Derrick Shields
Verified Expert in Engineering
DevOps Engineer and Developer
Reston, VA, United States
Toptal member since December 21, 2022
Derrick is a senior programmer with extensive experience in software architecture and development. He specializes in cloud architecture and designing and writing cloud-native and enterprise-grade software applications. He is proficient in over a dozen programming languages, including Java, Node.js, and C#, with extensive DevOps CI/CD and IT experience. As a Certified Scrum Master and Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect, Derrick contributes to all aspects of application design.
Portfolio
Experience
- Data Migration - 20 years
- SQL - 20 years
- Architecture - 20 years
- Google Cloud - 12 years
- Terraform - 10 years
- Big Data - 10 years
- DevOps - 10 years
- Data Pipelines - 7 years
Work Experience
Cloud Architect/Engineer Consultant - AWS & GCP Ecosystem
Artisoph
- Contributed as a technical lead for a SaaS tax accounting CRM product. Used Node.js, TypeScript, React, or Redux. This was hosted in a GCP ecosystem.
- Engaged as a technical lead on a paper-to-digital transformation project for athlete drug testing. Utilized AWS Amplify, AppSync, and DataStore and CI/CD using AWS CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline integrated with Microsoft DevOps and TeamCity.
- Redesigned and implemented an Auth0-backed authentication process for an online car financing website, allowing partially complete loan applications to resume. Used Java 8, Ruby, Oracle, JavaScript, React, GitHub, and Jenkins.
- Integrated a custom-built CRM application with Oracle NetSuite for improved accounting reporting and quicker funding transactions.
Google Cloud Data Engineer and Senior Solutions Architect
- Designed and documented official architectural solutions for GCP products and enterprise integration.
- Authored an official white paper on multi-region load balancing for multi-AZ App Engine deployment.
- Engaged as a security specialist for GCP products and services, covering hardening, the three Rs: rotate, repave, and repair, intrusion detection system, and zero-day exploits.
- Worked on several initiatives using Terraform automation, big data, BigQuery, data modeling, and ETLs.
Platform Architect | Strategic Accounts
Pivotal
- Prepared and delivered presentations on Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Pivotal Data Analytics, and big data and data science.
- Delivered cloud-native and distributed systems workshops, highlighting Spring, Spring Cloud Data Flow, and Spring Cloud services.
- Conducted cloud data architecture planning and discussions, covering relational and NoSQL data, analytics, caching, and multi-datacenter synchronization.
- Executed long-term onsite software re-architecture engagements to migrate legacy banking and investment applications to cloud-native digital banking platforms.
- Provided industry-specific proof of concepts (POCs), including a transportation industry real-time fleet tracking application using multiplexed telemetry feeds and predictive analytics for engine failure.
Sales Engineer
VMware
- Prepared and delivered presentations on vFabric and vSphere technology to prospective customer senior executives, IT directors, and architects.
- Created proof-of-concept (POC) technology demonstrations on vFabric components and integration solutions with vSphere portfolio, including Spring framework, Tomcat server, GemFire, SQLFire, RabbitMQ, Hyperic, APM, and Cloud Foundry.
- Enabled third-party vendors and ISVs through custom technology workshops and courses.
- Supported regional and federal sales in quota achievement; personal targets were achieved in all quarters.
Subject Matter Expert II
SAIC
- Engaged as the subject matter expert (SME II) for IBM WebSphere Portal server architecture, development, configuration, and build automation.
- Acted as the architect and development lead for system performance, enterprise system security, single-sign-on (SSO) implementation, high availability (HA) and fault tolerance, and 508 compliance.
- Architected and implemented development framework for client and server endpoints using Dojo, DWR, Spring, Hibernate, SOA, and web services.
- Led teams on WebSphere architecture and development, using WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal server 5.1 and 6.1.
- Architected and developed WebSphere authorization solution, using custom Apache authentication filters via proxying and Oracle and Sun IDM.
- Developed WebSphere portlets using JSR 168 and JSR 286 specifications.
- Architected and developed a single sign-on authentication solution using Apache proxying, custom WebSphere Trust Association Interceptors (TAI), and custom WebSphere portlets.
- Led development team on 508 and accessibility compliance, coordinating 508 testing with HiSoftware AccVerify and issue mitigation and establishing UI developer best practices.
- Architected and implemented high-availability and fault-tolerance configuration (HA/FT) using F5 BIG-IP LTM.
Senior Architect for Global Systems
The Washington Post
- Participated as senior architect for the Global Shared Services team, assisting in the design, review, implementation, and testing of over 12 services ranging from registration and authentication to geocoding and calendaring.
- Acted as an architect and technical lead for search on washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com, budgettravel.com, sprig.com, and theroot.com.
