Michael Heap

Michael Heap has a diverse range of work experience spanning several roles and companies. Michael started their career at Versatilia, where they worked part-time while studying, gaining experience in bug fixing, software releases, and customer communication. Michael then joined Livelenz as a part-time developer, where they contributed to rewriting a legacy application using modern techniques.

After graduating, Michael became the Lead Developer at Max Software Ltd, reporting directly to the company owner and managing a team of three. Michael not only provided technical direction but also worked on business aspects such as pricing models and increasing exposure of the tools they built.

Michael then worked at DataSift as a Software Engineer, starting on the data delivery platform and eventually leading a maintenance team. In this role, they closed numerous customer-facing issues and collaborated with the billing team to replace an aging system.

At digi.me, Michael served as the Infrastructure Team Lead, responsible for implementing a well-defined software planning and development system. Their responsibilities included Jira and Github administration, automated application builds, infrastructure management, and architectural reviews.

Michael then joined Nexmo (now Vonage) as a Developer Advocate, with a focus on the PHP community. Their role expanded to include ownership of Nexmo API standards and maintenance of the developer platform after the departure of the documentation lead. Michael later became the Senior Developer Relations Manager, responsible for the developer platform, content, and API experience, eventually evolving into the portfolio-level role of Director of Developer Experience. In this role, they set growth strategies, coached managers, and managed a multi-million dollar budget.

Finally, Michael currently holds the position of Director of Developer Experience at Kong Inc., which they joined in 2021.

Michael Heap completed a BSc in Computing from Leeds Beckett University from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that, they completed a BSc in Computing from the University of Leeds from 2007 to 2009.