
Chris Picard
Verified Expert in Engineering
Back-end Developer
Highlands Ranch, CO, United States
Toptal member since March 28, 2022
Chris is a passionate developer who is eager to improve software quality while addressing issues related to the software development process. Throughout his 14+ years of professional experience, he has created practices and patterns that enable the rapid development of high-quality clean code. Chris enjoys the back-end development, solving complex technical challenges, and mentoring teams to help them reach their full potential.
Portfolio
Experience
- Java - 16 years
- Back-end - 14 years
- Spring Boot - 14 years
- Software Engineering - 14 years
- REST - 10 years
- Microservices - 8 years
- Software Architecture - 8 years
- Docker - 7 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Java, Linux, Spring, PostgreSQL, IntelliJ IDEA
The most amazing...
...software I've built from scratch is a geospatial planning SDK that led to creating seven different planning applications.
Work Experience
Co-founder & CTO
Power Up Software Engineering
- Provided consulting services to multiple clients of all sizes helping them through legacy migrations, architectural issues, and design.
- Created an MVP for a software tooling SDK used to dramatically reduce the time it takes to create a new code repository.
- Created a custom software application that saved a financial planner six hours per client of onboarding time.
Software Engineer | Back-end Contractor
- Performed security-related updates across the entire health tool suite requiring rapid learning of each tool.
- Led an award-winning hack week project to detect and delete dead code from the monorepo.
- Spearheaded the effort to update an unmaintainable service that none of the current developers had enough knowledge about.
Framework Architect and Lead Engineer
Monterey Technologies
- Architected a reusable geospatial planning SDK used in seven different software applications.
- Created the software process from scratch, including the coding standards, tech stack, software patterns, development toolset, CI/CD pipeline, and team culture.
- Built a set of reusable design patterns that reduced team development time. As a result, we managed to be the highest productivity team out of a 30+ team enterprise.
- Transitioned a legacy monolith application into a set of deployable Docker container-based microservices.
Staff Software Engineer
Lockheed Martin
- Reintegrated a project to help solve a technical issue blocking client acceptance. I was able to solve these issues and 20 other defects in a 6-week period.
- Worked as the unique developer of an application to measure contract staffing requirements over time, thus ensuring proper staffing levelers.
- Built an application framework for a research and development project after converted into a production system. I oversaw the conversion and adoption of the project.
Experience
Geospatial Planning SDK
Service Code Generator
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science and Project Management
University of Denver - Denver, Colorado, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
Colorado State University - Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, MyBatis, React, Java Message Service (JMS)
Tools
IntelliJ IDEA, Gradle, Jenkins, Git, RabbitMQ, Apache Maven, Jira, Artifactory, Amazon CloudWatch, ActiveMQ
Languages
Java, XML, Java 8, Python, JavaScript, SQL, Python 3, Scala, TypeScript, Groovy
Frameworks
Spring Boot, Spring, JUnit, Spring MVC, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Spring Microservice
Paradigms
REST, Microservices, Desktop App Development, Agile Project Management, Agile, Desktop Web Design, Requirements Analysis, Automation
Platforms
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, JBoss
Storage
PostgreSQL, JSON, MySQL, NoSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch
Other
Software Engineering, Computer Science, Back-end, APIs, Software Design, Leadership, API Integration, Task Scheduling, Architecture, Software Architecture, Large-scale Projects, Full-stack Development, Distributed Systems, Large-scale Distributed Systems, Relational Database Services (RDS), Fractional CTO, Okta, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)
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