Daniel Hough

At Beam, I was a core member of a small, agile team focused on building and scaling impactful digital products that support vulnerable people across the UK. Our technology stack primarily included Ruby on Rails, Vue.js, AlpineJS, Stimulus, AWS, Heroku, OpenAI’s APIs, Azure AI, and multiple third-party integrations like Calendly, Twilio, Google Calendar, and WhatsApp. We utilised GitHub Actions for continuous integration and deployment. Our key products included a bespoke internal CRM for managing caseloads and interactions with beneficiaries, beneficiary productivity tools, a charity crowdfunding platform, interactive government dashboards, and an AI-driven automatic note-taking app called Magic Notes. My responsibilities involved end-to-end product development, from design and implementation to iterative improvements and feature extensions. Key contributions included significant refactoring efforts to streamline triage processes, incorporating integrations such as WhatsApp APIs, robust roles and permissions systems, and pioneering our initial AI integrations to automate and enhance workflows. Additionally, I developed a budget calculator to help users efficiently determine their welfare eligibility. On Magic Notes, my major contributions were implementing passwordless authentication, developing advanced speaker-extraction features, and enhancing the quality and detail of outputs through sophisticated multi-stage prompting techniques. Beyond technical responsibilities, I regularly managed entire technical projects from conception through delivery under ambiguous conditions, actively contributed to hiring and onboarding new team members, and frequently hosted team-wide meetings to foster clear communication and collaborative working practices. My role at Beam was broad, challenging, and hugely rewarding, providing significant opportunities for personal and professional growth while delivering technology that had tangible positive impacts on people's lives.

Working across Marvel's extensive and well-maintained web application, made up of a CRUD Django API and two JS applications in Backbone and React respectively. Also, managing a team of developers and leading technical decisions.

Working across Marvel's extensive and well-maintained web application, made up of a CRUD Django API and two JS applications in Backbone and React respectively.