Alex Francis Email Address

Head of Product Engineering

Polecat's reputation risk intelligence software monitors and analyses online and social media conversations for strategic reputation management.

Since 2000 I've worked as a software engineer, team leader and dev manager on web-technology applications and data management systems. After periods leading the engineering function at a small start-up and then managing the product engineering team for a larger web agency, I built up core software engineering skills with IMDb/Amazon which I now apply in my engineering leadership role with Polecat. My experience includes large-scale data pipelines, processing, aggregation and presentation; online publishing; product development for the public sector and recruitment systems and integrations. I've grown up with the web as a software engineer. My preferred role is helping small teams acquire maturity and raise the bar on quality while maintaining agility. I have experience of building new products, modernising and adapting existing legacy systems and transitioning from legacy software stacks to modern replacements. I work effectively with sound object-oriented practice in software build but also have significant experience in planning, estimating, design, operational readiness and deployment/maintenance. The bulk of my coding has been using Java, Perl, C# and JavaScript, with some Python and Ruby. I have a particular expertise in and affinity for test automation (at multiple levels - unit, integration, system testing etc.) and have been responsible for transformative changes in team approaches to testing, linked through to build automation, use of quality assessment tools, continuous deployment and monitoring. I have introduced agile methods including Scrum and XP, sometimes in situations where a lot of encouragement was needed. I've been through several instances of rewriting existing products on new software platforms and of productising ad-hoc collections of bits of software into something coherent and managed.