Dwayne Crooks
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Toptal member since September 22, 2014
Dwayne is a senior software engineer currently specializing in web application development with Python, Django, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, React and Redux. He has over five years of experience working for companies like Springboard Retail and Caribbean Ideas. He is a passionate craftsman, a lifelong learner, a challenge-seeker, and a determined professional who does whatever it takes to get the job done.
Portfolio
Experience
- Linux - 6 years
- JavaScript - 5 years
- Ruby - 4 years
- PostgreSQL - 4 years
- React - 2 years
- Redux - 1 year
- Django - 1 year
- Python - 1 year
Preferred Environment
Git, Atom, Ubuntu
The most amazing...
...thing I've coded is a C implementation of Donald Knuth's Dancing Links algorithm to help me efficiently solve Sudoku puzzles.
Work Experience
Software Developer
Springboard Retail
- Improved our promotion system by refactoring its DSL and changing the way the custom language is parsed and interpreted.
- Migrated our Ruby-based asset pipeline to NPM and Webpack.
- Developed our MailChimp integration.
- Added support for multi-store multi-jurisdiction tax.
- Built pivot table support into our reporting system.
- Implemented bulk item deletion/deactivation.
- Improved the logging and robustness of our customer background jobs.
- Added token-based login support to our admin backend.
- Optimized the Ruby implementation of our item imports system and improved its performance by 2x.
- Fixed 100+ front-end and back-end bugs.
Senior Web Developer
Caribbean Ideas
- Developed custom websites, web applications, content management systems, and mobile applications.
- Built a trivia game.
- Implemented a social feed that displayed content from our Twitter and Instagram accounts within an infinite scroll.
- Created an interactive detective game for Facebook to teach people about invasive species within the Caribbean.
- Built a single-page application, using AngularJS, for dressing avatars in traditional Carnival costumes.
- Created RESTful APIs as the back-end for mobile apps.
Software Developer
Medullan
- Helped to build a single-page Backbone.js application for psoriasis patients.
- Helped to build the Medicare NewsGroup website using .NET and Telerik.
- Helped to build a web application for Aetna using the Groovy, Grails, and Spring Frameworks.
Teaching Assistant
The University of the West Indies
- Tutored COMP 1100 - Introduction to Computer Programming I.
- Tutored COMP 1200 - Introduction to Computer Programming II.
- Lectured for COMP 2600 - Theory of Computation I.
- Lectured for COMP 1350 - Mathematics for Computer Science II.
- Designed course content, set final exam questions, and graded papers.
- Built an application in Racket to help illustrate how the data structures and algorithms for DFAs, NFAs, and regular expressions could be implemented in practice.
Entry-level Software Developer
Teleios Systems
- Built SMS-based applications using their proprietary technologies.
- Developed a C# API to control SMS messaging devices.
Java Game Developer
Parodice Games
- Ported Quickit (now called PG-Cricket) from QBasic to Java.
Experience
Whitespace Interpreter
https://github.com/dwayne/whitespace-pythonEducation
Master of Philosophy Degree in Mathematics
University of the West Indies - Trinidad & Tobago
Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science & Mathematics
University of the West Indies - Trinidad & Tobago
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, React, jQuery, Locomotive, Backbone.js, Sequel, Sidekiq, Node.js
Tools
Sitefinity, Atom, Vagrant, Git, Refinery CMS, Emacs, RSpec, Jenkins, Chef, NGINX, Webpack, Ansible
Languages
JavaScript, Ruby, ECMAScript (ES6), C, Python, PHP, Groovy, C#, Java, Racket, CoffeeScript
Platforms
Linux, Heroku, WordPress, Telerik, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Android
Frameworks
Redux, Django, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sinatra, Ionic, AngularJS, .NET, Grails, Spring
Paradigms
RESTful Development, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
Storage
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Memcached, Redis
Other
QBasic, Loggly
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