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Daniel Schaefer
Verified Expert in Engineering
Back-end Developer
Akron, OH, United States
Toptal member since November 5, 2022
Bio
Daniel is a software engineer with 17+ years of experience specializing in implementing DevOps. As part of an engineering team, he enjoys developing applications while owning code, tests, builds, deployments, infrastructure, and monitoring. Daniel believes in scalable, reliable, testable, and maintainable code.
Portfolio
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Python 3, Terraform, AWS Cloud Architecture, GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, AWS Lambda...
BrightEdge
PHP, Python 3, Python 2, Kubernetes, Terraform, A/B Testing...
OnShift
Python 2, Python 3, gRPC, CI/CD Pipelines, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker...
Experience
- Git - 12 years
- Unit Testing - 12 years
- AWS IAM - 10 years
- CI/CD Pipelines - 10 years
- Behavior-driven Design - 7 years
- Python 3 - 5 years
- Terraform - 3 years
Work Experience
Software Developer Lead
2020 - PRESENT
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
- Designed system and software architecture and defined technologies for a payment collection system, including programming languages, IaC, local development tools, and AWS cloud technologies.
- Developed Python utility libraries used in many AWS Lambda to include functionality such as standardized logging, API responses, hashing algorithms, database models, and common business logic.
- Designed and implemented the GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates and pipelines to build, test, scan, and deploy dozens of microservice code repositories into AWS.
- Led a development team to build an event-driven ETL application to process and send payments for settlement to external systems, using technologies such as DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Kinesis, S3, AWS Glue, Step Functions, and CloudWatch.
- Developed Terraform modules to deploy dozens of microservices to AWS.
- Facilitated weekly collaboration sessions across all development teams, ensuring cross-team communication was maintained with best practices and discoveries during development and demoing new functionality that could be used across teams.
- Stood up the application development teams by participating in many interviews for developers, QA analysts, lead developers, IT managers, product owners, and scrum masters.
- Created and maintained onboarding documentation for the technical roles in my program, encouraging onboarded members to edit and add improvements to the working document.
Technologies: Python 3, Terraform, AWS Cloud Architecture, GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS Glue, ETL, Behave, Pytest, Test-driven Development (TDD), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), AWS IAM, Amazon API Gateway, AWS ALB, TypeScript, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Software Development, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Jenkins, Agile, Docker, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DNS, Git, Unit Testing, Behavior-driven Design, Back-end Architecture, Python, Microservices, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Agile Delivery, Engineering, Architecture, Banking & Finance, Open Source, REST APIs, API Integration, Cloud, API Documentation, DevOps, DevOps Engineer, APIs, Node.js, Clean Architecture, NoSQL, Full-stack, SQL, Full-stack Development, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mentorship
Senior Software Engineer
2019 - 2020
BrightEdge
- Architected and implemented features, systems, and microservices that optimized the effectiveness of SEO automation using Python 2 for legacy systems and Python 3 for greenfield microservices.
- Designed and implemented centralized Python 3 microservices running in Kubernetes and Cloud Functions to retrieve, process, and cache Google SERPs.
- Acted as a stand-in DevOps resource, scrum master, and coach for the application development team and other product teams.
- Designed and implemented a process to send emails to platform users with A/B testing in mind, showing the performance that SEO automation brought to the customer's sites while helping to increase user engagement with the platform.
- Mentored and managed junior developers and conducted in-depth code reviews for the team.
Technologies: PHP, Python 3, Python 2, Kubernetes, Terraform, A/B Testing, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Cloud, Jenkins, Bash, Jira, Agile, Software Development, Docker, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DNS, Git, Unit Testing, Back-end Architecture, Python, Microservices, Agile Delivery, Engineering, Architecture, React, HTML5, Open Source, REST APIs, API Integration, Data Engineering, Cloud, Data Science, APIs, Full-stack, SQL
Technical Lead
2015 - 2019
OnShift
- Led a team of high-performing software engineers to rearchitect a major component of the legacy application written in Python 2 into a more sustainable data model by slicing the application into gRPC and Python 3 microservices.
- Built repeatable Kubernetes infrastructure using Ansible, Cloud Formation, and other AWS technologies into four environments.
- Implemented a more robust application from a single web server to multiple load-balanced web servers and Celery workers for asynchronous processors. Automated the provisioning and configuration of the entire application infrastructure using Ansible.
- Established acceptable metrics for our applications and set up alerts and reporting dashboards to display system status on internal dashboards using Grafana.
- Built CI/CD solutions and pipelines to build, test, and deploy various applications while collaborating with other systems engineers and software engineers from multiple teams to understand the need.
- Created a framework for new applications to standardize builds and deployments.
- Migrated the marketing site from a third-party hosting platform to a self-hosted solution, automating the configuration of the servers with Ansible.
- Developed and maintained integration code for importing employee and punch clock data with many of our customers' time and attendance systems.
