Chris Boakes

“I've had the opportunity to work with Chris in two roles in the past. Firstly alongside him as a joint developers where we tacked problems together and helped each other. I found him to be a great teammate, he was always there to pair on problems and to help out. Chris' code was always at a very high level, he is a careful, conscientious developer always striving to deliver the best solution he can. For Chris it's never about just shipping features out of the door - but delivering maximum value and questioning the 'why' before working on it. I later had the opportunity to manage Chris where he was an easy hire - for all the reasons listed above but also for the additional skills he'd learned since last working with him. Of particularly note was his ability to substantially improve the performance of our web-apps. He has exceptional analytical skills used to critically break down any performance issue and suggest a plan to remedy them. Chris was always very easy to manage - he'd previously been a principal engineer and so was very good at self-managing his time. He also worked well with the wider team and frequently took his initiative to pair with other team members to achieve the best solution. I would strongly recommend Chris for any frontend developer roles, or any role that requires conscientious, analytical thinking.”

“Chris has set the standard for the senior developers at Onvi. He has worked on some major features, helped clear up a huge amount of technical debt and substantially improved our web and native app performance. He is an excellent communicator, able to work seamlessly with other developers and designers on major features, as well as with the sales and support teams to fix small issues that hamper usability and block sales. With Chris’s experience and skill set, he’s able to work relatively autonomously, using his judgement on when to push forward with changes and when to consult with and pull in other team members. He is a great example for other senior developers as well as for other members of the product and tech team.”

“I was lucky enough to work with Chris directly on various projects at Onvi. His innate drive to deliver best-in-class experiences as an engineer paired perfectly with my user-centric design style. He actively asked questions about best practices, proposed solutions when there were technical limitations, and took the initiative when he discovered areas of the product where the experience was lackluster. I found collaborating with Chris directly to be incredibly easy and fluid, where he took design feedback gracefully and was able to communicate technical issues in an easy-to-grasp way. Observing him interacting with other engineers and team members, it is clear that this successful communication style can be found with everyone he works with. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Chris, and I highly recommend him to any team that needs a user-focused and talented engineer.”

“Chris was a fantastic developer to work with and manage. He was conscientious about the quality of his work at all times; was a great personality to have in our team; and helped the junior developers improve their work too. I would have no hesitations working with Chris again and would strongly recommend him for any future front-end developer roles he takes on in the future. ”