Our team continues to grow!
This month, we’re happy to welcome Mark Bowman, Akoova’s brand new Ecommerce Architect.
We’re very excited to have him on board. Get to know Mark with us:
First of all, welcome to Akoova, Mark! How have you been finding everything so far?
Great, it’s always challenging when starting a new role, but everyone is being super helpful and nice in helping me settle in.
What were you up to before you joined us?
I worked as an Ecommerce Architect at Made.com. I worked there for almost 2 years on the Magento 1 -> Magento 2 Migration and helped keep the legacy Magento 1 application running as smooth as possible while this happened. It was a great opportunity to work on some really powerful and complex technology like Event Sourcing and Event Driven Architecture, MicroServices, Containerised Applications and of course Magento 2. It was also a great opportunity to work with some really great people, and I made some really good friends. Sadly Made.com entered into Administration in November last year.
Just before I joined Akoova, I was working as a freelancer at BrandAlley UK for 5 months helping with various cool projects. This gave me the opportunity to really take my time and work out what I wanted to do long term, and that’s when I spoke with Zac and Ossy, the founders of Akoova.
What will you be working on in your new role at Akoova?
I will be working on a range of projects that involve making the experience for Akoova clients even smoother and more enjoyable than it is now. I want to take my experience managing some large Magento Sites running on AWS and feed that into the Akoova offering and client experience.
What is your favourite thing about your job?
I still feel like I have a lot to give as an engineer/developer and don’t feel ready to hang up my coding boots just yet, but at the same time I am not at the stage in my life to develop full-time anymore. The Architect Role allows me to be inquisitive, research, develop and improve things without having to ship code or products day to day. It allows me to ask questions, discuss and help contribute to the business by being part of a council of Architects with the aim to build the long term future of the tech and culture at Akoova.
Have you been learning anything recently?
Since my time at Made.com I was able to get involved in projects that were built on technologies such NextJS, NestJS, Nomad, Consul, Vault, AWS CDK, Terraform, Varnish, GitHubActions to name a few.
Have you got any fun facts about you to share?
I help coach a team of 8 years olds to play football for AFC Ewell, where my son plays. Possibly the most fun and rewarding thing I have done is to get into Grass Roots football. I would like to start a Grass Roots football club to cater for kids who have missed a year in development football (they are already behind at this stage), to get them some great coaching and help them get into Saturday football teams in the area, either by setting up teams internally or helping them gain places in other clubs. Football is for everyone regardless of ability, and there should be a place for all children to play if they want to.
Lastly, can you recommend us something to read, see, watch, listen to or try? It could be a book, film, band, YouTube video, website, app, art exhibition – anything really.
Read: Bobby Robson, Farewell But Not Good Bye. It will teach you what unbelievable things “good” people can achieve. Listen to: Underdog by Kasabian…..Just listen. Watch: Lego Batman Movie….Watch out for the extra shredded abs!
Want to work with us as well? Keep an eye on our careers page.
