Sam Watkins
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Toptal member since February 25, 2021
Sam is an expert programmer with 25 years of experience. He's a good communicator, enthusiastic, innovative, and meticulous in his attention to detail. Sam practices "Simplicity, Clarity, Generality" to rapidly create quality software. His research interests include LLMs, latent diffusion, e-learning, collaboration, maths, and graph-based programming. Sam programs in Python, JavaScript, Go, C, and Perl, and creates web apps with Python, Node.js, PostgreSQL, HTML5, CSS, and Svelte.
Portfolio
Experience
- C - 20 years
- PostgreSQL - 20 years
- Linux - 20 years
- JavaScript - 20 years
- Python - 15 years
- HTML5 - 5 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 4 years
- Svelte - 1 year
Preferred Environment
Debian Linux, Vim Text Editor, Git, Svelte, Python, C, Full-stack, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), AI Chatbots
The most amazing...
...project I've developed professionally is ArmVault, a web application that is used by the major banks in Australia to forecast cash levels and trade cash.
Work Experience
Senior Developer
Headland Consulting PTY LTD
- Developed and maintained a service to manage setting targets and repricing offers, in addition to reports, for steam items trading on DMarket with reference to pricing from other marketplaces.
- Wrote unit tests for all core logic, maintained, and developed using AI assistance.
- Ported AWS Lambda services to run on a generic VPS for cost efficiency, ease of development, and simpler networking setup.
Senior Developer
Odem Global Pty Ltd
- Implemented a credit system and API for users to pay for their usage of an online service, including a daily free credit allowance. Implemented comprehensive unit tests.
- Improved and debugged a tool to automatically review pull requests on GitHub using a large language model (LLM). Added Anthropic Claude support alongside OpenAI. Implemented JSON format support for OpenAI models. Handled line numbering better.
- Refined the GitHub Action workflow for the LLM pull request reviewer to function smoothly, which required some troubleshooting and adjustments.
Full-stack Developer
Broadband Expanded
- Handled visual design and branding: applied new branding guidelines, including updating fonts, colors, and logos to align with the style guide. Suggested and applied other design changes. Ensured correct rendering in different browsers.
- Implemented sticky table headers to improve user navigation and readability in tables on a Quarto site. Conducted extensive testing and debugging across multiple browsers and devices to ensure consistent user experience.
- Developed scripts to automate data integration and designed methods for managing large datasets, ensuring accurate and up-to-date information on the website, using GitHub Actions, US Census APIs, and Polars.
- Implemented various other improvements to the website, including selecting and adding a hero image, blog subscriptions, landing pages, new pages, systematic changes to content across many pages, and stylesheets for clean printing.
Software Architect (via Toptal)
Realfy
- Researched and authored a technical design document for building a social networking app with advanced AI features. The document outlines key features like voice chat with VAD, image generation, and video creation and covers tech and cloud deployment.
- Evaluated and selected a mix of open-source and proprietary AI products for text, image, audio, and speech functionalities, optimizing for cost and performance.
- Designed and documented a high-level system architecture leveraging cloud microservices, prioritizing vendor-neutral open-source solutions to ensure flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in.
- Outlined detailed roles and responsibilities for assembling a development team capable of implementing the system within the specified time frame and budget.
AI and Full-stack Developer
ChatPal.me
- Developed an AI therapist web app based on Open AI services, with assistant chat, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and in-browser VAD based on Silero. ChatPal includes five assistants: therapy, relationships, parenting, life coaching, and careers.
- Implemented settings allowing the user to describe themselves and settings to customize the AI assistant's behavior.
- Added insights and a structured summary of each session, which serve as the AI's memory of previous sessions.
- Deployed the web app on cloud services, using Google Cloud Run, Cloudflare Pages, and MongoDB Atlas.
AI Consultant and Software Developer
FlipIt Inc
- Developed a FastAPI service to summarize web pages using large language models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and several models hosted by Perplexity AI.
- Helped to design and improve the AI service to meet the client's requirements.
- Designed and implemented a web scraping module, which can be used for AI summaries of pages.
