Brett Hlavinka, Developer in Houston, TX, United States
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Brett Hlavinka

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Solution Architecture Developer

Location
Houston, TX, United States
Toptal Member Since
February 5, 2021

Brett is an expert hands-on architect who specializes in the Microsoft suite of technologies: C#, .NET, Azure, SharePoint, and Xamarin. He has a proven record of solving problems for 12+ years in the software space. He is passionate about making fast, significant impacts for his clients. With a clear and direct communication style, Brett partners to solve your most difficult challenges across many facets; architectural design, integration, custom development, and team process, to name a few.

Portfolio

Solve Right Consulting
APIs, Docker, Go, Code Performance Improvement, Code Review...
Pariveda Solutions
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twilio API, Azure WebJobs, SharePoint, Android, iOS...
Pariveda Solutions
C#.NET, C#, Xamarin, Salesforce, ETL, Redshift, Data Warehouse Design...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Azure, C#, .NET, SharePoint, Xamarin

The most amazing...

...project that I led was a cross-platform app where we designed an MVVM pattern for Xamarin that paved the way for Xamarin Forms to be created.

Work Experience

Hands-on Architect and Developer

2018 - PRESENT
Solve Right Consulting
  • Developed a successful solution architecture for dozens of projects across several different clients.
  • Involved heavily in projects' implementation phase by leading and developing.
  • Understood the implications of design decisions and how to best describe them to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Specialized in the Microsoft suite of technologies: C#, .NET, Azure, Xamarin, and Visual Studio.
Technologies: APIs, Docker, Go, Code Performance Improvement, Code Review, Azure Queue Storage, Azure WebJobs, Azure, CSOM, SharePoint Online, Feature Backlog Prioritization, System Requirements, Technical Consulting, Agile Leadership, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), .NET Core, C#.NET, Project Management, Data Integration, Solution Architecture

Project Manager and Hands-on Architect

2015 - 2018
Pariveda Solutions
  • Developed a skillset from programming contributor to architecture leader. Delivered value to client while balancing multiple projects and teams.
  • Involved in projects across strategy and architecture, websites, web APIs and micro-services, notifications and queuing, mobile applications, databases and data warehouses, desktop clients, mobile applications, and beyond.
  • Became a top performing mentor internally by growing talent to the next level. Enjoyed the opportunity to mentor others as they grow in their own career. Found giving back and sharing experiences incredibly rewarding!
  • Specialized in the Microsoft suite of technologies: C#, .NET, Azure, Xamarin, and Visual Studio.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twilio API, Azure WebJobs, SharePoint, Android, iOS, Angular, SQL, MySQL, Java, Solution Architecture, Integration, APIs, Team Mentoring, Agile Leadership, Project Management, JavaScript, D3.js, Data Warehousing, Data Warehouse Design, Redshift, ETL, Salesforce, Xamarin, C#.NET

Technical Team Lead and Developer

2011 - 2014
Pariveda Solutions
  • Developed a skillset from programming contributor to team lead. Consistently delivered value to client.
  • Involved in projects across websites, web APIs and micro-services, notifications and queuing, mobile applications, databases and data warehouses, desktop clients, mobile applications, and beyond.
  • Became a top performing team lead internally by lifting teammates to the next level.
  • Specialized in the Microsoft suite of technologies: C#, .NET, Azure, Xamarin, and Visual Studio.
Technologies: C#.NET, C#, Xamarin, Salesforce, ETL, Redshift, Data Warehousing, Data Warehouse Design, D3.js, JavaScript, Team Mentoring, APIs, Integration, Solution Architecture, Java, MySQL, SQL, Angular, iOS, Android, SharePoint, Azure, Azure WebJobs, Twilio API, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Junior Consultant

2008 - 2010
FrogSlayer
  • Learned to develop enterprise applications using .NET technologies.
  • Became efficient at more effectively critiquing code.
  • Served clients while balancing the last two years of my degree at Texas A&M.
Technologies: Visual Studio, C#.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

.NET Plugin for Third-party Application with .NET Core, C#, and SQL

As part of a large IoT application revamp, our team needed to create a component that could read data from a third-party application and ingest it into our own system to share as needed. I designed and implemented the plugin, which leveraged an SDK to consume data via event triggers and re-format based on a configuration. It was written in C# using .NET Core. The solution was deployed across edge devices for many clients.

Feedback snippet from client: "You kept everything productive. In meetings, there would always be an 'At the end of this meeting, here is what I need answered/be done.'"

