Alex Engel
Verified Expert in Engineering
Web Application Developer
Seattle, WA, United States
Toptal member since June 2, 2021
Alex is a motivated full-stack engineer with seven years of experience creating and deploying scalable web applications from the ground up. His favorite technologies to work with are React and TypeScript on the front end and Node.js or Java Spring on the back end, deployed with tools such as Docker, AWS, and TeamCity. Alex is seeking positions that involve architecting modern solutions to challenging problems for clients who require effective communication, dedicated teamwork, and clean code.
Portfolio
Experience
- JavaScript - 8 years
- Web Applications - 8 years
- Java - 7 years
- React - 6 years
- Node.js - 6 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 3 years
- TypeScript - 3 years
- Docker - 2 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), React, TypeScript, Node.js, MongoDB, Java, Python, Docker, JavaScript
The most amazing...
...product I've created is a scalable, industry-leading federated search engine that aggregates, clusters, and ranks documents from over 500 sources.
Work Experience
Full-stack Engineer
AMPLYFI, Ltd.
- Led the front-end development of a new, state-of-the-art federated search engine which has since become the company's best-selling SaaS offering.
- Harvested over six million documents for a machine learning pipeline using targeted querying and web crawling. The POC for this project led to the company's largest recurring contract to date.
- Maintained and deployed legacy federated search applications for over 30 customers.
- Created an administrative API that allows internal and external admins to configure pieces of their application, deprecating an extremely time-consuming manual process.
Full-stack Engineer
Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
- Developed a redesigned front end for a legacy federated search engine. This redesign played a key part in the multimillion-dollar acquisition of DWT by AMPLYFI in 2020.
- Maintained and added new features to over 40 customer applications.
- Implemented server-side caching for search engine result sets, resulting in much faster response times for many queries.
- Performed miscellaneous system administration tasks on over 15 Linux servers.
Software Engineer
Freelance
- Developed and deployed a web app to replace a legacy volunteer recruitment website. Used React and Node.js in conjunction with Bootstrap. This resulted in a 50% increase in customer conversion.
- Aided in developing a regatta timing application using React Native, Node.js, and Firebase. Since then, the application has been adopted by some of the largest regatta organizers in the world.
- Gained experience working remotely with a small team of engineers and project managers.
Software Development Intern
Philips
- Used the ASP.NET MVC 4 framework to create a RESTful web service that queries a SQL database via HTTP requests. Implemented public and private key authorization for security.
- Created an administrative website allowing authenticated and authorized users to delete archives via the web service.
- Created a console application to act as a client to the web service and retrieve archives over a firewall via SFTP.
Experience
Federated Search Engine for Researchers
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Symbolic Systems
Stanford University - Stanford, CA
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js
Tools
TeamCity
Languages
JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Python, SQL
Paradigms
REST, Human-computer Interaction (HCI)
Storage
MongoDB, Elasticsearch
Frameworks
Knockout (Knockout.js), React Native, ASP.NET
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Linux, Firebase
Other
Web Applications, Data Visualization, System Administration, Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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