AI Consultant and Software Developer
Inverloch Tourism Association
- Developed tools using search and AI to determine the top locations in a region, such as the top Beaches in Melbourne. Collected web documents about each location, processed them with AI, and filled out templates to generate complex WordPress pages.
- Developed a web tool using Gradio that can take multiple input files of various types (e.g., text, HTML, PDF, Word doc, video, audio) and process them using AI to complete a certain task (such as summarisation, critique, writing a resume, etc.).
- Created a unified automation script for WordPress content management using the WordPress API. This script handles tasks such as uploading posts, pages, and images, with corresponding options for listing, updating, and removing.
- Developed command-line interfaces for APIs, including Google Maps, Mapbox, OpenAI GPT-4, and Anthropic Claude, and for scraping, including Google Search.
- Designed and implemented an image processing script for resizing with focal cropping using OpenCV.
- Used Whisper STT to transcribe meetings and produced clean transcriptions and summaries using LLMs.
Mathematics Consultant
Classdiving
- Developed advanced mathematical models for tidal movements in rivers, significantly enhancing the accuracy of depth surveys for multiple rivers in West Africa.
- Implemented mathematical models for tidal movements in rivers utilizing spreadsheets, making the method and data more accessible for the client.
- Incorporated graphs to verify and demonstrate the accuracy of the models for tidal movements in rivers.
Back-end Developer
ServiceRocket and Meta Reality Labs
- Led a small development team to develop and deploy a complex and critical real-time API integration system. The product enables teams of developers to collaborate efficiently on major projects between several companies.
- Developed a FastAPI service to sync data between two systems using async REST and GraphQL calls.
- Built a Python API service with Starlette and GraphQL and backed it on a PostgreSQL database.
- Modified a TypeScript React user interface in a Jira plugin to enable editing fields on an object and send updates to the API service.
- Produced and edited demonstration videos of my work, including an overview and several use cases, using OBS with a face camera, OpenShot, FFmpeg, Audacity, and HandBrake on Linux.
JavaScript Developer
Toptal
- Wrote user scripts to automate submissions to a JavaScript Speed Coding Challenge, testing that it was possible to solve the challenge in this way.
- Solved all the problems in the JavaScript Speed Coding Challenge.
- Suggested improvements and future directions for the JavaScript Speed Coding Challenge.
Full-stack Engineer
Ribbon Home, Inc.
- Implemented front-end changes to a complex web application using React.
- Implemented back-end changes to a complex web application using GraphQL, Python, Kafka, and Django.
- Implemented front-end and back-end tests for my work on a complex web application.
React Native Android Developer
Poll Analytics Inc
- Debugged a complex performance problem in a React Native app on Android.
- Used image processing tools to resize images for better performance.
- Tested and debugged a React Native app in Android Studio and on-device.
Go Developer
Synphonyte
- Helped to develop an API proxy/gateway written in Go to present a complex upstream XML SOAP API as a JSON REST API.
- Debugged and updated the open-source tool "xml2go," written in Ruby, which helps generate properly tagged Go structs (for parsing and generation) from XML data without requiring any metadata.
- Found critical missing information via web research, e.g., discovered the necessary SOAPAction to use for the upstream API, which was presented without any WSDL metadata.
Full-stack Developer
Tekt Industries
- Developed TypeScript cloud functions on GCP/Firebase to support an innovative IoT device, including payments with Stripe, and Twilio SMS alerts.
- Worked on a Vue TypeScript web dashboard for the management of IoT devices, users, and sessions.
- Worked on IoT device firmware in Python, focused on cloud connectivity.
- Assisted with debugging a mobile app which was written in Dart with Flutter.
Full-stack Developer
Aeyons
- Installed and configured video meeting software Jitsi Meet, with Videobridge and TURN server, for an online music teaching service. Worked on optimizing performance.
- Developed a web app using JavaScript, including fast search and pagination for browsing music teachers. Created another web app using Vue and Vuetify.
- Extracted artist details from the legacy web app, processed and loaded into a new data store.
Analyst Programmer
Linfox Armaguard
- Made ArmVault, a web application used by the major banks in Australia to forecast cash levels and trade large amounts of cash. It was developed in Python, JavaScript, and PostgreSQL and runs on Linux.