SharePoint Architecture and Development with Azure, C#, and CSOM

Conducted assessment, development, go-live, and support of a highly configured SharePoint Online environment to enable organized collaboration with a customer's clients.

I designed SharePoint architecture that allows safe external document collaboration with many clients, used OOTB SharePoint concepts to ease the solution's long-term feasibility, and configured consistent search across all sites for easy aggregation of documents. I wrote C# CSOM scripts to automate the creation of various sites within the hierarchy, wrote and deployed small CSOM client components to Azure, and configured the legacy SharePoint (2010) search and simplified user experience. The site creation scripts were queued into Azure Queue using a SharePoint front end. An Azure WebJob was deployed to consume the Queue functions and handle the appropriate site creation/alteration script.

Custom Software Suite Maintenance with C# and SQL

Plugged into a team of eight developers to create new and maintain existing portions of the custom software suite, a highly complex system of dynamic schema, multiple mobile applications, and server components, all written in .NET.

I quickly ramped to support the highest priority items as team members were moving off the project, was trusted to positively impact all portions of the software suite with new functionality and bug fixes, and conducted spikes around performance improvement in a highly multi-threaded application. I shared findings via lunch-and-learn events, created a new source control process using best practices for developers to adapt, and helped to establish better morale as the development team was experiencing churn and a low point.

Feedback snippets from the team:

- "You brought a high degree of engagement into all discussions."
- "The impact that you have had on this team is stupendous."
- "You helped me understand how to properly work in a team of people and interact with stakeholders productively."
- "You served not only as an excellent development resource with deep technical skill, but you also helped as a role model to the rest of the team in scrum practices as well as overall productiveness."

Microservice Implementation with .NET Core, Golang, and Docker

Led a previously failed effort to abstract the shared functionality of many applications into a core API. Led a team to create lasting architecture that promotes the correct sharing of functionality across applications. The team has since created more than 100 microservices to promote code sharing.

I designed technical POCs given the requirements of abstracting shared functionality, architected microservice and containerization (Docker) approach, used Golang and .NET Core (C#) to write several microservice standards, and managed the team to create a few microservices and refactor applications to use the new API.

Cross-platform Mobile Field Service App with Xamarin C#

Inherited a small team mid-project and carried over the finish line. I worked on the solar installation mobile application, modified the architecture to better fit the use case of shared codebase with Xamarin and C#, and designed a complex area of online and offline with synchronization from mobile to the data center (Salesforce).

Cross-platform Customer Profile Mobile App with Xamarin C#

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/xamarin/direct-energy-supercharges-their-app-with-xamarin/
Took ownership of full codebase quality leading the team to create a highly shared, cross-platform codebase with over 80% code coverage in unit tests. I deployed a cross-platform mobile application to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, architected a forms-based MVVM solution (with Xamarin, C#) for code sharing, and created complex graphing components with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Notification Platform with C#, RabbitMQ, SQL, and Twilio

Created solution architecture for enterprise notification platform which allowed users to manage notification preferences and receive notifications via SMS and email. Applications used an API to publish notifications with various parameters. Then the notification platform would push notifications to various users. Applications could later retrieve notifications for users.

I managed a small team of four developers while also contributing significantly to the codebase. The core logic and API were written in C#, publish/subscribe implemented with RabbitMQ, a database created in SQL, and SMS integration performed via Twilio. Our team also did a POC of Kafka against RabbitMQ.

Languages

C#.NET, C#, SQL, JavaScript, Go, Java

Frameworks

.NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Angular, ASP.NET MVC, JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

Tools

Visual Studio, Git, RabbitMQ

Other

Agile Leadership, Solution Architecture, Full-stack, DLL, Computer Science, Technical Consulting, System Requirements, Feature Backlog Prioritization, SharePoint Online, CSOM, Azure WebJobs, Code Review, Code Performance Improvement, APIs, Data Warehousing, Team Mentoring, Integration, Events, SDKs, Data Warehouse Design, Website Optimization

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, Windows Forms (WinForms), D3.js, Twilio API, jQuery, Entity Framework

Platforms

Azure, SharePoint, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Windows, Windows Server, Xamarin, iOS, Android, Docker, Salesforce, Apache Kafka, Twilio

Storage

NoSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Data Integration, Azure Queue Storage, Redshift, MySQL, JSON

Paradigms

ETL, Windows App Development, RESTful Development

Industry Expertise

Project Management

2007 - 2010

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Texas A&M - College Station, Texas, USA

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