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Alex Altair, Back-end Developer in Berkeley, CA, United States
Alex Altair

Back-end Developer in Berkeley, CA, United States

Member since April 12, 2019
Alex is a software engineer with a jack-of-all-trades set of experiences. He has at times worked in computer networking, cryptocurrency, and most frequently, web development. His most enjoyed role thus far has been data engineer. He is extremely curious and gets a sense of fulfillment from writing good tests.
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Portfolio

  • Reserve
    Testing, Docker, REST API, Git, Agile, Back-end, Full-stack, Clients...
  • Grand Rounds
    DYNAMO, JavaScript, Data Engineering, Testing, PostgreSQL...
  • Metaswitch Networks
    Testing, Bash, Docker, Git, Agile, Wireshark, Tcpdump, Linux, OpenStack, Python

Experience

Location

Berkeley, CA, United States

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Bash, Git, Sublime Text, Linux

The most amazing...

...experience I've had as a software developer is being part of a team that went from nothing to being funded by some of the biggest names in VC.

Employment

  • Blockchain Engineer

    2018 - 2019
    Reserve
    • Wrote a code coverage tool in Go for the Solidity blockchain language from scratch.
    • Built smart contract testing and deployment frameworks using Go and Docker.
    • Performed security reviews for smart contracts, web server code, and business processes.
    • Wrote secure token smart contracts for Ethereum in Solidity.
    • Evaluated formal verification tools for Ethereum, like mythril and Isabelle.
    Technologies: Testing, Docker, REST API, Git, Agile, Back-end, Full-stack, Clients, Blockchain, Python, Solidity, Go

  • Data Engineer

    2015 - 2018
    Grand Rounds
    • Onboarded one of the world's biggest companies as a client by building out our data ingestion pipelines to interact with their legacy systems. Used ruby's lazy enumerators to stream large files through many processing stages without ever hitting disk.
    • Split a monolithic Rails app into microservices and integrated them around the ruby workflow engine Ruote.
    • Replaced the back end of a keystone business service with no downtime or data loss. Used A/B testing and gradual changeover to minimize the risk of user issues.
    • Implemented ETL steps of a new data service using Python's Airflow and SQLAlchemy. Integrated data from heterogeneous sources.
    • Integrated AWS services into data pipelines, e.g. S3, Kinesis, SNS, ADP, DynamoDB.
    Technologies: DYNAMO, JavaScript, Data Engineering, Testing, PostgreSQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS, REST API, Git, Agile, Back-end, Full-stack, AWS Push Notification Service (AWS SNS), AWS Kinesis, Workflow, Apache Airflow, Python, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby

  • Software Developer

    2014 - 2015
    Metaswitch Networks
    • Worked on the 1.0 release of the Python SDN controller Project Calico.
    • Overhauled Python testing frameworks for our networking products. Designed a Docker-in-Docker framework for testing network topologies.
    • Wrote a resource watchdog module and bug reporter for a data center networking product.
    Technologies: Testing, Bash, Docker, Git, Agile, Wireshark, Tcpdump, Linux, OpenStack, Python

  • Software Development Intern

    2013 - 2014
    Academia.edu
    • Initiated discussions of potential product improvements. Followed through with implementations of agreed upon improvements, e.g. better auto-population of mostly empty user profiles.
    • Built real-time dashboard in D3.js showing latency percentiles of user requests.
    • Integrated A/B testing library to test user response to different email copy.
    • Improved user's analytics page by giving them more detailed categorization of their profile views.
    Technologies: DYNAMO, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS, Git, Agile, Back-end, Full-stack, Sidekiq, Slim, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby

Experience

  • Solstice | Code Coverage Tool for Solidity (Development)
    https://github.com/reserve-protocol/solstice

    Solidity is the most used language for the Ethereum blockchain. As a new language, its toolchain was not mature. At Reserve, we assessed the only existing code coverage tool for Solidity and decided that we didn't like the tradeoffs it made. Thus, I wrote Solstice, a code coverage tool that makes a different set of tradeoffs.

  • Project Calico: An SDN Controller for Data Centers (Development)
    https://github.com/projectcalico/calico

    Project Calico is an open-source software-defined networking controller for data centers. While at Metaswitch, I built out the system tests for the early version of Calico. We used the Mininet library to simulate different network topologies. Challenges included running Docker-based networks inside a Docker container, and managing a large number of artifacts that Docker created.

Skills

  • Languages

    Ruby, Python, Go, Bash, Solidity, JavaScript, DYNAMO

  • Frameworks

    Ruby on Rails (RoR), Slim

  • Libraries/APIs

    REST API, Sidekiq

  • Tools

    Git, Sublime Text, Apache Airflow, AWS Push Notification Service (AWS SNS), Tcpdump, Wireshark

  • Paradigms

    Testing, Agile

  • Other

    Full-stack, Back-end, AWS, Data Engineering, Clients, Workflow

  • Platforms

    Docker, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockchain, AWS Kinesis, OpenStack

  • Storage

    PostgreSQL

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