Steven Watkin
Principal Engineer at OLIO • Share More, Waste Less
Ystalyfera, Wales, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSteven Watkin is a Principal Engineer at OLIO with 14 years of experience building scalable web and backend systems to tackle food waste. He blends hands-on polyglot engineering (from PHP, Ruby and Node.js to Java, C and legacy FORTRAN) with cloud-native tooling like AWS, Docker, Postgres and Redis to deliver resilient services. A seasoned open-source contributor and past XMPP Standards Foundation member, he has contributed authentication and protocol enhancements to xmpp.js and helped integrate XMPP-driven features into GitHub Services. Beyond work, he’s an experienced conference speaker and technical author who also codes side projects like pinitto.me and once organized the world-record Scuba Santas charity event—evidence of creative, impact-driven engineering. Based in Wales, he pairs rigorous scientific training in physics/astrophysics with endurance sports discipline as a triathlete and ultra-marathoner, bringing persistence and systems thinking to complex technical problems.
14 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
MPhys Atmospheric Physics and Instrumentation, MPhys Atmospheric Physics and Instrumentation at Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd
Stackoverflow
495reputation
43kreached
27answers
4questions
Github Skills (22)
xmpp10
javascript10
authentication10
user-authentication10
sasl10
ruby10
rest-api10
github-ci9
nodejs9
githubaction-workflow9
xml8
twitter7
cicd7
twitter-api7
gearman6
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
xmppjs/xmpp.js
Apr 2013 - Aug 2017
XMPP for JavaScript
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:633 commits, 1 PR, 3 pushes in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Steven's contributions primarily involve enhancements to the XMPP for JavaScript library. These changes include adding support for features like acting on behalf of other users and authentication. The code modifications touch upon core components, specifically within SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) and client-side and session-related components. These changes demonstrate a focus on enhancing authentication, authorization, and overall protocol implementation within the library.
xmppbrowserreact-nativechatjavascript
github/github-services
Aug 2012 - Mar 2015
Legacy GitHub Services Integration
Role in this project:Backend Developer & DevOps Engineer
Backend Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:35 commits, 1 PR, 6 comments in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Steven contributed to the legacy GitHub Services Integration project by making various updates and enhancements. They focused on refactoring existing code, particularly within the buddycloud service, and introduced new features such as filtering by branch for Twitter updates. Furthermore, the user demonstrated skills in setting up and configuring XMPP-based communication within the project, involving the creation of XMPP IM and MUC services. This suggests a focus on integrating the project with external communication platforms.
github-servicesintegration-services
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