Christopher Henderson

I am a developer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Right Now

I am a Senior Software Engineer at Appetise.

Last Seen

For almost 5 years, I was a Senior Developer at Backstory, a provider of SaaS and custom development specialising in agritech. I was a programmer, working with Laravel, Docker, React, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. I was architect for a multi-year project, as well as handling numerous DevOps responsibilities in AWS. I also dabbled in GIS, Flutter and React Native, and IoT.

Previously

• For over 2 years, I lived and worked in Vienna, Austria. I was a full-stack developer at UBIMET, a provider of weather forecasts and other meteorological data.
• I was a developer at Webtools, a small development shop in Christchurch, New Zealand. I wore many hats there, mostly developing web apps and managing servers.
• I was for 5 years a Client Facing Engineer at SLI Systems, a leading SaaS provider of search engines for E-commerce sites. I worked with customer success representatives to communicate with the customer, to ensure a smooth integration process.

SmartCross

I created the software that powered SmartCross, a fun and engaging touch-screen system for pedestrian crossings. You could play a Pong-like game against a person across the street, or against the AI. These devices delighted residents and visitors to Christchurch in two central city locations.

Inside each device was a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian Linux. The operating system was provisioned and secured to stop unauthorised access. I wrote a secure software update system that allowed installation of new game software in the field, using cryptographically signed packages.

The game software itself was written in Python, using the Kivy framework. This provided good performance and rapid development of new features, like a survey system and logging of games to a central API.

More About Me

Born in 1984 in Lumsden, New Zealand, I spent my formative years on a crop and sheep farm and attending the local rural schools. A love of astronomy took me to Christchurch for university, where I've been ever since.

When I'm not coding, I'll often be:

• Watching movies (follow me on Letterboxd!)
• Finding the next great place to eat
• Playing video games (on my self-built gaming PC)
• Exploring my beautiful country
• Lost in a good book

Education

Coursera

• 2016 - Fundamentals of GIS by University of California, Davis. Certificate.

Open Polytechnic

• 2009 - Certificate in Web Design & Writing

University of Canterbury

• 2006 - MSC Part I, with research in Astronomy
• 2003-5 - Bachelor of Science, majoring in Astronomy