Summary

Product-focused software developer and technical leader. I endeavour to always focus on the end user and ensure my team and I are building products that solve real problems. I take a risk-reduction approach to technical design: focusing on producing the simplest solution to a problem and building up from there. I enjoy working at all stages of a project, but find the discovery and validation stages to be particularly interesting: engaging with prospective users, validating concepts and establishing tight feedback loops.

Stack

Languages

PythonTypeScript/JavaScriptDartJavaC++

Backend

DjangoFlaskNode/ExpressPostgresqlSequelizeRabbitMQCeleryElasticsearchNGINX

Infrastructure

DockerKubernetesTerraformGKEEKSEC2RDSCloudFrontAWS IoTIAMLambdaS3Route53

Frontend

EmberAngularJSFlutterSass/SCSS

Cloud Engineer / Development Seed

June 2021 - Present / Dartmouth, NS

At Development Seed, I primarily work on projects for the IMPACT team at NASA. I serve as the development team lead on the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition project, which involves a combination of system design, software development and technical mentorship. On the development side, I work on web backends (mainly FastAPI), frontends (React/Next.js) and data pipelines (Step Functions, Airflow), as well as managing the corresponding infrastructure with infrastructure-as-code tools.

VP Engineering / Curv Health

March 2020 - June 2021 / Halifax, NS

This was a people and technical management role. I reviewed pull requests, contributed to the design of each service and the overall system and provided mentorship and goal-setting to members of the development team. I worked with the business/design side of the company to shape feature ideas into appropriately-detailed and scoped tickets. When needed, I drew on my background in UX design to help guide the product design process.

Senior Software Developer / Curv Health

Sept 2019 - March 2020 / Halifax, NS

I worked on designing and developing the platform for Curv’s movement analysis product, including the architecture of the overall system and individual services. This covered a broad range of tools and techniques, from C4 diagrams for describing architecture and data flows to Terraform and Kubernetes for infrastructure to Flask and Express for web services. I conducted code reviews and provided mentorship to junior developers on the team.

Senior Software Developer / ​Osprey Informatics

Dec 2014 - Aug 2019 / Remote

Worked on every aspect of the Osprey Reach remote monitoring platform, from the Django-based backend and REST API, to the AngularJS and Ember frontends, to the edge video processing device. For a few years, I divided my time between software development and UX design/user testing. I built a number of early prototypes which went on to become core features of the product and consistently pushed the team toward a more user-focused, iterative workflow.

Creative Technologist / ​Freelance

Apr 2013 - Dec 2014 / Calgary, AB

Developed a number of independent projects, including a now-defunct subscription service for creators (a la Patreon), a pair of award-winning gesture-based applications for Intel's RealSense Developer Challenge, and a number of tech/art pieces exploring passive WiFi tracking as a tool for mapping social networks. During this period, I spoke at a couple of conferences on the subjects of indoor positioning systems and on principles of interactive art.

Tech Director / ​Globacore Interactive Technologies

Jan 2012 - Feb 2013 / Toronto, ON

Provided technical leadership and managed a team of six developers in a fast-paced environment, producing interactive exhibits for events. This often involved taking new projects from concept to deployment in a matter of weeks (deployment in this case meaning installing a 12-foot-wide touchscreen on a street corner in downtown Austin, for example), which necessitated a different approach to project management and team structure than one typically finds in software companies.

Education

Certificate in User Experience (Interaction Design Specialty) / ​Nielsen Norman Group

2018 / Vancouver, BC

Bachelor of Fine Arts (New Media) / Ryerson University

2008 / Toronto, ON