Nolan is available for hire
Hire NolanNolan McCafferty
Verified Expert in Engineering
Python 3 Developer
Iowa City, IA, United States
Toptal member since August 3, 2022
Bio
Nolan has worked on everything from back-end web development, front-end web development, mobile development, and machine learning (ML). After graduating, he got a job as an automation engineer at Ford, where he made a significant impact by delivering an essential proof of concept (POC) for management. Now Nolan would like to take on new challenges and projects!
Portfolio
OpenAlex
Flask, Python 3, Python, API Development, Heroku, Open Source...
Self Employed
C#, Amazon API, Canvas LMS, eBay API, Flask, Django, Go, Java, JavaFX, Pandas...
Databricks - Security Team
Python, REST APIs, APIs, PySpark, ETL, Spark, Pandas, Jira, Jira REST API...
Experience
- ETL - 8 years
- Python 3 - 8 years
- Web App Design - 3 years
- Django - 3 years
- Go - 3 years
- Flask - 3 years
- JavaFX - 3 years
- Java - 3 years
Preferred Environment
MacOS, PyCharm, Slack, Linux
The most amazing...
...project I’ve created was a Django web app that enables dropshippers to list items from one platform to another. I used the eBay and Amazon APIs.
Work Experience
Back-end Developer
2023 - PRESENT
OpenAlex
- Maintained and improved a Flask application to parse relevant fields from HTML documents stored in Amazon S3. Created new parsers for different formats/websites, etc.
- Developed a multithreaded process to scrape and save new documents in Amazon S3.
- Created a multithreaded process to refresh database records served by an API to ensure that end user data is as current as possible.
- Served as a sales engineer and technical support for Unsub, working with large clients such as Jisc and other universities to help optimize their journal subscription agreements.
Technologies: Flask, Python 3, Python, API Development, Heroku, Open Source, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), API Integration, Multithreading, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), AWS SDK, Large Language Models (LLMs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Integration, JSON, JSON API, JSON REST APIs, SFTP, Document Parsing, OpenAI API, FastAPI, LMMS, SQLAlchemy, Error Logging, PDF, Amazon RDS, Third-party Integration, Beautiful Soup, CSV File Processing, Claude, Code Refactoring, Legacy Code, Large Data Sets, Data Analysis, Website Data Scraping, Automations, Deployment
Senior Full-stack Developer
2014 - PRESENT
Self Employed
- Built automation solutions for data ETL, logins, form submission, and other repetitive actions for 100+ different sources.
- Built dashboards for clients to interact with and view the progress of large-scale data scraping and API consumption tasks.
- Reverse-engineered hundreds of hidden website APIs to extract desired data for clients.
- Loaded data into Pandas data frames to perform cleaning and export to various formats such as SQLite, CSV, JSON, and others.
Technologies: C#, Amazon API, Canvas LMS, eBay API, Flask, Django, Go, Java, JavaFX, Pandas, Python 3, Selenium, Web App Design, Web Scraping, ETL, Singer ETL, PostgreSQL, Amazon EC2, Full-stack, Web Development, SQL, Web App Development, APIs, Back-end, Linux, PostgreSQL 10, PyCharm, Charles Proxy, Postman, eCommerce, Automation, REST APIs, API Development, Networking, Git, GitHub, API Integration, Multithreading, Android, Appium, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Data Science, Integration, JSON, JSON API, JSON REST APIs, SFTP, LMMS, TypeScript, SQLAlchemy, Error Logging, React, Node.js, Third-party Integration, Beautiful Soup, CSV File Processing, Claude, Large Data Sets, Data Analysis, Gemini, Twilio API, Website Data Scraping, Automations, Deployment
Data Integration Python Engineer
2022 - 2023
Databricks - Security Team
- Developed and maintained ETL pipelines, sourcing data from security scanning tools and importing it into Jira and Amazon S3 (AWS S3).
- Created a custom GitHub comment bot to remind developers to review security standards before merging pull requests.
- Used the Pandas library and Databricks platform extensively to manage, transform, and migrate large amounts of data.
Technologies: Python, REST APIs, APIs, PySpark, ETL, Spark, Pandas, Jira, Jira REST API, DevOps, DevSecOps, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Databricks, CI/CD Pipelines, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Trivy, QualysGuard, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Scala, Jenkins, Networking, Git, GitHub, API Integration, AWS SDK, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Unit Testing, Data Analysis, Deployment
Python Web Scraping Engineer
2021 - 2023
IDM
- Developed scrapers for numerous sites, including Angie's List, TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor, Google Maps, Yelp, and more.
- Used multi-threading/concurrency and rotating proxies to increase the speed of data extraction.
- Wrote results to a transportable SQLite database for easy use by the client.
Technologies: Python 3, Beautiful Soup, CSV File Processing, Large Data Sets, Data Analysis, Automations, Deployment
Automation Engineer
2021 - 2022
Ford Motor Company
- Designed and built the infrastructure to integrate cross-validation ML models into a test framework.
- Improved the accuracy of cross-validation design defective screen detection by around 300%.
- Maintained and created new test scripts to ensure the proper functionality of the infotainment UI and hardware.
- Pulled data from REST API and imported it into the Pandas data frame; used data to create graphs using Matplotlib to track testing metrics and find anomalies.
Technologies: Python 3, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Selenium, RPC, Pandas, Matplotlib, REST APIs, Internet of Things (IoT), Networking, Git, GitHub, Multithreading, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), SFTP, Error Logging, CSV File Processing, Code Refactoring, QA Automation, Automations
Back-end Engineer
2017 - 2018
Öppettider.nu
- Extended the existing codebase and wrote new code to gather and organize business operating hours data from 50+ sources.
