Daniel Schaefer, Developer in Akron, OH, United States
Daniel is available for hire
Hire Daniel

Daniel Schaefer

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Bio

Daniel is a software engineer with 17+ years of experience specializing in implementing DevOps. As part of an engineering team, he enjoys developing applications while owning code, tests, builds, deployments, infrastructure, and monitoring. Daniel believes in scalable, reliable, testable, and maintainable code.

Portfolio

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Python, Terraform, AWS Cloud, Git, GitLab CI/CD, AWS Lambda, AWS, AWS...
BrightEdge
PHP, Python, Python, Kubernetes, Terraform, A/B Testing, Cloud Engineering...
OnShift
Python, Python, gRPC, CI/CD Pipelines, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Python 3, Terraform, AWS Lambda, Behave, Pytest, Agile, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CI/CD Pipelines, Git

The most amazing...

...thing I've done is running an entire software development program for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, building a culture of collaboration.

Work Experience

Software Developer Lead

2020 - PRESENT
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
  • Designed system and software architecture and defined technologies for a payment collection system, including programming languages, IaC, local development tools, and AWS cloud technologies.
  • Developed Python utility libraries used in many AWS Lambda to include functionality such as standardized logging, API responses, hashing algorithms, database models, and common business logic.
  • Designed and implemented the GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates and pipelines to build, test, scan, and deploy dozens of microservice code repositories into AWS.
  • Led a development team to build an event-driven ETL application to process and send payments for settlement to external systems, using technologies such as DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Kinesis, S3, AWS Glue, Step Functions, and CloudWatch.
  • Developed Terraform modules to deploy dozens of microservices to AWS.
  • Facilitated weekly collaboration sessions across all development teams, ensuring cross-team communication was maintained with best practices and discoveries during development and demoing new functionality that could be used across teams.
  • Stood up the application development teams by participating in many interviews for developers, QA analysts, lead developers, IT managers, product owners, and scrum masters.
  • Created and maintained onboarding documentation for the technical roles in my program, encouraging onboarded members to edit and add improvements to the working document.
Technologies: Python, Terraform, AWS Cloud, Git, GitLab CI/CD, AWS Lambda, AWS, AWS, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS Glue, ETL, Python, Pytest, Agile Development, Amazon S3, AWS IAM, Amazon API, AWS ALB, TypeScript, AWS, AWS CloudTrail, Software Development, SAFe Project Management, Jenkins, Agile Development, Docker, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DNS, Git, Unit Testing, Behavior-driven Design, Back-end Developers, Python, Microservices Development, AWS, Agile Delivery, Engineering, Architecture, Banking Consulting, Open Source Development, REST API, API Integration, Cloud Engineering, API, DevOps, DevOps, APIs, Node.js, Clean Architecture, NoSQL, Full-stack, SQL

Senior Software Engineer

2019 - 2020
BrightEdge
  • Architected and implemented features, systems, and microservices that optimized the effectiveness of SEO automation using Python 2 for legacy systems and Python 3 for greenfield microservices.
  • Designed and implemented centralized Python 3 microservices running in Kubernetes and Cloud Functions to retrieve, process, and cache Google SERPs.
  • Acted as a stand-in DevOps resource, scrum master, and coach for the application development team and other product teams.
  • Designed and implemented a process to send emails to platform users with A/B testing in mind, showing the performance that SEO automation brought to the customer's sites while helping to increase user engagement with the platform.
  • Mentored and managed junior developers and conducted in-depth code reviews for the team.
Technologies: PHP, Python, Python, Kubernetes, Terraform, A/B Testing, Cloud Engineering, Google Cloud Development, Jenkins, Bash, Jira, Agile Development, Software Development, Docker, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DNS, Git, Unit Testing, Back-end Developers, Python, Microservices Development, Agile Delivery, Engineering, Architecture, React.js, HTML5, Open Source Development, REST API, API Integration, Data Engineering, Cloud Engineering, Data Science, APIs, Full-stack, SQL

Technical Lead

2015 - 2019
OnShift
  • Led a team of high-performing software engineers to rearchitect a major component of the legacy application written in Python 2 into a more sustainable data model by slicing the application into gRPC and Python 3 microservices.
  • Built repeatable Kubernetes infrastructure using Ansible, Cloud Formation, and other AWS technologies into four environments.
  • Implemented a more robust application from a single web server to multiple load-balanced web servers and Celery workers for asynchronous processors. Automated the provisioning and configuration of the entire application infrastructure using Ansible.
  • Established acceptable metrics for our applications and set up alerts and reporting dashboards to display system status on internal dashboards using Grafana.
  • Built CI/CD solutions and pipelines to build, test, and deploy various applications while collaborating with other systems engineers and software engineers from multiple teams to understand the need.
  • Created a framework for new applications to standardize builds and deployments.
  • Migrated the marketing site from a third-party hosting platform to a self-hosted solution, automating the configuration of the servers with Ansible.
  • Developed and maintained integration code for importing employee and punch clock data with many of our customers' time and attendance systems.
  • Collaborated with database analysts, systems engineers, and other software engineers to formulate the best solutions for any problem my team needed to solve.
Technologies: Python, Python, gRPC, CI/CD Pipelines, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, Ansible, Grafana, Celery, RabbitMQ, SQL, Git, Bash, Artifactory, Jira, AWS, Amazon EC2, Autoscaling Groups, Nginx, PHP, Drupal Design, TypeScript, Software Development, Agile Development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Nagios, DNS, Unit Testing, Behavior-driven Design, Back-end Developers, Python, Microservices Development, Flask, AWS, Twilio Development, Agile Delivery, Engineering, React.js, HTML5, Open Source Development, REST API, API Integration, Cloud Engineering, DevOps, DevOps, Django, APIs, Full-stack, SQL

