About
A developer since 1996
I'm Shaun Hare, a developer and technical leader based in the East Midlands, UK. I've been building things for the web since 1996 — long enough to have watched the industry reinvent itself several times over, and long enough to know that curiosity matters more than any particular technology.
I tend toward open source, favour pragmatism over dogma, and enjoy the craft of writing good software as much as I ever did.
What I do
I'm currently Principal Developer (Digital) at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), part of UK Government. I lead teams building digital services for drivers, riders, and vehicle operators across the UK — services used at real scale by real people, which I find genuinely motivating.
Our technical strategy has been to move steadily toward serverless architectures on AWS. One example: we migrated 140,000 user accounts to Amazon Cognito, delivered the first phase in six weeks, and had 70,000 users sign in within two hours of go-live without noticing a thing. That's what good engineering looks like in practice.
I'm also part of the management committee for the Cross-Government Software Engineering Community, helping shape engineering practices across UK government departments.
Before DVSA, I spent a number of years as a developer and manager at the University of Nottingham.
Skills & Technologies
I'm a AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, I like learning back in the day I was also a Zend Certified PHP Engineer, a Spring-certified Java developer, and lots of other things. However I now write PHP and Typescript and play around with AI whilst managing teams. I have some other AWS certifications as well see my badges at Credly. Day to day, I try to let the problem guide the choice of tools rather than reaching for the familiar one.
Languages & Frameworks
PHP · TypeScript · JavaScript (React) · Java (Spring) · Ruby · Python · Objective-C
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS (Lambda, Cognito, CDK) · Terraform · Chef · Puppet · Unix server administration
Practices
TDD · BDD · Agile · Technical leadership · Architecture · Serverless
Databases
MySQL · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Oracle · SQL Server
Community
Beyond the day job, I'm actively involved in the East Midlands and wider UK tech community.
I co-organise Digital Lincoln **Digital Lincoln and PHPMiNDS, a PHP and modern web development meetup group in Nottingham albeit it is on a bit of a hiatus, and help run LincolnHack, a free 24-hour programming competition that brings developers together to build things and have fun doing it.
I like speaking and have spoken at AWS public Sector days, other conferences and meetiups most recently I've spoken at ServerlessDays Cardiff on DVSA's multi-year journey with serverless applications, and I given occasional guest lectures at Nottingham Trent University on agile methodologies and working in government digital services.
If you're in the area and interested in tech, come along to one of our DL events or find me at Nottingham events as I am trying to revive Nottingham Digital— new faces are always welcome.
Writing
I write occasionally on the DVSA Digital Blog about the work we're doing, and I keep a small personal blog here for anything else. See the blog for more.
Certifications & Badges
Get in touch
- Email: shaun [at] shaunhare.co.uk
- GitHub: sdh100shaun
- LinkedIn: shaundhare
- Elsewhere: I can be found on the latest social platforms using @sdh100shaun
- Stack Overflow: shaun-hare