25 people in York

One half of Isotoma's founding partners, Doug is a highly-experienced and dedicated software and systems architect specialising in cloud technologies, with an abiding curiosity about what makes the Internet tick.

But what does he actually do? Well, as CTO, he provides strategic support and detail management for the full software lifecycle. He's filled this role on everything from innovative projects for creative entrepreneurs to a number of pan-European and global multi-year enterprise programmes.

In practice, that means he uses that extensive experience to provide advice and software architecture for our larger and more complicated projects. Doug's a certified cloud security professional and has AWS pro architect and security specialist qualifications, as well as being a certified Kubernetes administrator.

With expertise in cloud systems, security and compliance, performance, scale, automation, software lifecycles, organisational design and process maturity, Doug's sweet spot is untangling the lurking horrors where social, technical and economic systems meet.

Andy's usually the first Isotoma face that clients get to know. He looks after the early stages of projects, delving into the detail to understand what's really needed. With a particular interest in how applications are used and how they evolve, Andy helps customers to clarify their outcomes, shape the features they need and refine their supporting business structures.

He has the dubious honour of having been dubbed an 'internet veteran' by TechCrunch as long ago as 2008. Hardly surprising, considering he's been building web applications since the mid 90s, holding key roles in some of the largest and highest profile web projects of the time.

Before founding Isotoma with Doug in 2005, Andy spent 5 years working at EMI Records, responsible for all consumer-facing websites and ecommerce for bands including Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Gorillaz, Kylie, Blur, Radiohead and The Spice Girls.

As his job title might suggest, project director Richard looks after projects from discovery and build right through to support. His favourite element of the job? The opportunity to understand what makes so many different business sectors tick - and to problem-solve in all of them.

You'll meet Richard at the earliest stages, where - alongside Andy, Rick and James - he'll be part of our team working alongside clients to understand requirements and agree a detailed spec of what we'll deliver.

As the project moves along, he'll be at the controls, tracking everything to make sure it's on time and on budget - and flagging up any risks that might emerge. His early career in the voluntary and community sector, further education, children's services and joint commissioning with health services gives him a good understanding of the challenges and constraints our clients often face.

That helps as the time for delivering software change comes closer: Richard often spends time helping clients to understand how a major project might impact your team and business processes. Whether we're handing to an in-house development team or continuing with elements of management or hosting, Richard will oversee that smooth transition from development to business as usual.

As well as our unique projects, Richard's also heavily involved with our curriculum mapping tool Sofia, a partnership with Imperial College London.

David is another industry veteran. Today, he looks after our developers, leads our recruitment, and is involved in creating and evolving our development process. When we say 'veteran', what we mean is that David's been coding since the 1980s.

Given that timeframe, it's no surprise that he's worked on all sorts of systems in all sorts of roles, first coding and then as lead developer, focused on the whole solution and getting the best outcome for the customer.

He's been delivering projects into the AWS Cloud for several years and is a certified solutions architect - professional, experienced in architecting larger systems and solutions.

Clare took a roundabout route into tech. Ready for the list? Here goes: she started with a degree in linguistics and sociology before working as a teaching assistant, wine advisor, primary school teacher, probation service case administrator, employment advisor, manager of a frontline homelessness services team and head of member involvement at a national homeless charity.

At this point, she fell in love with coding, first as a hobby, then through a bootcamp, and went on to spend years leading Isotoma projects from kick off to completion. Today, as Systems Director, she leads on shaping and delivering the organisation's strategy and operations, while keeping a hand in the technical side through consultancy work, still driven by a passion for problem solving and seeing the bigger picture.

Clare's pretty sure she's found her niche now, and still uses lots of that past experience (even occasionally her WSET intermediate qualification in wine and spirits!).

Drawing a veil over Rick's brief spell as a bank manager, his tech career kicked off 15 years ago when working in marketing for a charity in Leeds. Spotting a way to add more value to the project, he learned to code in his spare time.

Bitten by the web-dev bug, he went on to work for a small York-based agency before setting up as a freelance developer, making websites for a variety of clients. In 2014, he started annual tech conference DotYork, inviting 200 guests to hear from interesting people from the world of tech and beyond.

