National Coding Week Q&A with Owen Denley

How do you implement coding to improve the user experience (UX) in products?

We focus on two main factors: performance optimization and user interface (UI) designs. The strategy is to provide stable and high-performing software which has a clean and intuitive UI design. This is then improved iteratively based on feedback from our users. 

What coding practices do you use to ensure products are scalable?

We ensure scalability by using a microservices architecture hosted in the cloud, which allows us to scale individual components independently and efficiently. We also use containerization, which makes it easy to scale our services both horizontally and vertically, depending on the demand. Our cloud-native setup enables automatic scaling, load balancing, and resource optimisation, ensuring our product can handle increased loads seamlessly whilst also keeping our customer cost to serve low.

How do you balance innovation in coding with maintaining a stable product?

Balancing innovation with maintaining stable code requires a strategic approach. To balance effectively, we use thorough testing, code reviews and feature toggles for controlled rollouts. Clear documentation for new features and following our code standards help prevent issues, while regular feedback from users ensures the product evolves effectively without compromising on stability.

How do you use automation in coding to streamline product development?

We use Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to automate the deployment of our services, along with automated testing, which allows us to deliver code changes in a streamlined and efficient manner. Additionally, we utilise Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate the provisioning and management of our infrastructure, ensuring both our software and hardware are maintained in a consistent, version-controlled, and automated way.

What security measures do you implement in your code to protect a product and its users?

We adhere to OWASP practices with multiple layers of security to ensure the integrity of the product and our customers’ data.

What advice would you give to people who want to learn code?

Find an industry or domain that you have a strong interest in; this will make the experience a lot more enjoyable. There are a lot of resources available online to help kick-start your knowledge on coding and provide the foundations you will need.