Marcus Howarth — Senior Java Engineer

Now

What I'm doing

Java Software Engineer at OneAdvanced, building back-end services across the Vision 360 microservices platform for NHS Scotland — Spring Boot, Kubernetes (EKS), AWS and ArgoCD on live clinical systems.

On the side I'm exploring AI-assisted development as a disciplined pairing practice, and self-hosting my own tooling — MCP servers, native containers, CI/CD — to stay sharp across the whole stack, end to end.

Selected work

Things I've built

KanbanMCP

An MCP server bridging Claude to a Kanboard board — read, manage and move tasks from an AI client. Quarkus-native (Java 25) — a ~21 MB container on EC2 behind Caddy.

› review my subtasks
✓ 2 done, 1 in progress

Java 25QuarkusNativeGraalVM

GitHub →

MediaWikiMCP

An MCP adapter exposing a MediaWiki instance to Claude — read, write and search pages. Quarkus-native (Java 25) — a ~10 MB container on EC2 behind Caddy.

› write today's journal
✓ created today's entry · 4 tasks carried over

Java 25QuarkusNativeGraalVM

GitHub →

FIN OPTICS

A retirement projection app, split across three repos — fin-model (Java modelling engine) → fin-optics-api (Quarkus-native API) → fin-optics-ui (Vue front end with interactive ECharts).

AlphaJavaQuarkusVueECharts

Live → model api ui

REAL RETRO

A real-terms retrospective visualiser — "what did X really cost, in today's money?" for any historical price or value series, rebased against ONS RPI. Same fin-model engine as FIN OPTICS, a React front end this time round — deliberately, as a stack comparison.

AlphaJavaQuarkusReact

Live → model api ui

Experience

Twenty years across finance & healthcare

2025 —

Java Software Engineer

OneAdvanced

Back-end services on the Vision 360 platform for NHS Scotland. Spring Boot, EKS, AWS, ArgoCD.

2013–25

Software Engineer — Healthcare Integration

Cegedim Healthcare Solutions (formerly Vision)

OSGi integration platform (Karaf / Camel) connecting pharmacies & GP practices to NHS national services. ~70m prescriptions/month; delivered FHIR for EPS Scotland. Scrum Master.

2010–13

Senior Developer

Bravura Solutions

Straight-through-processing settlement messaging over SWIFT, EMX & NSCC for transfer-agency back office.

2005–10

Developer / Team Lead

Ipreo

I-Synd bookbuilding for primary capital markets. Onboarded a development team in Ukraine.

1999–05

Developer / Consultant

ActivIdentity · LogicaCMG

Security (4TRESS authentication) and consulting / integration across clients.

Earlier: fund pricing at Standard Life & Britannia Life. Sun Certified Java Programmer (2002). Full history on LinkedIn →

How I work

Craft over output

01Test-driven & pair-first. Faster feedback, shared knowledge, fewer surprises in review. A 25-year habit, not a slogan.

02AI as a pairing partner — not a code generator. Same standards, same review, same accountability. I build the context that makes it genuinely productive.

03Small, shippable, honest. Every project exposes its build provenance, runs as a lean container, and keeps its README true to the code.

Writing & community

Out and about

I write occasionally at The Non-Critical Path, and turn up regularly at the London Java Community and A JUG for Everyone meetups — talks, conferences, and the odd coding dojo.

Blog → · Vlog →