Nikesh Ashar | nikeshashar@gmail.com
A driven and fast learning, team player who loves technology & solving problems. I've spent the last 5 years across different roles at Makers Academy. Roles described below but this has been scaling the business from a startup of 8 people to now employing 50+ people and training hundreds of developers every year to employment.
- Building simple and interactive sites for small businesses
- Advising on SEO and growth strategy with startups through Escape the City and NEF
- Bug fixing for product sites
- Working on personal projects to keep skills up to date
Following a restructure at Makers at the start of the pandemic I was asked take over the role of centralised operations and bring multiple parts of our business back together under one roof. Projects have included :
- Managing our fleet of 200+ laptops and mobile devices (from spreadsheet -> MDM)
- Restructuring and updating all processes across the business
- Building internal teams up to share knowledge in a remote first world
- Creating a platform for reporting to the board and senior management team
- Cutting costs by approx 35% across the business
- Testing and implenting new software across all teams
- Becoming Cyber Secure to adhere to government supply guidelines
Makers launched Apprenticeships in 2018. I was asked to launch the division using the knowledge and experience gained over the years building the core bootcamp model.
- Hands on launch of Apprenticeships
- Recruited, trained and mentored 100+ students in our first year
- Hired a team of 15 into the business
- Lead the team through passing our first ever OFSTED inspection
- Opened additional Makers training centres in Peterborough and London
- Oversaw our 100% pass rate through to March 2020
- Ensured financial and ESFA compliance was met
After graduating at Makers, I am now working there on a temporary basis as a teaching consultant and supporting the current batch of students with their work and being on hand to answer any technical questions they have.
I am also supporting the Makers Engineering Team by testing some of their software and working with their Director of Engineering to provide mentorship support and feedback on pre-course materials for future students already booked onto the course.
Final Project: Challenge Me - a group project designed to make fund raising fun. Using TDD and Rails, we worked to plug a hole in the fundraising industry and made people accountable for their fundraising.
My responsibilities on the team were to create and work on the back-end of the app and ensure all of our code was tested and working. I paired with Toan mainly for the creation of the database and it's various dependancies. Once the MVP was up we used two API's (JustGiving and MapMyFitness) to create a full user experience.
I started volunteering my time to Esc to help run their evening meetups and events over 2 years ago. Most recently, I am involved with 99 other people on a pioneering program to help shape the future of the Escape School.
- Management of all social media activity
- Research and implement a customised CMS
- Ensuring our booking team was selling all spaces available
- Maximise revenue from available inventory
- Business development and account management
- Increasing brand awareness and raising company profile
- Latest Project: Opening Britannia Study Hotel, Brighton
June -September 2014
A 12 week course with Makers Academy to join the next generation of highly skilled programmers and web developers in London and around the world.
Technologies Learnt at Makers
- Ruby (2.1.x) | Ruby on Rails (4.1.x)
- Sinatra
- RSpec, Capybara, Cucumber and Jasmine
- ActiveRecord and Datamapper
- PostgreSQL
- Agile methodologies (TDD, BDD, Scrum)
- Object orientated programming
- Pair programming
- Version control using Github
- Javascript, JQuery, Ajax, Websockets
- Heroku
- HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap,
- APIs including Twilio, Stripe, Mailgun
Air Transport Studies BSC Hons