- Developed and maintained Armaguard Online, a web application used by clients to order cash collections and deliveries. It was developed in Python, JavaScript, and PostgreSQL and runs on Linux.
- Built a web application for client services to view routing information collected from a SOAP API, such as the stops and ETAs, for all vehicles in the company's fleet. It was developed in Python, JavaScript, and PostgreSQL and runs on Linux.
- Created a set of command-line tools and a web app to remotely upgrade, configure, and manage more than 1,000 smart, safe devices, including parallel updates. The web app was developed in Perl, JavaScript, and Firebird SQL and runs on Linux.
- Maintained and developed console applications written in C and used for core business, including cash counting.
- Performed security audits and implemented security-focused projects, including authentication, 2FA, SSO for major clients, input prevalidation, OWASP web app security, cryptosystem selection, and identifying network security vulnerabilities.
- Implemented a web app for a new TV system in the head office and all the branches to show safety statistics visually and show internal video updates on a schedule.
- Maintained and continued development of a PHP web app used for internal statistics and reporting.
Software Developer
Fastmail
- Worked on the module that strips potentially dangerous elements from HTML emails.
- Added keyboard shortcuts to the email user interface with popup help.
- Improved the user interface for the user to set their time zone.
Software Developer
SchoolsNet | MyInternet | Editure | New Era Technology
- Improved a variety of software components including Perl web apps, a statistics/analytics system, and a complex asynchronous server written in C++.
- Wrote a Perl web app, a data-driven XML editor for teachers to edit metadata describing shared e-learning resources; solved the general problem of editing any sort of XML object, which was simpler than creating an editor for a single data type.
- Wrote software tools in Perl and Shell, including a general-purpose database query tool that works with many engines including PostgreSQL and MySQL, a database schema upgrade tool, a file conversion utility, and text processing and relational tools.
- Packaged internal software components as Debian packages and used Debian GNU/Linux, which is still my preferred operating system.
Experience
Allemande Ally Chat
https://allemande.ai/Ultra Code Monkey | Web App
I made this system to help me teach math and programming to my own children and to students remotely. I can edit content live on the web page, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, drag-n-drop, Markdown, TeX for math, plots, and embedded content, and save changes to the server.
The linked page is one example. I also use it for other sites, project planning (like Trello), and individual student pages. I intend to extend this to be a full live collaborative HTML editor. The app is implemented mostly in JavaScript, with some Python on the server side.
Cz | Programming Language
Cz has coroutines, hygienic macros, header generation, #! scripting and cached executables, libraries with graphics and sound, and many animated demos. Cz is developed on GNU/Linux and can also run on Windows (with MinGW), Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, and GNU/Hurd. Cz translates (fairly) cleanly into C.
Cz is a work in progress, but I think it is already useful and fun. Cz has the full power of C, but it is easier to use, like Python. I use it for some of my programming experiments, including plotting fractals and game development. Cz is pronounced see-zee, sounds like C-easy. It's supposed to be easy to use.
The language and the translator have a few faults that need to be rectified before it might be more generally useful. I intend to continue improving it.
Rescue | Video Game
To save them, you must enter the caves and face the deadly Wumpus and Grue. You have agility and rope but nothing else.
Rescue is a "homebrew" game written for the Pandora handheld. It was written for the Feb/March 2011 Pandora Homebrew competition; I've been gradually improving it since then. It also runs on PC Linux, Mac, and Windows.
It's quite hard but can be fun and a big challenge.