- Used an HTTP proxy to reverse-engineer private website APIs to locate and extract desired data.
- Published data directly to the company website and sold to internationally-recognized luxury automobile companies in Sweden for use in vehicle navigation systems.
Technologies: C#, MySQL, Selenium, Charles Proxy, REST APIs, Networking, Multithreading, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Integration, JSON, JSON API, JSON REST APIs, SFTP, Error Logging, Beautiful Soup, Large Data Sets, Website Data Scraping, Automations, Deployment
Experience
eCommerce Inventory Management Web App
Developed a Django web application that allows dropshippers to list items from one platform to another. The app updates the prices of listings to ensure profit is made at time of sale and tracks the orders made. I built the entire back end and used Django to create a simple UI.
eCommerce Arbitrage Tool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxYDccNKBKwCreated a JavaFX app that allows users to find products to drop-ship between competing eCommerce platforms. I wrote the front end and back end. I also used a combination of third-party APIs to provide most of the necessary data.
Calendly Singer Tap
https://github.com/singer-io/tap-calendlyDeveloped a Calendly data tap compatible with a Singer ETL specification. It allows users to access their data with the Calendly API and integrate with the Singer ETL platform. I set it up so users can run the tap and pipe the results to any number of Singer.io platform targets, CSV, BigTable, PostgreSQL, etc.
AirBnB Rankings Tracker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVcxZmdmLroCreated a JavaFX app that allowed users to track the rankings of their Airbnb properties across different search queries. I used the Airbnb website private JSON API to fetch results, displayed in an easy-to-read table format, and allowed for results to be exported to a CSV file.
Medical Survey Web App
A Django web application that allows medical study participants to submit responses to questionnaires. Also features a portal and dashboard for study administrators to create custom questionnaires and view participants' responses, as well as audio recording and saving for questions that require an audio submission.
Canvas Data Visualization Web App
A Flask and MongoDB-based web application that extracts a user's Canvas profile from the Canvas LMS API and stores it in JSON and document format in a MongoDB collection. Also features a Dash (based on Flask) visualization web application where the user can view statistics and graphs about their test scores and submissions. Docker and Docker Compose were used to containerize and launch the Mongo and Dash instances.
College Basketball Scouting Report PDF Generator
A client in the college sports industry needed a bot to visit a series of URLs on their website, export each page as a PDF, and email these PDF files to their website users. The "Save as PDF" functionality of their website allowed users to download college athlete scouting reports in a more easily viewable format on paper, which college athletic recruiters prefer. I used Selenium and a Python SMTP client to automate this process and meet my client's needs.
Sports Betting Data Extractor
Used a Python requests library to automate login and data extraction of sports betting data on a large sports betting and fantasy data website. Data was loaded into a Pandas data frame, cleaned, and uploaded to a Google sheet. This automation pipeline ran hourly to ensure the client's sheet stayed up to date.
IoT Fan Controller
https://github.com/nolanm1122/fan-controllerA small web application designed for Raspberry Pi that uses a GPIO pin as an antenna to send radio messages and control consumer ceiling fans. The app was written in Go, and it utilizes the "rpitx" package to send radio messages. The app required analysis and reverse-engineering of physical controller radio signals to copy and re-transmit from Raspberry Pi. Web/HTML interface was built to allow users to easily send messages such as light on/off, fan speed low/medium/high/off.
Amazon Logistics API
A simple REST API to fetch and return the next available appointment times from AWS Carrier Services, given the warehouse ID and PO as inputs. It was deployed to AWS Lambda and required reverse engineering of the private API request used by the Carrier Services front end.
Dropship Labs
A Django application for Amazon to eBay dropshipping businesses. It parses tracking numbers from the Amazon order spreadsheet and uploads them to the respective eBay orders. Automatically syncing these tracking numbers ensures good seller standing on eBay and buyer satisfaction.
Education
2016 - 2021
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
University of Iowa - Iowa City, IA, USA
Skills
Libraries/APIs
eBay API, Amazon API, Pandas, REST APIs, API Development, JSON API, SQLAlchemy, Beautiful Soup, Twilio API, OpenAI API, Node.js, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Requests, Matplotlib, PySpark, Jira REST API, XHR, React
Tools
Canvas LMS, PyCharm, Slack, Charles Proxy, Postman, Git, GitHub, Canvas, AWS SDK, LMMS, Claude, Celery, Jira, Jenkins
Languages
Python 3, Java, Go, C#, Python, JavaScript, HTML, SQL, TypeScript, C++, Scala
Frameworks
Django, Flask, Selenium, Appium, Flutter, Spark, Bootstrap
Paradigms
Web App Design, ETL, Automation, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Code Refactoring, Agile, Unit Testing, DevOps, DevSecOps, HTML DOM
Platforms
Amazon EC2, JavaFX, Docker, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Android, MacOS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Databricks, QualysGuard, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 3 GPIO, Heroku, AWS Lambda
Storage
JSON, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL 10, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Other
Web Scraping, Singer ETL, Web App Development, APIs, Back-end, eCommerce, Internet of Things (IoT), API Integration, Multithreading, Integration, JSON REST APIs, Error Logging, Amazon RDS, Third-party Integration, CSV File Processing, Legacy Code, Large Data Sets, Data Analysis, QA Automation, Website Data Scraping, Automations, Deployment, RPC, Data Engineering, Full-stack, Web Development, Dash, Data Visualization, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Data Science, Data Architecture, Embedded Systems, Networking, Large Language Models (LLMs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Document Parsing, FastAPI, Gemini, SMTP, HTTP, Reverse Engineering, CI/CD Pipelines, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Trivy, Open Source, Algorithms, SFTP, PDF
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