- Architected and implemented search, location, and event (calendar) shared services for Going Out Guide—CityGuide replacement—using Java 5 and 6, JUnit, Spring 2.5, Maven, GlassFish, Oracle 9i, Postgres 8, and CruiseControl.
- Acted as a senior architect for Going Out Guide website and application using Spring MVC role isolation—DAO, controller, presentation—and data components, including schema, procedures, and triggers implementation on Oracle 9i and 10i.
- Upgraded company-wide enterprise search engine to FAST ESP 5.1.
- Architected and implemented data feeds and back-end for Local Explorer dynamic mapping application for washingtonpost.com using Oracle 9i, Java 4, WebLogic, and Google Maps API.
- Implemented all content changes and maintenance on a FAST enterprise search engine, news feed search, and CityGuide applications.
- Maintained all CityGuide data feeds, including TicketMaster and movies using Java 4 and Perl 5.
- Architected and oversaw the implementation of events data feed between paper-based The Washington Post and online-based WPNI.
- Designed and implemented several internal editorial tools for managing locations, geocoding, and user reviews using Ruby.
Project History
Real-time Fleet Tracking App
The POC's microservice architecture included the dashboard UI, fleet query for real-time fleet coordinates, truck details to drill down on vehicle make or model, odometer service to drill down on engine metrics, service center for locating remediation services, and data export for exporting to CSV.
I used Spring Cloud Data Flow for telemetry ingest and GemFire for real-time map display. I also used Greenplum for engine failure predictive analytics, Jenkins for CI/CD, and Cloud Foundry for deployment automation.
Tax Accounting Collaboration Management Platform
The platform is hosted on AWS using microservices and serverless paradigms written in Node.js, TypeScript, React, and Redux. AWS EC2 instances and ECS Fargate are used for container deployments along with Lambda for serverless events modules. Aurora, RDS, DocumentDB with MongoDB, and DynamoDB are used for various back-end system storage, and S3 is used for document management. Finally, Cognito is used for authentication management and X-Ray for enhanced monitoring and diagnostics.
Athlete Drug Testing Application
The mobile application supports both iOS and Android using React Native, supporting both tablets for screeners and phones for athlete users. The back end is hosted on AWS using AWS Amplify AppSync and DataStore for mobile data synchronization, Node.js Lambda services for handling database events and locking, and AWS RDS for SQL Server with integration between Microsoft DevOps, TeamCity, and AWS CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline for CI/CD.
Global Banking Service Architecture Standard
https://github.com/vmware-archive/spring-bianI developed an implementation of this standard for the Java Spring framework to accelerate adoption and implementation by the online banking industry. This library is an implementation of the BIAN model leveraging the Spring framework, and it allows a developer to rapidly create BIAN-compliant services while hiding much of the underlying BIAN model details. See www.bian.org for more information on BIAN.
This library leverages not only the Spring framework but a number of the Spring Cloud services components and facilitates building robust and resilient cloud-native BIAN microservices. It is aligned with the Wave 3 approach of the BIAN implementation model. The used Spring components are Spring Boot, Spring Cloud Netflix, and Spring Cloud Stream.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering
Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
Certifications
Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect
Google Cloud
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Hystrix, REST APIs, jQuery, JSR 168, JSR 286, DWR, API Development, Node.js, React, AWS Amplify, Google Maps API
Tools
Terraform, Concourse CI, Eureka, Zuul, Apache Tomcat, RabbitMQ, WebSphere Portal Server, VPN, WebLogicServer, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), GitHub, Postman, Apache, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), AWS IAM, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Deployment, AWS SDK, GitLab CI/CD, Moodle, Logging, PHP-FPM, GCP Security, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS Fargate, Amazon Cognito, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS CodeCommit, TeamCity, Auth0, Jenkins, AWS Step Functions, AWS CloudFormation, Beanstalk, Docker Hub, AutoML, VMware, VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, VMware vSphere HA, VMware vRealize Orchestrator, VMware App Volumes, Apache Maven, Artifactory, Jira, Amazon EKS, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Splunk, ELK (Elastic Stack), NGINX, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Grafana, Squid Proxy Server, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), IBM MQ, MongoDB Atlas, Docker Compose, Amazon Connect, CircleCI, OpenTofu, AWS AppSync
Languages
Java, C++, Assembly, C, JavaScript, PHP, CSS, HTML, Java 6, Java 8, Bash, SQL, Bash Script, Go, Microcode, TypeScript, Python, Jython, Perl, Ruby, SAML, Python Script, Python 3
Frameworks