The following year, he opened ACOLLECTIVE, a co-working studio for local creatives. Rick joined Isotoma in 2020 and spent several years as a senior developer. These days you'll find him at the start of projects rather than in the middle of them, working out with clients how the business really works and what needs to get built.

Having spent years making web applications himself, he knows which parts are hard to build and what it takes to make a project a success.

After finishing a bachelor's degree in fine art and spending a long time as a professional chef, Ben started up a business with his dad, building websites in the heady days of the late 90s internet.

He's still at it 25 years later, so he must be enjoying it.

QA analyst Robin draws his skills from a surprising past - as a private investigator. He started his career probing road traffic accidents, questioning witnesses and taking statements, but when he made the move into software development, he discovered his robust investigation skills came in handy when testing functionality.

After working his way up from frontline support to operations manager for a small IT business, Robin joined Isotoma in 2014. His role as a QA analyst once again draws on that PI experience. He's involved throughout the entire software lifecycle, from project discovery sessions to end user testing.

Asking clients the right questions to support the development process is Robin's forte. He then creates and runs detailed test scripts using requirements and wireframes to make sure the software we deliver works as intended and is bug free. He's ISTQB/BCS qualified to intermediate level and an iSQI Certified Agile Tester (CAT).

Say hello to test analyst Lydia, because she's someone you'll see throughout the whole life cycle of a project, from discovery to the regression testing at the end of a build.

Lydia has been in a testing role since 2011 and has certification in ISTQB Foundation, ISQI Certified Agile Tester (CAT) and BCS Intermediate Certificate in Software Testing.

Although Stephen's one of our senior developers, that's just one of his many talents. With a master's degree in software engineering and postgraduate certificates in education, he's spent 25 years developing software for web agencies and in-house teams in the UK and abroad.

Along the way he's called bingo, trained primary science teachers, examined master's degrees, and depth surveyed a ferry terminal.

Stephen also works for the Open University on modules including web technologies and data analysis, and in his spare time leads groups of canal restoration volunteers.

Senior developer Sharon's work is underpinned by a fascination with how technology can improve people's lives.

She loves nothing more than a chat with people, to dissect their problems and (hopefully) fix them using the tech and tools at her disposal, of which there are a few, including React, Django, AWS, Kubernetes and even Unity.

Any challenge is welcome but she particularly enjoys problems around user experience and workflows. You'll find her involved in most of a project's process, from hand waving, writing stories and designing solutions to implementation and, of course, fixing bugs.

All her projects become her 'babies' so you know they're in safe hands.

Andrew's role isn't easy to pin down. Covering a broad range of specialisms, from creating custom DevOps solutions to maintaining and curating ongoing portfolios, you might find him on a call with a client, providing support to others in the office or digging into the nitty gritty of some code.

Graduating from Cambridge in 2011 with a degree in maths, he followed up with a computer science master's, and has worked at Isotoma for most of the years since.

Hannah spent a couple of winters enjoying the seasonaire lifestyle as a ski technician in the French Alps - and worked as a property manager for a few years - before joining Isotoma.

A maths graduate, she left the leasehold world behind to go to Northcoders' 12-week Coding Bootcamp, where she was introduced to us and relocated from Cheshire to join the team as a junior developer.

Sarah's your go-to person when your production site has issues or needs changes - and also the person you'll see through the QA journey of your project. After working in social research, she joined Isotoma as a project officer before finding her niche with a mix of front line support and QA testing.

She's also a part of the team that monitors and reviews the processes for both the ISO:9001 and ISO:27001 accreditations. Sarah has obtained her ISTQB Foundation certification in software testing.

Like several other members of the team, developer Tom did a maths degree before moving into software development. He found Northcoders almost by accident and, before he knew it, he was learning to code. That led to an interview with Isotoma and after meeting the team (and especially the dogs), he knew this was a place he wanted to work.