Web Application Developer and Systems Analyst

2008 - 2015
Performance Administration
  • Developed, deployed, maintained, and supported a web application built on the LAMP stack.
  • Maintained the entire systems and network infrastructure that supported the application, including the company's internal servers and network.
  • Supported workstations, printers, and scanners for the company's employees and print operations.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, Apache, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git, Bash, LAMP, Nagios, Subversion (SVN), Puppet, CentOS, Mail Servers, DNS, DNS, CUPS, Samba, FTP Servers, Desktop Support, Proxmox, NAS Servers, Bacula, Network Administration, Software Development, Unit Testing, WordPress Development, Engineering, Laravel, Open Source Development, DevOps, DevOps, Full-stack, SQL

Development and Operations Team

2011 - 2014
High Fidelity
  • Designed and implemented infrastructure for virtual reality software.
  • Implemented continuous integration using GitHub hooks, Jenkins, and Ansible for one stack and Subversion hooks, Selenium, and Ansible for another stack.
  • Designed and implemented a backup solution using Bacula.
Technologies: Jenkins, Ansible, CI/CD Pipelines, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancers, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon Route 53, AWS, Bacula, Subversion (SVN), Software Development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, LAMP, Nagios, DNS, Git, AWS IAM, Engineering, Open Source Development, Full-stack, SQL

Web Application Developer

2005 - 2008
Logic Partners
  • Developed and maintained a repair ticketing system for the railroad industry built on the LAMP stack.
  • Built and maintained an inventory and retail management system for a convenience store distributor, integrating data bi-directionally with a mainframe system into a MySQL database for reporting and making updates.
  • Created and maintained several static websites for various companies, including the company's website.
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, CentOS, Software Development, HTML, LAMP, DNS, Engineering, Open Source Development, Full-stack, SQL

ACH Debit Payment Settlement

I led a team of three to eight developers, QA analysts, and automation test engineers to build an event-based ETL solution to batch and send ACH debit payments to an external integration partner for payment settlement. We used all AWS native technologies for the solution. The solution was consumed from the DynamoDB streams while the data was written by APIs. The data was then batched into files saved to S3, triggering Lambda to pick up, transform, and send to the integration partner. Response files were retrieved from the partner on a schedule and saved to another S3 bucket. These files were processed via event-driven architecture, parsed, and messages were added to SQS, consumed by Lambda, and the original records were updated in DynamoDB.
2003 - 2005

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Kent State University - Kent, OH, USA

MAY 2022 - PRESENT

SAFe 5 Agilist

Scaled Agile, Inc

Libraries/APIs

REST API, Node.js, SQL, Twilio Development, React.js

Tools

Terraform, AWS IAM, Git, Git, GitLab CI/CD, Python, Pytest, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS Glue, AWS, AWS CloudTrail, Jenkins, Jira, Ansible, Grafana, Celery, RabbitMQ, Artifactory, AWS, Nginx, Subversion (SVN), Apache, Nagios, Puppet

Languages

Python, Python, Bash, JavaScript, SQL, TypeScript, PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, HTML5

Paradigms

Agile Development, Unit Testing, DevOps, ETL, Microservices Development, Clean Architecture, Agile Development, Samba, Microservices Architecture, Event-driven Architecture, Back-end Developers

Platforms

Docker, WordPress Development, AWS, AWS Lambda, AWS ALB, Kubernetes, Cloud Engineering, Amazon EC2, Drupal Design, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, LAMP, CentOS, Proxmox

Storage

Amazon S3, NoSQL, AWS, Google Cloud Development, PostgreSQL, MySQL, NAS Servers

Frameworks

SAFe Project Management, gRPC, Flask, Laravel, Django

Industry Expertise

Banking Consulting

Other

Software Development, Engineering, Open Source Development, DevOps, Full-stack, CI/CD Pipelines, Behavior-driven Design, Agile Delivery, Architecture, API Integration, Cloud Engineering, APIs, AWS Cloud, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon API, A/B Testing, Autoscaling Groups, Elastic Load Balancers, AWS RDS, Amazon Route 53, Bacula, Mail Servers, DNS, DNS, CUPS, FTP Servers, Desktop Support, Network Administration, Ajax, Data Engineering, Data Science, API

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

1

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring