James Allen
Verified Expert in Engineering
Education Developer
Mentor, OH, United States
Toptal member since March 23, 2018
James loves creating things with technology and teaching others to do the same. He is an efficient coder and ensures that whatever he produces can be understood by other developers with minimal effort. James also enjoys helping people understand how technology works at a level of understanding appropriate for them.
Portfolio
Experience
- HTML - 20 years
- PHP - 16 years
- CSS - 15 years
- Education - 13 years
- Python - 13 years
- REST APIs - 4 years
- Celery - 4 years
- Django - 4 years
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Vertical Knowledge
- Architected and implemented portions of a system collecting large volumes of publicly available information.
- Mentored junior developers.
- Developed tutorials and documentation for client-facing APIs.
- Maintained a legacy system before transitioning users to its replacement.
- Contributed to and created relevant open-source projects.
Developer | Technology Consultant
Self-employed
- Developed full-stack web applications as a consultant for Offerpop, Color Splash Studio, University of Michigan, and others.
- Put together an affordable plug-and-play looping video display system using custom software on Raspberry Pi.
- Consistently completed projects within estimated timeframes.
- Designed and programmed interactive Konfabulator Widgets for various clients and the general public using JavaScript.
- Recorded and edited professional videos for school and community events.
- Created WordPress plugins and themes.
Software Development Instructor
We Can Code IT
- Designed and taught full-time boot camp courses in web development using C#, MVC, and Entity Framework.
- Addressed needs of a diverse student population and adapted teaching to meet various learning styles.
- Rebuilt the curriculum to meet accelerated goals based on employer feedback.
- Acted as product owner and mentor to guide students through building complex final projects following Scrum methodology.
Data Science Instructor | Online Content Author
The Iron Yard
- Taught intensive 12-week full-time “boot camp” courses in web development and data science using Python, Django, and Pandas.
- Planned and led crash course workshops introducing new developers to the joy of programming with Python through the use of turtle graphics.
- Mentored and managed students through the planning and execution of marketable final projects.
- Created online lessons covering a wide variety of topics relating to web development.
Director of Center for Technology and Invention
Hathaway Brown School
- Oversaw and mentored programs encouraging and recognizing students to pursue engineering and design, including a high school robotics team.
- Laid the groundwork for the creation of a schoolwide digital fabrication lab, securing funding and administrative support.
- Used low-power systems such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers in applications ranging from computer vision to hacking remote control cars.
- Created and taught computer science classes for 5th to 12th-grade girls.
- Served as a key member of the Technology Review Committee, spearheading major changes including campus-wide WiFi and a 1:1 program for students in grades 3 to 12.
- Provided technical support for faculty and staff while promoting more technology independence via workshops and community user groups.
- Presented at educational technology conferences using the Python programming language as part of an introductory computer science course.
Computer Programmer
Manatron
- Developed, profiled, and optimized .NET web applications.
- Enhanced developer tools for automated project building.
- Transitioned a large codebase from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0.
- Identified and fixed errors in existing code.
Project History
Python Singletons
https://github.com/jamesmallen/python-singletonsCalFiller
Models.py
Education
Master of Science Degree in Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology - Atlanta, GA, USA
Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science Engineering
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Django ORM, Requests, Entity Framework, jQuery, OpenCV, Pandas, LINQ, REST APIs, iCal, Turtle
Tools
Celery, Photoshop CC, Atom, PyCharm, Sublime Text 3, Git, GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub, Illustrator CC, Zsh, Oh My Zsh, Subversion (SVN), CVS, Grafana, AWS ELB, Moodle
Languages
Python 3, Python 2, HTML, CSS, Python, PHP, PHP 7, PHP 5, PHP 3, JavaScript, C#, SCSS, C++, Java, C, Sass, Processing, Scratch, SQL, Bash, Bash Script
Frameworks
Django, Django REST Framework, ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails (RoR), .NET, Flask, AWS HA
Paradigms
Model View Controller (MVC), Agile, REST, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Integration (CI), Pair Programming, Scrum, Test-driven Development (TDD)
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), WordPress, Android, Unix, Linux, Amazon EC2, Web
Storage
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), SQLite
Other
Computer Vision, K-12 Education, Educational Portals, Test Cases, Curriculum Design, Curriculum Development, Robotics, Curriculum Development & Delivery, Networks, Videos, Sound, 3D, Python Performance, GitFlow, WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugins, Architecture, Graphite, Programming, Mentorship, Education, Education Technology (Edtech), iCalendar
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