Christopher Smith, Developer in Abilene, TX, United States
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Christopher Smith

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Spring Cloud Developer

Abilene, TX, United States

Toptal member since October 11, 2016

Bio

Christopher is an expert JVM developer with solid experience building with Spring, Groovy, and the JVM ecosystem in general. He has managed the full software lifecycle from requirements to deployment, along with systems administration and networking (CCDP/CCNP). He is a proactive guy who's looking for projects that involve back-end engineering, infrastructure questions, networking, orchestration, and harder functional programming.

Portfolio

Sphere Systems
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Azure, Spring Boot, Spring...
ArtSquare
GEB, Selenium, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Groovy, Java, Spring
Sphere Systems
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), IEEE 802.11, Cisco, Linux, Java

Experience

  • Linux - 16 years
  • Java - 14 years
  • Spring - 11 years
  • Spring Boot - 7 years
  • JPA - 7 years
  • Groovy - 4 years
  • Spring Cloud - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Spring Tool Suite (STS), Eclipse, Spring, Java, JVM, Linux

The most amazing...

...machine I've worked on is the PHENIX detector at the RHIC heavy-ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Work Experience

Consulting Technologist

2016 - PRESENT
Sphere Systems
  • Guided the client through implementation of the behavior-driven development methodology, improving delivery reliability and product owner satisfaction.
  • Implemented a continuous delivery pipeline integrating client's ticket management, development workflow, and deployment for faster and more reliable delivery with less time and attention required from developers and product owners.
  • Modernized and extended a currency trading platform.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Azure, Spring Boot, Spring, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Project Lifecycle, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Groovy, Data Architecture, Java

Chief Technology Officer

2013 - 2016
ArtSquare
  • Designed and managed the implementation of a cloud-first web application for artists.
  • Built and managed the software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering, story planning, continuous integration, and cloud deployment.
  • Mentored junior developers and helped non-technical people understand the development process.
  • Developed and maintained a full-stack Selenium test suite for the application using a spec-first BDD process.
  • Contributed to open-source Java libraries that were used by GitHub and the Central Repository.
Technologies: GEB, Selenium, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Groovy, Java, Spring

Consulting Technologist

2007 - 2013
Sphere Systems
  • Provided integrated consulting services to medium-sized businesses.
  • Designed the architecture for a safety-critical SCADA system.
  • Helped organizations roll out IPv6 deployment across IPv4 WAN infrastructure.
  • Advised on the interactions between networking choices and software communications models and made recommendations on protocol design.
  • Created custom VM appliances and network configurations to solve challenging network situations such as poor or slow satellite connections, remote work sites, and changing fleet configurations.
Technologies: Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), IEEE 802.11, Cisco, Linux, Java

Physics Research Assistant

2003 - 2005
Abilene Christian University
  • Wrote control interfaces for power and temperature management for electronics on the PHENIX high-energy physics experiment.
  • Wrote monitoring and analysis software for environmental sensors at PHENIX.
  • Set up a thin-client network and servers for training at ACU.
  • Upgraded control hardware and layout for power electronics at PHENIX.
  • Worked with the ROOT data-analysis package to process data from the PHENIX experiment.
Technologies: SCADA, Perl, C++, Linux

ArtSquare (Startup)

A platform for artists in the internet age, providing business information and tools for making a successful career in art. This provides matchmaking services for professional print-quality digitization and management of high-quality digital image assets (200MB+).

Base58 Codec

https://github.com/chrylis/base58-codec
This project consists of a Flickr Base58 codec dialect implementation in Java. It encodes complex data identifiers like UUIDs or arbitrary bytes, converting them into simple, human-friendly, URL-compatible text strings.

Blitline Java SDK

https://github.com/chrylis/blitline-java-client
A client SDK for Blitline, a cloud image manipulation service. Provides a job builder as well as handlers for postback notifications.
2009 - 2009

Certification in Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)

Cisco Systems - n/a

2007 - 2007

Certification in Cisco Certified Design Professional (CCDP)

Cisco Systems - n/a

2006 - 2007

Incomplete Ph.D. in Computer Science

Texas Tech University - Abilene, TX, USA

2002 - 2007

Bachelor of Science in Physics

Abilene Christian University - Abilene, TX, USA

2002 - 2006

Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science

Abilene Christian University - Abilene, TX, USA

NOVEMBER 2009 - OCTOBER 2021

Cisco Certified Network Professional Routing and Switching

Cisco Systems, Inc.

JUNE 2007 - OCTOBER 2021

Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise

Cisco Systems, Inc.

FEBRUARY 2003 - PRESENT

LPIC-1

Linux Professional Institute, Inc.

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, JSR 310, ImageMagick, jQuery

Tools

Apache Maven, Spring Tool Suite (STS), Groovy Grails Tool Suite, Eclipse IDE, RabbitMQ, Git, Jenkins, Karma, Babel

Languages

Java, JavaScript, HTML, Groovy, Ruby, HTML5, C++, Perl, C, XML, SQL, ECMAScript (ES6)

Frameworks

Spring, Spring Boot, Spock, JUnit, GEB, Spring MVC, Jasmine, Apache Spark, Spring Security, Mockito, Spring Integration, Hibernate, Bootstrap, JPA, Selenium

Paradigms

API Architecture, Object-oriented Design (OOD), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Continuous Deployment, Continuous Integration (CI), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), REST, Agile, Continuous Delivery (CD), Test-driven Development (TDD), Functional Programming, Aspect-oriented Programming, Promise

Platforms

Linux, Arch Linux, Unix, JVM, Eclipse, Azure, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bluemix, Apache Kafka, Arduino, AVR (8-bit MCU), MacOS, Solaris, IBM Cloud Platform

Storage

JSON, Redis, MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Spring Data

Industry Expertise

Telecommunications

Other

Code Architecture, Back-end, SaaS, Technical Leadership, QA Automation, Network Protocols, Routing, Networks, Cisco, IEEE 802.11, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), SCADA, Data Architecture, Project Lifecycle, Networking, IPv4, IPv6, WAN, Network Design, Cisco Switches, Mbed, Cloud Foundry, Spring Cloud, Undertow

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