About

Martin Bean

Hi! I’m Martin Bean, a software engineer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. I enjoy creating elegant solutions to complex problems.

I have over 15 years of experience, including nearly five years running my own freelance consultancy. I most recently worked for Pfizer, first as part of their internal DevOps team before moving on to be a technical lead on multiple new projects.

In my spare time, I run a business called Your Fight Site. As a teenager, I began building websites for independent professional wrestling promotions. I now build SaaS products for the professional wrestling, MMA, and boxing industries. Products include a self-service VOD platform and a multi-tenant CMS.

Day-to-day I work with technologies such as PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Docker, Amazon Web Services, and more. I also have lots of experience working with semantic, accessible, and SEO-friendly HTML; CSS (both with and without preprocessors); JavaScript and TypeScript (including modern ES syntax, libraries like Vue and React, and build tools such as Webpack and Vite). Other technology interests include Go and Rust. I’m also dabbling with Unreal Engine 5.

My work has spanned multiple companies and industries, seeing codebases of all shapes and sizes. I’m available for limited consultancy engagements. I can offer advice and insights on projects, perform code reviews and audits of existing codebases, and development of smaller projects. If you think there’s something I may be able to help you with, then feel free to contact me and we can look to arrange something.


Books

I have been lucky enough to be involved in the creation of the following books:

  • Technical Editor, Design Patterns in PHP and Laravel (Apress, 2017)
  • Contributor, A Field Guide to Freelancer Finances (FreeAgent, 2016)
  • Author, Laravel 5 Essentials (Packt, 2015)
  • Technical editor, Beginning Node.js (Apress, 2014)

Talks

I’ve also given a handful of talks at my local PHP user group, PHP North East.

  • : What’s New in Laravel 5.3
  • : What’s New in Laravel (since 5.0)
  • : An Introduction to Viaduct
  • : What’s New in Laravel 4.3 Laravel 5