Free Community
Education
Bachelor of Applied Science Degree (CSSE) (Incomplete) in Computer Science and Software Engineering
Swinburne University of Technology - Melbourne, Australia
Mathematical Olympiad Enrichment Program in Mathematics
Melbourne Grammar School - Melbourne, Australia
Certifications
Walk With Fast.ai Revisited | Artificial Intelligence
Zachary Mueller | Online
Practical Deep Learning for Coders Parts 1 & 2 | Artificial Intelligence
Fast.ai | Online
Skills
Libraries/APIs
SDL, Node.js, React, REST APIs, SlickGrid, Asyncio, Jira REST API, API Development, OpenAI API, LocalStorage, Vue, Fast.ai, jQuery, Mapbox GL, Stripe API, Python Asyncio, SQLAlchemy, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, Steam Web API, Standard Template Library (STL), HTML5 Canvas, Stripe, Twilio API, Beautiful Soup, OpenAI Assistants API, WordPress API, Mapbox API, SOAP APIs, OpenGL, Vuex, OpenGL ES, GeoIP, Facebook API, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Auth0 API, Auth0 Management API v2, OpenAPI, Google Maps API, OpenCV, NumPy, Gradio, Google Maps, Matplotlib, Pandas, GitHub API
Tools
Vim Text Editor, Apache, Jira, Git, Shell, Subversion (SVN), Certbot, VPN, OpenVPN, OpenSSH, GitHub, Cron, Claude, Whisper, Makefile, GNU Make, AI Prompts, Microsoft Excel, NGINX, Trello, Slack, Ansible, NPM, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Graphene, MinGW, Postfix, VirtualBox, Zoom, GNU Debugger (GDB), Valgrind, Jupyter, ChatGPT, MongoDB Shell, Google Sheets, Spreadsheets, Pandoc, Google Docs, ComfyUI, Visual Language Models (VLMs), Open Broadcaster Studio (OBS), Audacity, OpenShot, Make (formerly Integromat), SendGrid, LaTeX, RabbitMQ, gnuplot, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), Expect, GPG, Emacs, GIS, NoMachine, Kafka Streams, MongoDB Atlas, Auth0, Redoc, Draw.io, Pytest, Squid, CircleCI, Docker Compose, Postman, Amazon Cognito, Iptables, Stylelint, MailerLite, AWS Fargate, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
Languages
Python, C, Perl, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, SQL, HTML, XML, Bash, Python 3, Markdown, Regex, Bash Script, Java, C++, TypeScript, Go, PHP, GraphQL, Lisp, Scheme, ARM Assembler, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), Dart, Ruby, TeX, Rust, Lua, Haskell, Forth, DocBook, Hack, Google Apps Script, YAML, SCSS
Frameworks
Vanilla JS, WebApp, Agentic Frameworks, Svelte, Django REST Framework, Django, Flask, Netfilter, Selenium, OAuth 2, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Nuxt.js, Vuetify, Tailwind CSS, Flutter, React Native, Accelerate, Material UI, Express.js, Bootstrap
Paradigms
DevOps, REST, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), ETL, Agile, Automation, HTML DOM, Web Architecture, Templating, Web Application Architecture, Database Design, API Architecture, Responsive Layout, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Functional Programming, Requirements Analysis, B2B, Test-driven Development (TDD), Testing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Agile Software Development, UI Design, Compiler Design, Mobile Development, Automated Testing, Portable Code, Microservices, Penetration Testing, Microservices Architecture
Platforms
Debian Linux, Linux, Unix, Debian, Apache2, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Firebase, Windows, Twilio, Quick EMUlator (QEMU), ARM Linux, Jupyter Notebook, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Linux, Microsoft, Mapbox, NVIDIA CUDA, KVM, Arch Linux, MacOS, Android, WordPress, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), PostHog, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Mailgun, Netlify, AWS Lambda
Storage
PostgreSQL, Firebird, JSON, Databases, Database Structure, MySQL, Cloud Firestore, MongoDB, Google Cloud, NoSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon DynamoDB, SQLite, PostGIS, Google Cloud Storage
Industry Expertise
Cybersecurity, Project Management, Web Design
Other
