--- title: CV canonical: 'https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/cv' url: 'https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/cv' --- # Tom Gould: CV Development Lead at Bright Sites I’m the Development Lead at Bright Sites, whose publishing software is used by more than 200 publishers, including The Independent and the Evening Standard. I joined in October 2015 as a senior developer on those two sites, and since 2021 I’ve led development on Flow, a publishing system, and Storycue, which helps editors plan what to publish. Before that I spent eight years building and leading web projects, including as lead developer at Wonga and the sole developer on Turner’s TV channel sites. I plan and estimate, lead teams and still write code. In my own time I build and publish apps and open-source libraries in PHP, TypeScript and Python. Elsewhere: [GitHub](https://github.com/tomgould), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-gould-14332316/) ## Experience ### Development Lead, [Bright Sites](https://www.brightsites.co.uk) 2021 to now Bright Sites makes software for newsrooms and publishers: Flow, a publishing system, and Storycue, which helps editors plan what to publish. Its clients include The Independent, the Evening Standard, The Star and The Scotsman. I lead development on Flow and Storycue: planning and estimating the work, leading the team and still writing code. ### Senior Developer, [Bright Sites](https://www.brightsites.co.uk) 2015-10 to 2021 I joined as a senior back-end developer on The Independent and Evening Standard websites, about six weeks after they moved to a new platform. I mainly built new features and tuned the existing code, keeping the sites fast under heavy traffic on a news platform that changes all day, in a very agile team. ### Web Developer, Turner Broadcasting System 2014-06 to 2015-10 - I looked after the sites behind Turner’s TV channels on my own, including Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Cartoonito and Boing, a job a team of six permanent staff had done before. - I built new features, maintained the sites, sped up their slow parts and ran the deployment schedule and process. - I rebuilt the Cartoonito and Boing sites. Cartoonito was a complete rebuild: I imported all the content from the old site and worked closely with a designer so both sites looked and worked well on mobile devices. - I reported to the channels’ product owners and the digital media technology supervisor, interviewed applicants, planned new builds and helped internal and external clients with work beyond the channel sites. ### Lead Developer, Wonga 2012-08 to 2014-03 - I was the lead developer on the website’s projects, in a large agile team of mostly C# developers, product owners and business stakeholders. I estimated, planned, built, tested and reviewed the work, and represented the website in quarterly and sprint planning. - I led the web development of PayLater, a new point-of-sale product. - I prepared a new PHP site to replace the old .NET wonga.com, then extended it with new features, including an instalment loan to replace the original single-repayment loan. ### Back-End Developer, [Tigerfish](https://tiger-fish.com) 2010 to 2012-08 - I was a back-end developer in a small team of three developers and two designers, looking after around 100 client sites. - I talked to clients about what they needed, then planned, estimated and delivered new projects, and supported and maintained the existing ones. - Most of the work was client management, planning and custom development. ### ASP and Web Developer, eCommerce Associates 2007 to 2010 - I joined on a three-month contract that lasted nearly three years. - I programmed in classic ASP and ran the existing group of affiliate sites, and built new search-friendly sites to earn affiliate revenue. - I handled every part of each site: planning, briefing the designers, finding and managing content, programming, deployment and hosting. - Most of the work was consumer sites built around search engine optimisation, before Google’s Panda updates changed the rules. ### Online Marketing Manager, [Summit Media](https://www.summit.co.uk) 2004 to 2007 I joined Summit Media in 2004, new to online media. There I found my interest in marketing and web strategy and started learning the skills I use today. I worked on the pay-per-click campaigns for Play.com and Gameplay.com, managed affiliates for Gifts.co.uk and worked on the SEO of sites Summit managed. ## Skills - **Languages:** PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Bash, C, SQL, HTML, CSS - **Back end:** Composer, PHPUnit, PHPStan, PSR HTTP standards, cURL, Drupal - **Front end:** Vite, jQuery, Chart.js, Theme development, Responsive design, Progressive web apps, Accessibility (WCAG) - **Data and APIs:** REST APIs, JSON, XML, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, ChromaDB, Model Context Protocol, HMAC request signing - **Testing:** Playwright, Vitest, Jest, pytest, Selenium, axe-core - **Infrastructure and delivery:** Linux, Ubuntu, Android, ADB, Apache, Nginx, AWS, Cloudflare, Cloudflare