Hi 👋! My name is Alex Durrant. I am a Platform Engineer, Software Engineer, writer and artist.

I studied Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and graduated in 2019. Since then, I have worked for a variety of companies, including Amazon and Ecosia. I currently participate in Digital Mushrooms, where I help people with common and not-so-common IT issues.

I am known for my can-do attitude and my versatility as a software developer, being able to quickly learn new codebases and programming languages. I have worked extensively configuring systems in AWS and Cloudflare, using Terraform to automate this configuration. I have worked with and improved complex CI/CD systems, and developed automated testing suites to improve reliability in these systems.

My work has included:

  • Improving the reliability of CI/CD systems by diagnosing and fixing points of failure and introducing automated unit testing. In one case, I brought the pass rate of a set of performance tests from 85% to 100%, allowing these tests to be re-enabled in the pipeline.
  • Ensuring SSL certificates and DNS records are up-to-date, and diagnosing and remediating issues with these configurations.
  • Developing configuration for Cloudflare WAF to block robot traffic and reduce wasted cost.
  • Maintaining and upgrading Kubernetes clusters.
  • Creating internal developer platforms, understanding and responding to the needs of developers in order to create these platforms.
  • Developing a web application designed to visualise real-time data, working with React in the front-end and Java/Spring Boot in the backend.
  • Delivering technical training to other developers.

In addition to this, I develop websites (like this one) using the Hugo static-site generator. Because of this, I have experience working with vanilla HTML, CSS and Javascript.

I have recently started contributing my skills to the KDE Software Suite.

As a writer, I have written for Greater Govanhill. My poetry and art will soon be published in Volume 2 of the StoryTree Zine.

I am currently looking for work in any of these areas - please reach out if you are interested!

An abstract image of merging red, yellow and blue triangles with shadowy trees in some of the triangles A statue of a dancer in an East Asian style. The dancer wears a green gown over a dress. The statue is somewhat worn.