Deanna Dee Gelbart, Developer in Vancouver, BC, Canada
Deanna is currently unavailable

Deanna Dee Gelbart

Software Developer

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Toptal member since October 6, 2025

Expertise
JavaAWSMySQLSpringHibernateKubernetesJavaScriptCSSMachine LearningWindows DevelopmentMacOSLinuxScalaAmazon S3
Bio

Deanna is a seasoned back-end-leaning software developer. She also does front-end development and technical writing at a less senior level. Deanna never stops at solving a problem; she explores its root cause, identifies why it occurred, and proposes effective ways to avoid similar issues.

Portfolio

Hootsuite
Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MySQL
Boats Group
Java, Spring, Hibernate, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS

Experience

  • MySQL - 5 years
  • Java - 5 years
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 5 years
  • Spring - 5 years
  • Kubernetes - 4 years
  • CSS - 1 year
  • JavaScript - 1 year
  • HTML - 1 year

Preferred Environment

Windows, MacOS, Linux

The most amazing...

...change tracking tool of value I've implemented at a company level in a matter of days drove a ROI increase.

Work Experience

Senior Back-end Developer

2020 - 2024
Hootsuite
  • Led a zero-downtime migration to improve parallelization in Amazon S3 (AWS S3) video transcoding, including designing new MySQL schema.
  • Eliminated all memory exhaustion crashes in a Java Virtual Machine (Scala) service whose Kubernetes pods had been crashing dozens of times a day for years, by eliminating different possible causes.
  • Improved social media post time suggestions using data related to past engagements and upcoming posts.
Technologies: Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MySQL

Full-stack Developer

2009 - 2016
Boats Group
  • Conducted full-stack performance optimization including SQL query tuning, Redis key/value caching, browser-side caching, and CDN adoption.
  • Built back ends for search, XML data import, and other operations, using Java (Spring, Hibernate), MySQL, and Elasticsearch.
  • Developed front ends (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Selenium tests) for server-side rendering (SSR) and single-page applications (SPA).
Technologies: Java, Spring, Hibernate, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS

Experience

Hootsuite Composer

At Hootsuite, I was one of the back-end developers supporting a social media post composer. I worked mainly in Scala, using AWS and social media APIs like the Instagram Graph API. The code was hosted on AWS using Kubernetes. I also used AWS for data storage and processing: Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Aurora MySQL, and AWS Elemental MediaConvert.

Education

2000 - 2008

PhD in Electrical Engineer and Computer Science

University of California Berkeley - Berkeley, California, USA

Skills

Languages

Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Scala

Frameworks

Spring, Hibernate

Platforms

Windows, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JVM, MacOS, Linux

Storage

MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)

Other

Machine Learning, Audio, Digital Signal Processing, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hootsuite, AWS Elemental MediaConvert

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