Workers, DDEV, Docker, Git, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Maven, New Relic, Continuous integration, Continuous delivery - **Publishing:** Apple News, Apple News Format, Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, RSS, Atom, iCalendar, tus, Brightcove, Kaltura - **Ways of working:** Agile, Estimating, Planning, Leadership, Code review, Jira, Confluence, Open source - **Other:** Affiliate marketing, BeautifulSoup, Classic ASP, Click, Crucible, FFmpeg, httpx, OpenCV, Pay-per-click advertising, Rich, Scrapling, sentence-transformers, SEO, SVN, tree-sitter, Waterfall ## Projects - [Mullet](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/mullet.md): A job runner that plans a coding job, runs it unattended in a sandboxed clone, and marks each step done only when its own checks pass. (Tool, since 2026) - [Solar Calendar](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/solar-calendar.md): A calendar of 13 identical 28-day months, with each year starting on the first Monday on or after the spring equinox. (App, since 2025) - [Where Should I Live](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/where-should-i-live.md): Rank cities around the world by what you’d keep after tax, what a month costs, which visas you can get and how each place fits the way you live. (App, since 2025) - [Apple News API](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/apple-news-api.md): A PHP client for publishing articles to Apple News, with a document builder for the whole Apple News Format. (Library, since 2025) - [GitHub Auditor](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/github-auditor.md): A command-line tool for looking after a lot of GitHub repositories at once, with reports on their health, on who has access and on what each developer did. (Tool, since 2026) - [TurboPush](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/turbopush.md): Upload large files from the browser in chunks that survive dropped connections and page reloads, with a PHP endpoint that reassembles them safely. (Library, since 2025) - [RSS to JSON](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/rss-to-json.md): A small PHP library and command-line tool that turns RSS, Atom and media feeds into clean JSON, and fetches remote feeds safely. (Library, since 2025) - [Puzzler PHP SDK](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/puzzler-php-sdk.md): An unofficial PHP client for the Puzzler Media puzzles API, with signed requests and clear errors. (Library, since 2025) - [ScrapePy](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/scrapepy.md): A Python web scraper that saves whole sites for offline reading and can turn them into Markdown. (Tool, since 2026) - [Trove](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/trove.md): A local search engine for documents, code and web pages, by keyword and by meaning, that serves its results to AI coding tools. (Tool, since 2026) - [Scrape](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/scrape.md): A PHP class that downloads files from web servers with directory listings turned on, and my oldest public repository. (Tool, since 2013) - [Reelify](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/reelify.md): An experiment that turns long screen recordings into short summary videos, by cutting idle time and speeding up what’s left to fit a target length. (Experiment, since 2026) - [TCL Google TV Tools](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/projects/tcl-google-tv-tools.md): Scripts that declutter a TCL Google TV over ADB without root, keep it that way through restarts, and turn it into a spare screen for a Linux laptop. (Tool, since 2026) ## References > I have worked with Tom continuously for the last 4 years. He has been nothing but a pleasure to deal with and has always been a positive influence on those around him. I will continue to recommend Tom to any of my clients. Rob Pestridge, Business Director, Oracle, Hays Enterprise Technology (Oracle Partner) (Tom was Rob’s client, 1 December 2017) > Tom is a great asset. He has a very deep knowledge of Drupal and he is very good with all PHP platforms in general. He is a perfectionist, has a great attention to detail and enjoys complex projects in which he can put in practice his knowledge and where he can also improve on what he already manages and learn and integrate with new technologies. It was great to work with him as he is very enthusiastic about technology. Laura Herrera, Senior Cloud Platform Engineer, Atos (Laura managed Tom directly, 19 February 2016) > Tom is a hard working, skilled and reliable developer. Having placed him with one of our large clients in 2014 they have had nothing but praise for him and his work and have extended his contract twice. I would happily place Tom again or recommend him to anyone else. Nick Walker, Founder, Cypher22 (Tom was Nick’s client, 15 April 2015) The same CV as JSON Resume: [cv.json](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/cv.json) --- Index of this site: [llms.txt](https://www.dealmobile.co.uk/llms.txt)