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Jonathan Stokes
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Jonestown, TX, United States
Toptal member since October 12, 2020
Bio
Jonathan is passionate about creating new things with excellence, from software to furniture to music. As an engineer and a craftsman, he has built maintainable and reliable software for over 25 years by separating responsibilities well through clean, object-oriented design. He is content to work solo but also collaborates well as a team member, using his experience to teach and mentor when needed.
Portfolio
Casetext
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Zapier, Pipedrive API, Passport.js, SAML-auth, SAML...
Planview
Amazon Web Services (AWS), XML, Mobile Apps, Git, SaaS, Jenkins, Android...
EndPlay
Architecture, Scaling, Software as a Service (SaaS), XML, Flowplayer, Liferay...
Experience
- Java - 20 years
- JavaScript - 10 years
- MongoDB - 3 years
- TypeScript - 3 years
- Node.js - 3 years
- Express.js - 3 years
- Angular - 2 years
- React - 1 year
Preferred Environment
MongoDB, TypeScript, Express.js, Node.js, Angular, React, IntelliJ IDEA, Linux, Windows, MacOS
The most amazing...
...projects I've developed are legal informatics tools for Casetext, which use React and Angular to interact with cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms.
Work Experience
Product Architect, Principal Engineer
2018 - PRESENT
Casetext
- Contributed as a senior full-stack developer in an extremely fast-paced startup environment, mentoring other developers, interfacing with the data science team and other groups, and increasing technical responsibilities.
- Collaborated with a team to port the flagship casetext.com application from AngularJS to Angular 3, including significant rewrites and additional features.
- Added UI-facing features for mobile and desktop browsers: complex document uploads, multi-faceted auto-complete, an API for managing court dockets, key passages, user highlighting, user notes, search-within document, and show similar issues.
- Played a key role in developing Casetext’s second major product, a SPA and MS Word add-in running on office.com and desktops. Solo features included search results, WYSIWYG content to .docx, and SSO to SAML2/ADFS identity providers via Passport-SAML.
- Created the back-office integration with Pipedrive CRM.
- Proved out the productivity of remote development as the first work-from-home developer on the applications team, which led to hiring several other remote developers.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Zapier, Pipedrive API, Passport.js, SAML-auth, SAML, Paid Memberships Pro (PMPro), React Redux, Redux, Webpack, GitHub API, GitHub, Git, Continuous Integration (CI), Stripe API, Stripe, REST APIs, Sass, SaaS, Analytics, Scaling, NoSQL, Bash Script, Material UI, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MEAN Stack, MERN Stack, Generics, Microsoft Word Add-on Development, Agile, Google Docs, Front-end, FullStory, Full-stack, Firebase, Figma, GraphQL, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Bootstrap, REST, HTML5 Video, HTML5, HTML, CSS, Team Leadership, API Architecture, Web Architecture, MongoDB, React, Angular, Express.js, Node.js, JavaScript, TypeScript 3
Software Architect, Director of Engineering
2011 - 2017
Planview
- Advanced from a technical leader to the director of a completely distributed team of developers building UI features in Sencha’s Ext JS client library while expanding our multi-tenant, cloud-hosted service to over 500 SaaS customers.
- Architected the transition from a JSP-based legacy web UI to RESTful services, returning JSON to single-page, JavaScript-based web clients on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, using Sencha’s Ext JS library.
- Hired and managed 13 direct reports and contractors as the engineering team grew from four people writing code to 29 full-time engineers distributed in five US states and four other countries.
- Continued writing code and providing mentoring and technical direction in addition to management duties such as hiring, mentoring, and evaluating team members.
- Oversaw the rollout of countless new features in a variety of capacities: project manager, architect, designer, and developer.
- Helped establish Agile development best-practices such as TDD, continuous integration, monthly release cycles, and code quality standards.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), XML, Mobile Apps, Git, SaaS, Jenkins, Android, Cordova, Teaching, Mentorship, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Databases, Scrum, Agile, Jira, MVC Design, Mockito, JUnit, Full-stack, Spring, OData, REST, Front-end, HTML5, HTML, CSS, Remote Team Leadership, Team Leadership, Ext JS, JavaScript, Java
Senior Software Developer
2011 - 2011
EndPlay
- Functioned remotely and in-person as a senior member of a growing team of developers creating a SaaS web-hosting solution, primarily for media companies with streaming video content.
- Architected EndPlay’s microsite platform and led the development team to implement the corporate website (www.endplay.com) on the new platform.
- Delivered the first implementation of Intelligently Rendered™ content, with tailored experiences for mobile and tablet form factors, including a different embedded high-quality video experience on each device type.
Technologies: Architecture, Scaling, Software as a Service (SaaS), XML, Flowplayer, Liferay, JavaScript, Java
Staff Software Engineer
2007 - 2011
Autonomy
- Started at Interwoven as a senior member of a distributed development team responsible for enhancements to Interwoven’s enterprise web content management offering. Continued as a technical lead after Interwoven was acquired by Autonomy in 2009.
