responsive design" meant the server answered at all.
The full history, including the bits that pre-date decent version control, lives on Chris's LinkedIn profile.
Recognition
Digital Innovation Award
Toolkit
Tools, not religions
Chris picks the stack that fits the problem, not the one that was trending on Hacker News that week. Usually that means something boring and dependable, which is a compliment in this industry.
Services
What you can hire him for
- Custom Software Development
- Web Development
- SaaS Development
- Mobile Application Development
- Cloud Application Development
- Database Development
- Application Development
- IT Consulting
From LinkedIn
What people who've worked with him say
Chris was the lead of a team of developers that I collaborated with to support several of the businesses under the Totemic umbrella. Chris was forward thinking with his proposed solutions which helped the business in moving forward over time. It was a pleasure working with him.
Chris is a very talented and experienced developer and a great team lead. Always professional and a thoroughly nice person to deal with.
More on LinkedIn.
Fancy a Straight Answer About Your Project?
No sales team, no discovery-call funnel, no six-week proposal process. Just Chris, telling you honestly whether the thing you want is a good idea and roughly what it costs.