Nigel Small

Canterbury, England, United Kingdom

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Summary

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Rockstar

Nigel Small is a seasoned backend engineer and protocol specialist based in Canterbury with 14 years of professional experience and nearly three decades of exposure to technology, travel, and finance. A self-described network programming and protocol geek, he brings deep expertise in database drivers and transaction semantics, evidenced by substantial contributions to Neo4j's Java and JavaScript Bolt drivers and core Neo4j backend. He’s helped harden transaction management, session handling and PackStream performance, and has improved client metadata and header control for the official Elasticsearch Java client. Comfortable across Python and Java ecosystems and a former DBA, Nigel blends low-level protocol work with pragmatic API and client improvements. His open-source impact spans both core database internals and higher-level ORMs like neomodel, showing an ability to move between systems-level code and developer-facing libraries. Colleagues value him for reliably untangling complex protocol edge cases and shipping robust, well-tested changes.

15 years of coding experience

Stackoverflow

Stats

4,485reputation

174kreached

186answers

0questions

Badges

neo4j

top-1%

python

top-5%

Github Skills (39)

api-rest10

server-communication10

transaction10

javascript10

python10

back-end-development10

server-client10

api-design10

restful-api10

testing10

amazon-elasticsearch10

http-header10

databases10

bolt10

graph-database10

Programming languages (17)

C#JavaC++CSSRustGoCypherHTML

Github contributions (5)

neo4j/neo4j-javascript-driver

Jul 2015 - May 2020

Neo4j Bolt driver for JavaScript

Role in this project:

Back-end Developer

Contributions:37 commits, 11 PRs, 29 pushes in 4 years 10 months

Contributions summary:Nigel contributed to the development of a JavaScript driver for the Neo4j Bolt protocol. The commits indicate the implementation of core functionalities like message packing/unpacking, session management, and the handling of different data types and structures specific to the Bolt protocol. The user's work focused on defining message types, handling responses, and supporting functionalities such as queuing requests and managing transactions, key elements in building a driver for a database.

driverjavascriptneo4jdatabasebolt

neo4j/neo4j-java-driver

Jun 2015 - Jan 2020

Neo4j Bolt driver for Java

Role in this project:

Back-end Developer & Database Engineer

Contributions:91 commits, 71 PRs, 59 pushes in 4 years 7 months

Contributions summary:Nigel's commits primarily focused on modifications related to the Neo4j Java Driver, particularly concerning the handling and implementation of transactions. The user introduced features for improved transaction control, like managing bookmarks and handling commit/rollback operations. Additionally, they contributed to session management and error handling, demonstrating a solid understanding of the driver's core functionalities.

driverjavaneo4jboltdatabase

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