- Implemented social computing components for incorporating ratings, polling, helpfulness, and other visitor feedback into web pages built in a web-based WYSIWYG page editor.
- Created proof-of-concept integrations from Interwoven LiveSite to various social media and user-generated content partners.
- Assisted in creating the Interwoven Component Guide, an interactive website for showcasing the library of out-of-the-box visual page components.
- Created a RESTful component framework used to access external services. After the Autonomy acquisition, this became the foundation for integrations between Interwoven LiveSite and Autonomy IDOL.
Technologies: Scrum, Agile, Jira, Front-end, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Autonomy IDOL Search, REST APIs, REST, Writing & Editing, Social Media APIs, Social APIs, HP TeamSite, XML, Java
Senior Software Engineer
2006 - 2007
Bazaarvoice
- Joined as an early-startup senior member of a stellar development team responsible for implementing new product features and scaling a software-based service to keep up with huge growth in customers and overall web traffic.
- Implemented and delivered major product features, end-to-end, while reviewing and mentoring developers on the overseas development team.
- Added support for uploading and linking videos when posting reviews of products sold online. This feature can be seen on Bazaarvoice client sites such as petco.com.
- Designed and implemented Bazaarvoice’s Merit Badging feature to rank/reward frequent contributors of user-generated content (e.g., “Top 1000 Reviewer”). This feature could be seen at most Bazaarvoice client sites such as walmart.com and bestbuy.com.
- Designed and developed Bazaarvoice’s RESTful web service for ratings and reviews, used as an integration API by clients such as dell.com and sears.com.
Technologies: Subversion (SVN), Bash Script, MySQL, JUnit, Full-stack, Spring, REST, HTML, CSS, eCommerce APIs, eCommerce UI, eCommerce, SaaS, Mentorship, YouTube API, JavaScript, Restlet, Apache Velocity, Java
Senior Software Developer
2004 - 2006
Infoglide Software
- Introduced software process best-practices and brought senior development experience to the development team. Served as a senior Java developer on the path to a product architect role, providing mentoring and contributing to the hiring process.
- Served as a designer and developer for Secure Flight, the end-to-end software solution for the Department of Homeland Security’s next-generation airline passenger screening system.
- Designed and developed the web user interface for Infoglide’s retail loss prevention product offering, based on an SOA for back-end services. This also included designing an Ajax-enabled web component framework, using the open-source Dojo Toolkit.
- Brought expertise to software design and development in every area of Infoglide’s business: back-end servers, front-end Swing GUIs, traditional web applications, thin-client applets, and Ajax-enabled, cross-browser web applications.
Technologies: MQSeries, Applets, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Swing, Dojo Toolkit, Ajax, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), SOAP, Web Services, Security, Technical Hiring, Mentorship, Architecture, JavaScript, Java, Test-driven Development (TDD)
Software Engineer
2000 - 2004
WhisperWire
- Progressed from a mid-level Java developer position on a web application software team into a senior/lead role.
- Completely redesigned the web-based maintenance tool for catalog data and led a team of three full-time and five part-time developers to implement it.
- Designed and led the development of a reporting system for analyzing application usage and activity. This included auditing events into a transactional database and then extracting that data into a data warehouse for reporting.
- Designed and implemented an automated process for publishing data from a maintenance system to various runtime systems, using RMI and Jini for seamlessly discovering distributed services.
- Conducted technical interviews and contributed to team hiring decisions.
- Created a facility for handling evolving catalog data in historical quotes.
- Implemented a JSP-based user interface for a Python-based guidance engine for recommending web hosting products.
- Implemented a data network design engine for delivering upgrade recommendations using genetic mutation algorithms and network topology heuristics.
- Implemented a database abstraction layer for persistently storing business objects, a core technology used in all company applications.
- Redesigned and implemented the third version of the core infrastructure for handling page navigation/flow and managing session state, which is still in use for all company applications.
Technologies: CVS, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Sockets, Code Architecture, Genetic Algorithms, Python, Catalogs, Technical Hiring, Jini, RMI, Java RMI, Databases, Web Architecture, Applets, XML, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Java
Consultant, Software Developer
1995 - 2000
JJT Inc.
- Started as an entry-level SAS consultant and advanced into multiple simultaneous roles as a senior SAS consultant, SAS software developer (SAS/AF and SCL), Java software developer, senior Java consultant, C++ software developer, and project lead.
- Designed and developed a customer profile database GUI client-server application for worldwide use at IBM PC.
- Co-designed JJT's Maestro™, an object-oriented statistical analysis software suite for the SAS System.
- Designed and developed an object-oriented, optimized Metabase system that extracted and joined requested data from multiple databases such as SAS, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, Informix, and DB2. Originally implemented in SAS/AF; rewritten in Java.
- Co-developed Convert™, a custom-built digital imaging software suite for professional production environments, built in C++ using Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC).
- Designed and developed JJT's Opus™, a Java client reporting application for statistical analysis and information visualization.
- Created a secure, internet image publishing system for the National Geographic Society.
