Experience and Projects

I've been passionate about web development since I worked on my first project in 2008, on an electronic RMA system to replace our existing paper-based system. Since then, I've designed and implemented multiple systems and stacks top to bottom and improved and upgraded internal tooling and processes. Some of the bigger projects include:

Tools API (2020)

Published a public API to allow various integrations and improvements to the platform. Implemented using API Gateway backed by Lambdas and pluggable custom authorizers. This enabled everything from triggering actions based on GitHub events to automatic creation of CI namespaces. Additionally, privileged pipeline processes can now be initiated securely from the pipelines, such as my favorite project of my career, using cryptographic signatures to verify artifact provenance and scope bounds.

Migration to cloud-based tooling (2019-2020)

Moved our internal platform's build process from Jenkins to CircleCI, code from Bitbucket to Github, and artifacts from on-prem Artifactory to hosted Artifactory. Planned transition, set up examples to follow, created support channels and documentation, and guided developers through the migration. Our build process on Jenkins was fairly strict and locked down so that we could make certain guarantees about what was being deployed using the servers' highly privileged credentials, meaning that our team was the bottleneck whenever an update or a new feature was needed. As we moved to CircleCI, by laying a strong foundation using the principle of least privilege, we were able to vastly expand flexibility, empowering the development teams to help themselves, move at their own speed, and experiment in areas that we previously never would have had the bandwidth to support. Processes that previously had to be enforced at build time are now a deploy time check using the tools API I wrote.

Developer cli (2018)

Designed a command line tool to assist developers in a variety of everyday tasks, from promoting a build to validating a config against a schema. Innersource: it was created to maximize ease of contribution, which was a key factor in its success and adoption. The modular architecture allows contributors to drop in their own functionality in new commands in any language with only minor wiring to hook into the wrapper's help docs. It is cross-platform, self updating and is automatically versioned (at least for minor and patch releases).

Platform upgrade (2017-2019)

Our internal platform enables developers to specify the infrastructure and resources they need for their microservices and serverless stacks using a custom DSL and convention over configuration to produce and deploy mostly CloudFormation templates, abstracting away most of the nuances and gotchas of that arcane field. This project involved taking the existing platform and bringing it to the next level as far as features, maintainability, community and ease of contributions, consistency, and overall polish. The original code base was a large Python script that had to be refactored in a backwards compatible way, so the first thing added was a suite of tests that ensured the outputs would remain the same throughout the rework. This also made it possible to receive contributions without fear of the domino effect or hidden side effects. Hand-crafted and maintained Jenkins jobs were converted to code using the groovy DSL making it easy to roll out changes to everyone at once. Portability was important, so the process was dockerized, relieving us from the pressures of relying on incompatible Jenkins plugins and other environment dependencies. Deployments were parallelized by creating a Codepipeline and Codebuild for each project, eliminating long wait times and allowing canary-style pipeline development. Documentation was added throughout, and channels for getting help were created. Additionally, a community was fostered so that support was eventually mostly self-sustaining. By the end of the project the platform was considered more stable and understandable, and developers had consistent builds and confidence in the quality of their contributions.

Heart Monitor (2010-2012)

Part of a team of three inexperienced engineers who designed an internet-connected portable heart monitor from scratch, got it through FDA approval, worked with manufacturers, and supported the device as it was sold. Wrote HTTP stack for an embedded system (C++), replacing FTP implementation from our prototype, and vastly improving potential for server-side capabilities. I also wrote the code for the UI, designed the label and menu graphics, and did the mechanical engineering and design.

Heart monitor report generating software (2015-2017)

Designed and developed a HIPAA compliant system for managing cardiac studies, including ability for technicians to generate reports for doctors. Integrates with EMRs for managing patients and facilities. Microservice based architecture using hypermedia REST APIs and JSON schema. Uses Docker containers for microservices. Deployed to AWS with Kubernetes. Logging and monitoring are done with the help of Elasticsearch and Kibana. Written mostly in Node.js and Express. Drone CI system for automated image building and unit/integration tests (using mocha, karma, selenium and protractor)

Heart monitor incoming file processing (2014)

Designed and developed a low-level service layer for managing the device side of cardiac studies. Processes incoming files from devices, runs them through an algorithm for additional arrhythmia detection. Written in PHP ( ZF2), stores files in S3 through an abstracted key-value data store layer. Provides a REST API for third party developers. Unit tested with PHPUnit. Deployed to EC2 using Chef. Later Dockerized and deployed with Kubernetes. Also uses jQuery and Bootstrap

Heart monitor device management (2013)

Designed and developed a system for managing inventory of devices, including serialization, assignment to customers, wireless settings programming, and automated SMS sending to initiate device actions. Uses PHP (ZF2) and MySQL on the backend, jQuery and SASS on the frontend, deployed to EC2 and RDS

Monitor interactions (2012)

Designed and developed a server that interacts with the portable heart monitors' HTTP stack to send and receive files during setup and operation. Uses PHP to perform low-level file parsing and composing, deployed to AWS EC2 with Chef. Uses Zend Framework

CRM (2010)

Designed and developed a CRM that integrates with our internal sales database and Google Apps to provide sales team with all the tools they need to manage their sales pipelines. Migrated data from pricey, bloated legacy CRM. Uses CakePHP, Javascript ( jQuery ) and MySQL, authenticates with OpenID, deployed on-premise with Chef

DMS (2009)

Installed DMS from the market to migrate our paper document management to an electronic system. Wrote PHP plugins to customize the behavior to be compatible with regulatory document control requirements

Sales database and commissions reports (2008)

Integrates with accounting system to inform our sales team about historical sales and their current commissions. ASP.net backend, uses complex MySQL queries and stored procedures extensively, works with Active Directory for integrated authentication on Windows

Other

Side projects have also resulted in experience with Go, Typescript, graph databases (neo4j, cypher) and Java (Android), as well as tools for other fields such as SolidWorks, Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator