Ed Plant's CV¶

I have had the pleasure of working with Ed as a Senior Software Engineer for five years, and he is one of the strongest engineers I have worked with.

What stands out most about Ed is his thoroughness. He has an exceptional ability to take a complex, ambiguous or poorly understood area of a system, quickly get to grips with it, and turn confusion into clarity. He does this whether through thoughtful design documentation, architecture and technical discussions, or by getting into the code and refactoring it into something simpler and easier to understand.

Technically, Ed is an expert Python developer with a deep understanding of software architecture, design and Infrastructure as Code. He is a true coding craftsman, with a strong appreciation for engineering quality and a particularly astute understanding of what a good "Definition of Done" looks like. He doesn’t just focus on making something work, he considers whether the solution is maintainable, well designed, appropriately tested and genuinely complete.

He also makes a significant contribution beyond his individual coding contributions. He has helped establish engineering standards for the team and is a trusted voice when making technical decisions. He is respected by his colleagues and regularly influences the direction of engineering decisions through well-reasoned and pragmatic contributions.

Ed thrives in ambiguity, which is particularly valuable in a complex product environment. He is able to retain and apply a significant amount of domain knowledge across a large and complicated system, and can make sense of unfamiliar areas remarkably quickly. His contribution to initiative kick-offs, discovery sessions, Three Amigos and pair programming is consistently thoughtful and productive, helping the team reach a shared understanding before moving into implementation.

He also has an excellent attitude towards evolving software development practices. Rather than adopting new approaches for their own sake, he is willing to evaluate them critically and assess where they genuinely improve the way we work. His proactive and positive adoption of AI throughout the software development lifecycle is a great example of this.

Ed is an excellent collaborator. He works effectively with engineers, product colleagues, non-technical stakeholders and external partners, and communicates complex technical ideas clearly to different audiences.

Overall, Ed brings a rare combination of deep technical expertise, engineering craftsmanship, curiosity, pragmatism and the ability to create clarity where others see complexity. He is someone I trust to take ownership of difficult problems, challenge thinking constructively, and help raise the engineering standards of the people around him.

Ed's a rare gem of an engineer, really enjoyed working with him. His low ego, keen sense on security, pragmatic and care about long term maintainability/scaling, make me think he's best backend engineer I've worked with.

I had the pleasure of working with Ed almost daily during the Adyen implementation at Expend, and he was exceptional to collaborate with.

Ed's attention to detail and efficiency are on a completely different level.

Beyond executing a seamless implementation, his constructive feedback on our documentation and developer experience was invaluable, setting the foundation for a very scalable integration

Ed was brought to my attention as part of a project where he validated the suitability of a new product for use in real-world customer trading platform environments. His attention to detail, thorough documentation of issues, and pragmatic approach to resolution of problems, quickly led to a fantastic working relationship with my team at the time. This was before he worked for me directly and already had a solid reputation as a technical leader, which was backed up when I looked for references from his managers when recruiting him into my own group.

Upon joining my team Ed had to embed himself as the new lead within an existing team, helping to implement new processes and practices as well as assisting with spearheading our latest automation initiative. This was a challenging and no doubt daunting task but he did a fantastic job, not only giving his team a new purpose but ensuring that they were contributing effectively for the benefit of the wider engineering department. To do so, he had quickly get himself and his team up to speed on several new technologies and tools, and gain a deeper, low-level, insight into the inner workings of our product set. He very much rose to the challenge.

Ed is a really great team player, I really enjoyed working with him and was privileged to have him in my group - I knew I could assign work to his his team and be confident he would get it done, or feedback immediately where there were issues. I always enjoyed our 1-2-1s; he would constantly challenge the status quo and any outdated practices, coming up with sensible and considered approaches to move the organisation forward.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Ed to any organisation and am sure he would be a valuable member to any team.

I have had the pleasure of working for Ed for the past 2 years.

Ed has really pushed me to exceed my own expectations and evolve my skillset.

He has excelled at pushing his team to succeed and evolve.

Since taking over the Platform Deployment team Ed has revolutionised the way the team works, pushing automation initiatives, questioning and refining procedures.

He has an excellent wealth of knowledge and is always looking to apply that knowledge to help the team and company improve.

I have enjoyed working for Ed and would recommend him to any employer.