Software Engineering, Coroutines, Macros, Mathematics, TCP/IP, Network Programming, Back-end, Front-end, APIs, Security, Web App Security, Authentication, User Authentication, Full-stack, Web Applications, FastAPI, API Gateways, Algorithms, Optimization, Physics, BIND, X Window System, X11, CGI, SSH, CSV, Regular Expressions, RSync, Email Templates, HTML Templates, Architecture, Integration, System Design, Code Generators, Web Research, Rapid Development, Simplicity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mutt, ARM, IT Security, Open Source, Web Scraping, Software Architecture, System Architecture Design, Machine Learning, Creative Problem Solving, Deployment, DOM, Software Design, SaaS, API Integration, Software Development, Scraping, Scripting, Large Language Models (LLMs), Full-stack Development, ChatGPT API, Data Encryption, Anthropic, Data Extraction, Technical Leadership, Solution Architecture, Web Development, Data Modeling, App Infrastructure, Code Review, HTTPS, Coaching, Engineering, Iframes, AI-generated Code, Prompt Engineering, Networking, SDKs, Apps, AI Chatbots, Requirements & Specifications, Mathematical Modeling, System Administration, DNS, Communication, Email, Front-end Development, Back-end Development, Debugging, Image Processing, Web App Automation, Software, Server Administration, Performance Testing, Scalable Architecture, HTML Parsing, ChatGPT Prompts, SSL, SSL Certificates, Chatbots, User Management, SaaS Design, User Interface (UI), JSON REST APIs, Responsive Design, Printing, Favicons, Memory Optimization, AI Agents, AI Consulting, Responsive Web Apps, Performance, Proof of Concept (POC), Software as a Service (SaaS), Transactions, Business Process Automation, Relational Database Design, Database Schema Design, Concurrency, AI Content Creation, Document Parsing, Plugins, Reporting Automation, Technical Architecture, Data Processing, Attention to Detail, AI Tools, LLM Integration, Excel Expert, Browser Automation, Combinatorics, Geometry, Algebra, Number Theory, Analytical Geometry, Calculus, Debian Packaging, SOAP, Google Cloud Functions, Analytics, Cryptography, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Message Queues, Axios, Firebase Cloud Functions, Gimp, Game Development, MSYS2, Serverless, Leadership, Real-time Rendering, SVG, Data Science, VNC, Third-party Authentication, OAuth, Security Policies & Procedures, Data Visualization, Webhooks, CI/CD Pipelines, Virtual DOM, QA Automation, Chrome Extensions, Workflow, Analytical Dashboards, Visualization, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), AI Design, OpenAI, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Data Engineering, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Data Scraping, Text to Image, Stable Diffusion, Text-to-Speech (TTS), Speech-to-Text (STT), Gemini API, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Content Management Systems (CMS), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Quality Assurance (QA), CTO, Cloud Architecture, Advisory, Scalability, Startups, Payment APIs, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Voice Activity Detection (VAD), Project Planning, Project Estimation, Web Hosting, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, Fintech, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Cookies, Website Data Scraping, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Data Analytics, Gaming, Data Analysis, Image to Text, AWS DevOps, UDP, Live Chat, First Contentful Paint (FCP), Reporting, User Experience Design, User Experience (UX), Web UX, Containerization, Quarto, GitHub Actions, Google Fonts, Front-end Design, Typography, Layout, Web Layout, Blogs, Subscriptions, GitHub Workflows, Microsoft Office, Compilers, Compiler Construction, Programming Language Design, Jira Administration, Encryption, Mobile First, Cloud, Design, Proxy Servers, Gemini, Agentic AI, LoRa, Financial Projection, Vertex, Data Mining, AI Automation, Workflow Automation, AI Voice Agents, role based access control, Cloud Security, RAG Pipelines, System Integration, Deno, Mobile Apps, 2D Games, Game AI, Animation, Level Design, Puzzle Design, Game Physics, Foley & Sound Effects, LXC, ZFS, BitTorrent, WordNet, WebSockets, SVG Animation, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Xterm.js, Web-based SSH, Single Sign-on (SSO), IoT Security, PDF, PDF Scraping, Geospatial Data, Dashboards, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), GPU Computing, Supabase, Midjourney, Firebase Hosting, Cloudflare, Payment Gateways, Content Writing, Writing & Editing, Technical Writing, Technical Drawing, Flow Diagrams, User Stories, AWS Cloud Architecture, Text to Video, Social Networks, Research, Dovecot, Hugging Face, Airtable, Apollo, Embedded Systems, Silero, AI Data Classification, Jitsi, Jitsi Videobridge, Internet of Things (IoT), AI Modeling, ESLint, Census Data API, Branding, Polars, Firmware, MERN Stack, Tkinter, Credit Systems, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), AWS NAT Gateway, Team Leadership, Early-stage Startups, ElevenLabs Solutions
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