Chris Dun

Software Engineer with 12 years experience working across web, mobile and augmented reality.

Read on for more about my experience, or skip to technologies I work with.

Staff Engineer Hopin 2021 - Present

I'm currently working as a tech lead at Hopin, an events startup that grew rapidly during COVID-19. The pods I work with build tooling that enables third parties to create apps and integrations with Hopin - these teams maintain our REST API, webhooks, in-event applications (e.g. interpretation) and our upcoming Javascript SDK. I've enjoyed being able to spend much more time mentoring other engineers at Hopin both at a direct technical level and on their own career progression.

I've recently also taken on a role as a maintainer of our inner-source module federation framework, which supports teams in being able to continuously deliver their features in isolation from the containing application. This has seen significant adoption within Hopin.

Key Responsibilities

Lead Engineer Charlotte Tilbury 2018 - 2021

Joining at the start of significant investment into technology, I was part of a team hired to give Charlotte Tilbury an advantage over it's competitors through not only product but superior experience throughout.

My initial attraction was due to an opportunity to use my previous experience with augmented reality to improve the product offering. Having worked in e-commerce in the past, I was happy to be able to work closely with the product, data and marketing teams and to steer the technical direction of the engineering team to meet and exceed the ambitious targets set by the business.

Key Responsibilities

CharlotteTilbury.com

Having significantly outgrown a Magento instance hosted by a third party - and suffered outages in critical trading periods as a result - the business committed a significant investement into a fully bespoke headless e-commerce platform that could power their next phase of growth.

Results (pre vs post replatform)

Augmented Reality Try On

Spearheaded and integrated WebGL/WebAssembly try on features into the product detail pages of CT.com without affecting performance for those not using the feature. Provided product recommendations based on the detected attributes of users' facial features (eyebrow shape, eye colour, etc).

Repackaged as an Electron application and deployed to the brand's flagship Los Angeles store.

Head Of Development Engine Creative 2013 - 2018

Engine is a full-service digital agency that specialises in augmented reality and a preferred partner with Metaio, the company purcahsed by Apple which ultimately became ARKit. As Head of Development, I was Responsible for all technical aspects of digital products created by the team. The majority of my work here was in Unity and native iOS apps, which after Metaio went off the market were backed by either Vuforia or Wikitude.

RealityEngine

In-house augmented reality SAAS platform aimed at the retail and publishing industries. Acted as sole developer for iOS and all backend services.

White-labelled for multi-national brands such as Tesco, Bauer Media Content partnerships with Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, HSBC & Visa Won best AR platform against industry giant Vuforia at 2015 TTE Awards

"The commercialisation of their product was leading against other entries and their solution through Tesco showed their ablity to scale and deliver something truly imaginative." Paul Heybourne, Global Innovation, Research & Demonstration Lab Manager, Aviva

"Very clear proposition and ROI for clients." Jonny Voon, Lead Technologist, Innovate UK

The National Lottery

Provided technical and UX consultancy to both Camelot's in-house development team and external freelancers. Performance optimisation of The National Lottery hybrid mobile app, development of native iOS and Android plugins to expand functionality.

Lacoste

Sole development of iOS / Android apps to accompany a retail campaign which allowed customers to try on footwear from the LCST range in augmented reality.

Front End Developer Purple Media 2012 - 2013

Purple is one of the best known agencies for e-learning in the UK, working with household names like Levi’s, Gucci, Kaspersky and many domestic phone carriers. I joined them around the time that Flash was falling from dominance for rich multimedia content. My experience with emerging concepts such as responsive design and offline web apps helped them embrace the move to native web technologies and to further their support for content designed for mobile and table devices.

Front End Developer Two Seasons 2010 - 2012

Two Seasons is a surf, skate and snowboard store owned by GSM - the parent company of Billabong, Element and many other brands. I had an existing relationship dating back to when Two Seasons was privately held from previous employment as their product photographer. After they were purchased by GSM I rejoined as sole developer and designer for their eCommerce site. I’m proud of what the small team I was a part of accomplished in turning that into the highest revenue storefront for the brand by some margin.

Technologies

I've found that being exhaustive with tooling isn't always helpful - what follows is a list of technologies I've used professionally in the positions listed above. I've got some exposure to much more - if there's something missing that's of particular interest, please ask.

Web Frontend

Web Backend

SAAS

Methodologies

Ops / Orchestration / Observability