Spring 5, Spring Microservice, Spring Cloud Stream, Spring, Spring 4, Dojo, Hibernate, JUnit, Spring MVC, Spring Boot, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Redux, .NET, Ant Design, Hadoop, SPF, React Native, Windows PowerShell
Paradigms
DevOps, Microservices, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), HIPAA Compliance, Best Practices, Secure Code Best Practices, MVC Design, Scrum, Agile, Microservices Architecture, DevSecOps, Automation, Event-driven Architecture, Penetration Testing, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Load Testing, Azure DevOps, MEAN Stack
Platforms
Linux, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, VMware Tanzu Application Service (TAS) (Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF)), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM WebSphere, Apache2, FAST ESP, Microsoft, Windows, Cloud Run, Ubuntu, LAMP, Debian, Red Hat Linux, Azure, Blockchain, Oracle Identity Management, WebSphere MQ, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), WordPress
Storage
Google Cloud, Amazon DynamoDB, Greenplum, NoSQL, Spring Data REST, MySQL, Cloud Deployment, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Data Pipelines, MongoDB, Amazon Aurora, Oracle 9g, PostgreSQL, Oracle 10g, Microsoft SQL Server, Redis, Elasticsearch, Google Cloud SQL, Datadog
Industry Expertise
Cybersecurity
Other
Intel 8085, Cloud, Software, Cloud Foundry, Gemfire, Big Data, SSL, Serverless, DNS, Cloud Computing, Architecture, SOAP, Cloud Architecture, Cloud Infrastructure, Consulting, AWS DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Hyperic, WAS, WebSphere Application Server, Proxies, Single Sign-on (SSO), Portlets, 508/WCAG 2.0, Hibernate 3, Web Services, Web Security, High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR), Fault Tolerance, Spring DAO, WebLogic, Scrum Master, Agile Sprints, Spring Cloud, Containerization, DNS Debugging, Service Meshes, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Monitoring, Containers, Continuous Monitoring, Autoscaling, Load Balancers, Low Latency, TCP/IP, Packet Communication, Networks, Full-stack, Pub/Sub, IT Security, Cloud Security, AWS Cloud Architecture, Security, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Container Orchestration, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Scalability, Web Scalability, Web Servers, Build & Release Engineering, Solution Architecture, DevOps Engineer, Network Security, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), AWS VPN, Infrastructure, Networking, Hardware, Scaling, Linux Administration, DMARC, DNS Configuration, DNS Servers, Domain Name System (DNS), Email, Emailers, HAProxy, SecOps, Release Management, Scalable Web Services, Web Hosting, GoDaddy, Email Delivery, Cloud Engineering, IT Administration, IT Infrastructure, IT Services, Mail Servers, Server Administration, System Administration, Servers, Cloud Migration, System Architecture, Google Drive, Email Systems, SMTP, Domain Management, Reverse Proxy, SSL Configurations, Web Hosting & Domain Setup, Server Infrastructure, Troubleshooting, GCP DevOps, Google Pub/Sub, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), SOC Compliance, AWS IAM Identity Center, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS GovCloud, Compliance, Large-scale Projects, FedRAMP, SOC 2, Deployment, Distributed Systems, AWS Auto Scaling, ECS, HIPAA, Event-driven Systems, Security Architecture, Configuration Management, Debugging Tools, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), OpenID Connect (OIDC), Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Observability, AWS Cloud Security, Back-end, APIs, Application Configuration, Data Migration, Application Security, Transport Layer Security (TLS), Security Audits, User Permissions, Automations, Data Processing Automation, Data Engineering, Domain DNS Setup, Domain Migration, AWS ECS Fargate, Amazon Route 53, Security Engineering, Security Groups, AWS Security Hub, AWS WAF, NIST, LicenseSpring, SSH, VM, Virtual Machines, Okta, IT Support, Platform Engineering, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon DocumentDB, Amazon RDS, Predictive Analytics, API Gateways, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), SaaS, Scraping, VMware ESXi, VMware vCenter, VMware VMotion, VMware NSX, VMware Cloud Director, VMware vCloud, VMware vRealize Automation, vCenter, APM, F5 Networks, GlassFish, Amazon API Gateway, AWS CodePipeline, OAuth, SAML-auth, Audio Processing, Audio Codecs, Network Optimization, Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), Google Cloud/Suite, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Orchestration, DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), Prometheus, IPsec, Machine Learning, Email Design, Email Marketing, Email Template Design, Intuit QuickBooks, Cloudflare, LangChain, Large Language Models (LLMs), Amazon Redshift, AWS X-Ray, Middleware, Google Cloud Security Command Center (SCC), NetSuite, Multi-tenant Architecture, GitHub Actions, Google Cloud Build, Snyk, Internet of Things (IoT), FastAPI, User Interface (UI), Logic Design, PCB Design, Circuit Design, Circuit Analysis, OutSystems, CruiseControl, MinIO, Open-source LLMs
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