- Collaborated with database analysts, systems engineers, and other software engineers to formulate the best solutions for any problem my team needed to solve.
Technologies: Python 2, Python 3, gRPC, CI/CD Pipelines, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, Ansible, Grafana, Celery, RabbitMQ, SQLAlchemy, Git, Bash, Artifactory, Jira, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon EC2, Autoscaling Groups, NGINX, PHP, Drupal, TypeScript, Software Development, Agile, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Nagios, DNS, Unit Testing, Behavior-driven Design, Back-end Architecture, Python, Microservices, Flask, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twilio API, Agile Delivery, Engineering, React, HTML5, Open Source, REST APIs, API Integration, Cloud, DevOps, DevOps Engineer, Django, APIs, Full-stack, SQL
Web Application Developer and Systems Analyst
2008 - 2015
Performance Administration
- Developed, deployed, maintained, and supported a web application built on the LAMP stack.
- Maintained the entire systems and network infrastructure that supported the application, including the company's internal servers and network.
- Supported workstations, printers, and scanners for the company's employees and print operations.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, Apache, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git, Bash, LAMP, Nagios, Subversion (SVN), Puppet, CentOS, Mail Servers, DNS, DNS Servers, CUPS, Samba, FTP Servers, Desktop Support, Proxmox, NAS Servers, Bacula, Network Administration, Software Development, Unit Testing, WordPress, Engineering, Laravel, Open Source, DevOps, DevOps Engineer, Full-stack, SQL
Development and Operations Team
2011 - 2014
High Fidelity
- Designed and implemented infrastructure for virtual reality software.
- Implemented continuous integration using GitHub hooks, Jenkins, and Ansible for one stack and Subversion hooks, Selenium, and Ansible for another stack.
- Designed and implemented a backup solution using Bacula.
Technologies: Jenkins, Ansible, CI/CD Pipelines, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancers, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon RDS, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudWatch, Bacula, Subversion (SVN), Software Development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, LAMP, Nagios, DNS, Git, AWS IAM, Engineering, Open Source, Full-stack, SQL
Web Application Developer
2005 - 2008
Logic Partners
- Developed and maintained a repair ticketing system for the railroad industry built on the LAMP stack.
- Built and maintained an inventory and retail management system for a convenience store distributor, integrating data bi-directionally with a mainframe system into a MySQL database for reporting and making updates.
- Created and maintained several static websites for various companies, including the company's website.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, CentOS, Software Development, HTML, LAMP, DNS, Engineering, Open Source, Full-stack, SQL
Project History
ACH Debit Payment Settlement
I led a team of three to eight developers, QA analysts, and automation test engineers to build an event-based ETL solution to batch and send ACH debit payments to an external integration partner for payment settlement. We used all AWS native technologies for the solution. The solution was consumed from the DynamoDB streams while the data was written by APIs. The data was then batched into files saved to S3, triggering Lambda to pick up, transform, and send to the integration partner. Response files were retrieved from the partner on a schedule and saved to another S3 bucket. These files were processed via event-driven architecture, parsed, and messages were added to SQS, consumed by Lambda, and the original records were updated in DynamoDB.
Education
2003 - 2005
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Kent State University - Kent, OH, USA
Certifications
MAY 2022 - PRESENT
SAFe 5 Agilist
Scaled Agile, Inc
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Node.js, SQLAlchemy, Twilio API, React
Tools
Terraform, AWS IAM, Git, GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, Behave, Pytest, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Step Functions, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS Glue, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Jenkins, Jira, Ansible, Grafana, Celery, RabbitMQ, Artifactory, AWS CloudFormation, NGINX, Subversion (SVN), Apache, Nagios, Puppet
Languages
Python 3, Python, Bash, JavaScript, SQL, TypeScript, PHP, Python 2, HTML, CSS, HTML5
Paradigms
Test-driven Development (TDD), Unit Testing, DevOps, ETL, Microservices, Clean Architecture, Agile, Samba, Microservices Architecture, Event-driven Architecture, Back-end Architecture
Platforms
Docker, WordPress, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, AWS ALB, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon EC2, Drupal, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, LAMP, CentOS, Proxmox
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), NoSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, MySQL, NAS Servers
Frameworks
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), gRPC, Flask, Laravel, Django
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance
Other
Software Development, Engineering, Open Source, DevOps Engineer, Full-stack, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, CI/CD Pipelines, Behavior-driven Design, Agile Delivery, Architecture, API Integration, Cloud, APIs, Full-stack Development, Mentorship, AWS Cloud Architecture, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon API Gateway, A/B Testing, Autoscaling Groups, Elastic Load Balancers, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53, Bacula, Mail Servers, DNS, DNS Servers, CUPS, FTP Servers, Desktop Support, Network Administration, Ajax, Data Engineering, Data Science, API Documentation, Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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