Chris is available for hire

Chris Butler

Verified Expert in Engineering

Software Developer

Location

Stamford, CT, United States

Toptal Member Since

June 22, 2020

Chris graduated from MIT in '91, his first startup had an IPO in '92, and has contracted ever since including four contract CTO startup roles. He has a wide breadth of products built. Chris enjoys innovative thinking, has a slight bias for quirky folks, and places a high value on smarts and good teams. He tends to like solid process, transparency, and good-natured folks. He feels fortunate to be in tech and tries to empower as many folks as he can. Life-long learning is just part of his DNA.

Java Node.js Ext JS Express.js MySQL Android Elasticsearch C MongoDB Ruby PostgreSQL Python iOS Swift React

Portfolio

Visdom

Sequelize, Responsive Design, AngularJS, Ruby, JavaScript, Express.js, Swift...

Arcat (Self-employed, remote)

Sequelize, Responsive Design, JavaScript, Express.js, Perl, Swift, Android...

Experience

JavaScript - 20 years Java - 20 years Android - 8 years Node.js - 7 years Express.js - 6 years Vue 2 - 5 years Elasticsearch - 5 years Swift - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Sequelize, AngularJS, JavaScript, Express.js, iOS, Android, Mongoose, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Java, Vue, Node.js

The most amazing...

...company I've founded was Visdom/Yarn, an ML indexing of entertainment video, which won Justin Kan's Snapchat contest and got us asked into Y Combinator Fellows.

Work Experience

CTO

2015 - PRESENT

Visdom

Oversaw all technology for the company and solely did all user-facing implementation.
Built 30 responsive design websites for various client teams and industry slices.
Created the SEO approach that generated up to 2 million free Google impressions per day.

Technologies: Sequelize, Responsive Design, AngularJS, Ruby, JavaScript, Express.js, Swift, Android, Google Cloud, Python, MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Angular, Node.js, Vue

Senior Architect

2008 - PRESENT

Arcat (Self-employed, remote)

Owned one public website, seven internal sites, and Android and iOS apps. The sites include sales, content development, statistics/analytics site, client portal, private-API, data administration, and client management.
Handled Google Cloud infrastructure (24 VMs, Elasticsearch, Redis, MySQL).
Reimagined and rewrote 25 years of legacy code into Node.js + Express.js + Vue.js stack in the last 2.5 years. Websites are mobile-friendly with responsive design using CSS3.
Led the SEO strategy, implementation, and internal page schema design.
Developed custom search algorithms on top of Elasticsearch.

Technologies: Sequelize, Responsive Design, JavaScript, Express.js, Perl, Swift, Android, Angular, Google Cloud, Redis, Elasticsearch, MySQL, Node.js, Vue

Experience

Killer Smart TV for Microsoft and Polar

A JavaScript-based device-mesh for taking polls while watching TV or playing a video game for Microsoft and Polar. I was the front-end developer that conceived and built the responsive design and custom UI event-queuing scheme that allowed phones, tablets, desktop, and TVs to all interact on the same screen seamlessly. Luke Wroblewski, the author of Mobile First, led the conceptual design.

Visdom, Deep Search into Video

http://tcrn.ch/1kq2WUu

Visdom uses data science, industry expertise, and machine learning algorithms to analyze and extract features from videos. Deep search and a rich understanding of video content are our business. Visdom was founded as a collaboration between old MIT friends, experienced internet veterans. Visdom won Justin Kan's Snapchat competition and got accepted into Y Combinator Fellows Program, Summer 2016.
I am the CTO who built and is responsible for all user experience across 30+ websites, Android, iOS, bot networks, SEO, and social media integrations. The technology stack is on Google Could using JavaScript (Vue.js, Angular, Node.js), Ruby (Rails), some Python, Elasticsearch, Redis, and MySQL.
https://www.visdom.io
https://www.getyarn.io
https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/29/yarns-app-lets-you-share-short-clips-from-movies-tv-shows-and-music-videos/

Skills

Languages

JavaScript, Java, Swift, Ruby, C#, Python, C, Perl

Frameworks

Express.js, Ext JS, Ember.js, AngularJS, Angular, Ruby on Rails (RoR)

Libraries/APIs

Vue 2, Node.js, React, Vue

Other

Responsive Design

Platforms

Android, iOS

Storage

Elasticsearch, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Google Cloud

Tools

Sequelize, Mongoose

Education

1987 - 1991

Bachelor of Science Degree in Architecture, Visual Design, Media Lab

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Cambridge, MA

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