Technologies: Statistical Analysis, Image Manipulation, SQL, Data Visualization, Statistics, Images, Stream Processing, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Library, C++, Robotics, Hardware, Visual SourceSafe, Writing & Editing, APIs, Sockets, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), TCP/IP, Databases, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), MVC Design, Java Digital Image Processing (DIP), Image Processing, HTML, Leadership, Software Architecture, OS/2, IBM Db2, IBM Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle RDBMS, SAS SQL, Base SAS, SAS
Experience
Casetext Research
https://casetext.comCasetext is the leading legal research solution with the best price in the market, using artificial intelligence to out-compete publishing giants LexisNexis and Westlaw.
I was the principal engineer on the small team of full-stack engineers that built this site, which serves well over two million unique case pages per month. I personally added countless UI-facing features for mobile and desktop browsers, including complex document uploads, multi-faceted auto-complete within the global search bar, utility services for showing toasts and alerts, a custom API for managing court dockets, key passages, user highlighting, user notes, search-within document, show similar issues, self-serve administration, and onboarding tours.
A 14-day trial (currently no credit card required) will let you search the entire corpus of US case law and experience the product I developed with the Casetext team. For example, https://casetext.com/search?q=google%20%2Fp%20angular uses a legal industry-standard query to find cases with "google" and "angular" in the same paragraph.
I was the principal engineer on the small team of full-stack engineers that built this site, which serves well over two million unique case pages per month. I personally added countless UI-facing features for mobile and desktop browsers, including complex document uploads, multi-faceted auto-complete within the global search bar, utility services for showing toasts and alerts, a custom API for managing court dockets, key passages, user highlighting, user notes, search-within document, show similar issues, self-serve administration, and onboarding tours.
A 14-day trial (currently no credit card required) will let you search the entire corpus of US case law and experience the product I developed with the Casetext team. For example, https://casetext.com/search?q=google%20%2Fp%20angular uses a legal industry-standard query to find cases with "google" and "angular" in the same paragraph.
Casetext Compose
Compose is litigation automation technology that takes care of the rote tasks in brief-writing so attorneys can focus their time on persuading the court.
As a key full-stack engineer, I was a significant contributor to developing Compose from the ground. We used React+Node+MongoDB to connect to other internal services and provide a single-page web app, as well as a Microsoft Word add-in running on both Office Online and native desktop MS Word. Solo features included displaying "supporting cases" results from parallel search, exporting WYSIWYG content to .docx format, user licensing, and single sign-on (SSO) to SAML2/ADFS identity providers via Passport-SAML.
As a key full-stack engineer, I was a significant contributor to developing Compose from the ground. We used React+Node+MongoDB to connect to other internal services and provide a single-page web app, as well as a Microsoft Word add-in running on both Office Online and native desktop MS Word. Solo features included displaying "supporting cases" results from parallel search, exporting WYSIWYG content to .docx format, user licensing, and single sign-on (SSO) to SAML2/ADFS identity providers via Passport-SAML.
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, REST APIs, Node.js, Microsoft Word Add-on Development, Stripe, Stripe API, Social APIs, Social Media APIs, Autonomy IDOL Search, Dojo Toolkit, Sockets, Java Digital Image Processing (DIP), Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Library, Passport.js, Pipedrive API, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), GitHub API, React Redux, YouTube API, Java RMI
Tools
IntelliJ IDEA, Google Docs, Git, GitHub, Jenkins, Flowplayer, Zapier, Create React App, Figma, FullStory, Webpack, Jira, Subversion (SVN), MQSeries, CVS, Visual SourceSafe
Languages
TypeScript, TypeScript 3, JavaScript, Java, HTML, HTML5, XML, SCSS, SQL, CSS, Bash Script, Sass, Python, SAML, SAS, GraphQL, C++
Frameworks
Angular, Ext JS, Bootstrap, Restlet, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Express.js, Material UI, Spring, JUnit, Apache Velocity, Swing, Redux, Mockito
Paradigms
API Architecture, REST, MEAN Stack, Agile, MVC Design, Test-driven Development (TDD), Web Architecture, Continuous Integration (CI), Scrum, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)
Platforms
MacOS, Windows, Oracle, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 3 GPIO, Linux, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Android, Raspbian, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Storage
MongoDB, NoSQL, Databases, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SAS SQL, Oracle RDBMS, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Informix, IBM Db2
Industry Expertise
Teaching
Other
Full-stack, Front-end, Generics, MERN Stack, Remote Team Leadership, OData, Architecture, Ajax, Applets, RMI, Jini, Code Architecture, Software Architecture, APIs, Axios, Team Leadership, HTML5 Video, Scaling, Analytics, SaaS, Paid Memberships Pro (PMPro), Mentorship, Software as a Service (SaaS), Writing & Editing, eCommerce, eCommerce UI, eCommerce APIs, Security, Web Services, SOAP, Catalogs, Genetic Algorithms, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Base SAS, Leadership, Image Processing, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), TCP/IP, Robotics, Stream Processing, Images, Data Visualization, Image Manipulation, SAML-auth, Cordova, Mobile Apps, Liferay, HP TeamSite, Technical Hiring, OS/2, Hardware, Statistics, Statistical Analysis
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