Developer Whitney has had the quintessential millennial employment history, working in hospitality, university administration, retail and as a self-employed knitwear designer since finishing her BA in art history at Emory University in Atlanta, GA USA in 2008. While on maternity leave, she decided it was time for another career move and taught herself to code. Hours of documentation reading and a coding bootcamp later, Whitney now blends all the bits of those previous jobs that she enjoyed (critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and a wee bit of customer interaction) at Isotoma as a developer.

James's experience is anything but standardised. His UX work has covered multiple sectors including fintech, travel, healthcare, marketing, retail, and game design, often spanning more than one at once.

The outputs from these projects have manifested in lots of different forms including a web application to simulate social media crises, a web-based 3D farm, a NHS planning and projection application, a system to track the amount of milk left in trolleys on supermarket shelves, and lots and lots of design systems!

Although proud of the systems he creates, if they don't work in the real world, they are no use. He prioritises user testing before and after a project to ensure that we build the right thing, choosing the correct solution for timescales, budget and requirements. He has had lots of experience devising, setting up, and running these activities, and even has used biometrics in the past to actual user reactions, rather than relying on their conversational feedback alone.

You'll see James accompanying projects throughout their development process, from research and ideation to prototyping, user testing, production and post-launch evaluations. The result of all these insights, enhancements and observations? An intuitive, well thought-out end-to-end user experience.

Ellen describes herself as a 'true nerd' and admits to being slightly addicted to the dopamine hit she gets from problem solving and building lovely things. A Cambridge psychology graduate, she initially worked in mental health research and then operations and finance.

An evening class with Code First Girls led her to training as a full-stack developer via the Northcoders bootcamp, before finally finding her 'home' in the right career at Isotoma.

The newest member of the Isotoma DevOps team, Steve architects, develops and maintains cloud and service infrastructure for clients and developers. With in-depth knowledge of AWS, Azure and Kubernetes environments, he helps customers and internal developers to manage their applications and deliver them to end users in a timely and stable fashion.

Steve has been building and deploying cloud-based web applications for more than 10 years, at all levels of the development stack, both for Isotoma and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Previously, he was an academic researcher and lecturer, specialising in intelligent user interfaces and applied neurofeedback systems. Steve was with Isotoma between 2013 and 2019 before returning in 2023.

We just can't keep him away!

Graduating from Newcastle in 2010, with a masters in Chemistry, Rebecca has taken a roundabout route to Software Development. First with a career producing fuel for race cars, then switching to the charity sector, managing teams of volunteers. Finally a coding bootcamp has led her to Isotoma

Emma has a varied academic background; she graduated with a degree in music, followed by a career teaching secondary maths before pivoting into software development, where she enjoys applying her love of problem solving and learning new things.

Aude's work experience has been in regulated industries, from buying parts for aircrafts to operations management at one of the oldest learning societies in the UK. Working on replacing an old Drupal website got her interested in software and from there she bootcamped her way to Isotoma

Like many of the team, Sam was a serial career-changer whose journey into tech was not straightforward. Armed with a degree in geology, Sam has worked in a variety of fields including: teaching piano, outdoor activity instructing, exploration geology, and even underground gold mining. This has taken him to many locations, ranging from the Australian outback to the Scottish Highlands. Long night shifts in the mine led Sam to seek an improved work-life balance. So he put down the pickaxe, picked up a laptop, and learnt to write code. A hop to a Northcoders bootcamp, a skip to Isotoma, and a deep-dive into Typescript later, he hasn't looked back! Sam enjoys breaking code to see how things work. Plus the daily challenges and constant learning that software development demands and provides. But most of all, he loves the opportunity to work with so many incredible people from such diverse backgrounds. He believes that technology really brings people together and the best thing is just about anyone can learn it!

Like many of the Isotoma team, Erica's journey here has been full of twists and turns.

Just some of Erica's roles to date...

- Hedge Fund Marketer

- Ecological Medicine Practice Manager

- Line Producer

- Personal Trainer

- Publican

She blames it on a keen interest in Woolworths pick 'n' mix during her formative years.

Victoria's career path is a hodge-podge of project based roles that have included everything from market research on satellite development to ghost writing autobiographies. Her favourite roles have been fast moving, industry varied tasks with a lot of problem solving and creativity required!