Shea Dawson

I'm currently in the process of transitioning back into freelance & contract work, while exploring some personal projects that have been in the back seat of my mind for far too long. If you're interested in working with me, or talking about Laravel and/or impact-driven software development, please get in touch 🙂

Led the design, development and delivery of solutions for clients in the health, science and environment space. Created and facilitated mentoring and professional development programs for junior developers. Established processes and standards for improved productivity, quality and enjoyment of work within the dev team.

Designed and developed software and hardware solutions for two automated, internet connected, in-vessel hot composting machines.

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Supported designers & agencies as a contract SilverStripe developer, often jumping in to help development teams at times of overflow. Worked directly with small-medium size businesses in Australia and New Zealand, providing end-to-end website design, development, hosting, maintenance and support.

Made significant contributions to the SilverStripe ecosystem, authoring around 20 popular open source modules. Made valuable contributions to SilverStripe core and community maintained modules. Supported the development of many websites and applications for local Government and public services.

After graduating with my Diploma of Web Development, I made use of the network I'd built up through my music project and dove head first into full time freelancing. This was a period of rapid, self directed learning and experimentation, through many web projects for NZ and international electronic music artists, labels and festivals... and petfood websites, mortgage calculators and other every day things.

Learned web development fundamentals though building websites and apps from scratch, without any frameworks. During the course I was able to build a music platform for prominent and upcoming New Zealand electronic music artists to share and promote their tunes and events. The platform hosted the profiles and releases of over 40 artists, before being steamrolled by newer, bigger services like SoundCloud and BandCamp.

Web app that screens eDNA samples for the presence of non-indigenous species (NiS). Samples with positive matches for NiS are then be published to the registry, where detection data is publicly available to explore via interactive maps, creating awareness and informing management decisions.

Back office system for a carbon credit retailer to manage and track inventory of carbon credits through the various stages of their lifecycle. The app integrates seamlessly with Xero and other platforms to sync sales data and produce detailed reporting.

Web app for a carbon analysis company to calculate total CO₂ emissions from land and air freight. The app takes a csv input of tens of thousands of domestic and international freight trips origin, destination and payload weight from a business' logistics activity. It uses a combination of Google Maps APIs and Geospatial Indexing to discover most likely routes and distances via road and air freight. This enables businesses to accurately offset emissions from all import, export and delivery operations.

Designed and developed software and hardware solutions for two automated, internet connected, in-vessel hot composting machines.
The system enables automated turning of up to 8 tonnes of organic material at optimal points in the composting process, in response to temperature sensor data. The companion app also enables remote configuration and operation of the machine, as well as real-time visualisation of collected sensor data and activity logs.

Watch the documentary