Strategic and collaborative software engineer with a record of success in developing efficient, scalable, and secure software solutions and managing all phases of the software development life cycle (SDLC). Scope, prioritize, and deliver new software solutions, enhance existing platforms, automate processes, and build and extend APIs. Advocate for reliability and continuous delivery through robust visibility, rigorous testing and monitoring, and efficient workflows. Offer a wealth of knowledge about best practices to help a startup or early-stage company establish technology strategies and processes, design products, make build vs. buy decisions, and implement a culture of collaboration and excellence to optimize software team effectiveness. Combine business acumen with software expertise to bridge the gap between business units and software development teams.
Known for entrepreneurial spirit, high-quality service, transparent communication, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. Decisive leader who demonstrates adaptability, agility, and strong relationship-building skills. Passionate about contributing to social justice and equity causes and developing technology solutions that support a promising future.
Known for entrepreneurial spirit, high-quality service, transparent communication, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. Decisive leader who demonstrates adaptability, agility, and strong relationship-building skills. Passionate about contributing to social justice and equity causes and developing technology solutions that support a promising future.
Work History
Software Engineer III
Ad Hoc LLC
September 2019
to April 2023
Full-time
Remote
- Gathered project-specific requirements from stakeholders, prepared action plans and estimates, and developed clean, scalable code to extend the API and automate processes for a recently deployed client application: Medicare.gov Plan Finder. Diagnosed and resolved critical incidents, deploying code solutions that minimize downtime. Prepared approachable documentation and wrote unit, integration, and smoke tests. Communicated technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders during product demo meetings. Observed user research sessions, integrating insights into product development and improvement roadmaps. Participated in post-incident retrospectives to identify opportunities for continuous process improvement.
- Contributed to development of a robust solution that maintained 100% uptime during 2022 Open Enrollment, served a peak of 80,000 requests per minute, and enabled 982,000 people to enroll in Medicare coverage.
- Played a key role in developing custom extract, transform, load (ETL) process, written in Go and Bash, which imported millions of health insurance plan data points from multiple providers daily and optimized data storage in Postgres.
- Facilitated informal discussions between engineering and product teams to improve non-technical stakeholders’ understanding of technical processes in an Agile/Scrum environment. Provided talking points to product managers.
- Reviewed job applicants’ technical submissions as part of the interviewing/hiring process.
Software Developer
BG Products
January 2018
to August 2019
Full-time
Wichita, KS
- Designed, built, delivered, and maintained software solutions, translating business requirements into technical specifications and managing project estimates and scheduling. Created technical documentation. Researched and resolved issues with stability, security, and performance. Troubleshot server issues, maintained SQL databases, resolved bottlenecks, and enhanced existing code. Participated in design and code reviews. Assisted with architecture, design, implementation, and deployments of SmartVMA applications, AWS, and Azure. Administered and configured AWS services, including EC2 instances, Route 53, and S3.
- Designed and implemented a custom PHP API server for an updated mobile app, including OpenAPI 3.0 specifications and auto-generated API docs. Increased response speed by as much as 1000%.
- Authored Azure functions to automate ETL of vendor data from FTP site to SQL Server production database, reducing human interaction and speeding up the process by 15%.
- Created a virtual machine image using Vagrant, Windows Server, Chocolatey, and PowerShell scripts, providing engineering team members with identical, custom, standardized development environments to eliminate deployment errors due to environment or configuration inconsistencies.
- Introduced modern software workflow procedures, including version control. Transitioned pull requests, code reviews, and deployments from FTP uploads to Git, vastly reducing deployment errors and supporting the quick location of issues.
Lead Software Engineer
SNT Media
September 2015
to October 2017
Full-time
Wichita, KS
- Performed back end API development in a fast-paced startup environment. Built content-driven sites on topics in sports, finance, and real estate, using various data environments and proprietary engines to create auto-generated content for those sites. Collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop numerous products in a short time.
- Rewrote a custom PHP data-fetching engine that powered a stock market website. Reduced API calls by 98% and monthly costs by $18,000 while improving data accuracy and timeliness.
- Led a team of developers to plan, build, and launch an AI-driven football website, meeting or beating all deadlines.
- Headed a cross-functional team to create and document new company-wide software development standards, providing a reference point for new employees regarding coding syntax, formatting, and general procedures and philosophy.
- Directed a team to conduct mobile ad industry research related to the company’s existing products; presented findings to C-level managers, avoiding a likely unprofitable investment by advising against building the product for mobile.
- Created and deployed back end service-layer APIs using Lumen framework to power sports and real estate websites. Wrote custom, automated ETL processes to aggregate data, including images, used to auto-generate content.
Application Developer
PK Technology
July 2014
to September 2015
Full-time
Wichita, KS
- Coordinated with QA, management, and operations teams to develop, debug, and deploy mobile and web products for this provider of mechanical integrity, coating, fireproofing, and fabric maintenance inspection services. Focused on the development and maintenance of PK’s primary product, intelliSPEC, an iPad application for use in capturing oil and gas equipment and facility safety inspection data and providing real-time reporting.
- Collaborated with a cross-functional team to build and deploy a critical comprehensive back end application that enabled customers to manage inspection configurations and data.
- Built a complete API server that allowed the iPad app to exchange inspection data with servers. Minimized payload to accommodate inspection locations’ poor wireless signals.
- Programmed the intelliSPEC server-side code using CakePHP MVC framework and front end interface using Kendo UI JavaScript framework.
- Played a key role in preparing intelliSPEC for market launch and adoption by customers such as BP, Dow, Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil.
Project Management Assistant
Office of IT Project & Process Management, University of Kansas
September 2013
to January 2014
Part-time
Lawrence
United States - Kansas
- Assisted campus IT and Construction projects with data entry & validation.
- Coordinated project status communications between departments and managers responsible for various project stages.
- Executed other special research and data aggregation projects as instructed by the Director.
Web Application Developer
Transition Coalition, School of Education, University of Kansas
September 2010
to July 2013
Part-time
Lawrence, KS
- Assumed responsibility for developing and managing the Coalition’s website, http://www.transitioncoalition.org/, an interactive educational tool used for teaching secondary educators and college students how to teach students with learning and developmental disabilities.
- Conceived, programmed and maintained web applications for other Coalition projects.
- Provided management and custom development work on other online learning platforms used by faculty & students at KU and other partner universities.
Skill Sets
Competencies
- Software Architecture
- Software Development Life Cycle
- Continuous Integration/Delivery (CI/CD)
- Monitoring & Visibility
- API Development
- Containerization
- Product Design/Roadmapping
- Well-documented, Scalable Code
- Process Automation
- Project Management/Prioritization
- Leading Cross-Functional Teams
- User-Centered Problem Solving
- Shaping Organizational Direction
- Integrating 3rd-Party Tools
Languages
- Go
- Protobuf
- PHP
- SQL
- JavaScript
- JSON
Databases
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Microsoft SQL Server
Frameworks
- gRPC
- jQuery
- Laravel
- CakePHP
- SlimPHP
- SmartyPHP
- KendoUI
Values
- Empathy
- Communication
- Transparency
- Accountability
- Self-Awareness
- Consistency
Education
Bachelor's Degree, Information Systems & Technology
University of Kansas School of Business
- Attended classes full time and maintained 3.62 overall and 3.76 professional GPA while working part time and being a single father
- Served as Web Developer for Non-Traditional Student Foundation at KU
- Served as Web Developer and PR/Social Media Manager for IS@K - Information Systems club at KU