Jacob Blackburn

About Me

Hi! I'm a doctor currently working in the NHS, but aiming to transition into the technology and software development sector.

I've always had an intrest in software and tech throughout my adult life but have never had the courage to make the change from an already established career, until now!

I'm dedicating most of my time to learning the skills required to make this enormous career swap.

Want to hear more? I am an NHS doctor with three years of front-line experience in a wide range of medical and surgical fields spanning both primary and secondary care. I was accepted into General Practice speciality training in 2022 but have defferred this start date to explore alternative career pathways, primarily within software engineering and full-stack development.

Whilst at school my interests were spread broadly between both scientific and artistic subjects, however due to my qualfication-hungry mindset at the time I pursued medicine. I completed my MBBS alongside an intercalated Bachelor of Science in Medical Education, and was successfully posted in my first choice placements for both foundation and speciality training. I have learnt a lot from medicine but for a long time I have felt that my interests and talents would be better suited in a different field. I would love to work in an environment of which I have genuine interst; one where I can work to my true potential rather than the practical limits of an overburdened system.

I am currently completing the full-stack development pathway through CodeAcademy, followed by the IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate through Coursera. You can view details of my roadmap in the Work section below. Here you can also view examples of my projects, with all of my code on my GitHub repo's linked below. I aim to be open to work and ready to begin building professional experience towards the end of 2023. Eventually I would like to utilise my experience in medicine as I feel this would give me a unique and valuable insight within, particularly, the HealthTech sector. I'm a practicing UK medical doctor but have come to realise that this profession is not for me.

I'm currently teaching myself to code through online platforms with the end goal to transition into Full-Stack Development.

In the future, if I can utilise the knowledge that I have gained in the medical field within the tech sector, then this would be ideal.

My Professional Roadmap

I have planned out a pathway for my professional development which spans over two phases. Phase One encompasses my initial Codecademy introduction to Full-Stack Development. This is where I begin my journey, and though completing Phase One I will have the knowledge and skills to develop both front and back end systems and bring them together into a single project. Phase Two represents my transition from a self-directed platform to a company backed professional certification. Although not fixed on details, I am currently leaning towards the IBM Full Stack Software Developer course, which explores developing applications with particular focus to cloud-based.

The roadmaps below display my progression so far - hover over each stage to see more details.

Phase One
Codecademy Full-Stack Career Path

Web Development Foundations

Module teaching the fundamentals of HTML and CSS, including how to develop websites locally and deploy them on GitHub. Also in this module is responsive website design.

Building Interactive Websites

Module covering adding interaction to websites. Covers intermediate JavaScript syntax, as well as web accessability. Introduces to GitHub and Bash for working with git.

Front-End Development

Module covering front-end skills for creating interactive applications. This includes further JavaScript syntax lessons and teaching on React and Redux.

Back-End Development

Module focussing on the fundamentals of back-end development based around creating a RESTful API with Swagger and OpenAPI. Lessons on Express.js and SQL.

Full-Stack Development

Module based around joining the back and front-end of an applications, with specific focus on security. Also looks into operating systems and DevOps fundamentals.

Phase Two
Coursera IBM Professional Certificate

Capstone Project and Assessment

Centers around designing a dynamic user experience utilising cloud native services, JavaScript, Django, JSON, IBM Cloud Foundry, Python, and Kubernetes.

Microservices and Serverless

Module covering serverless programming and when to use it, serverless deployment models and design patterns. Also covers microservices integration.

SQL, Databases and Django

Broad module covering databases as a whole. Utilises SQL queries and Django to develop a Django app that is deployed on the cloud.

Data Science, AI and Development

Modules that focus on Python and its role in data science. Teaching the fundamentals with hands on exercises, with an application project involving AI.

Developing Cloud Applications

Teachings on how to develop cloud native applications using server-side JavaScript and frameworks such as Node.js and React. Also covers containerization.

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Introduces the core concepts of cloud computing, covering the various service models, deployment models and infrastructure. Also covers emergent cloud trends.