Darion Cassel, Developer in Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Darion is available for hire
Hire Darion

Darion Cassel

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Toptal Member Since
January 8, 2016

Darion is a research scientist pursuing a PhD in computer engineering with a focus in security. He has published papers at top security conferences and has over four years of experience developing applications in JavaScript and Python. Darion has worked for organizations like Facebook, the Center for Open Science, NASA, Rackspace, CommVault, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, and has experience managing small and large teams.

MeteorMacOSjQueryJavaMongoDBPythonAgile Software DevelopmentFlaskScrumXcodejQuery UITwilio APICUbuntuC++Mithril.jsSwiftFlumeGraphite

Portfolio

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Qt, Octave, MATLAB, Python
Lagestee-Mulder, Inc
CSS, HTML, MySQL, Drupal, PHP
Rackspace
CentOS, Flume, Carbon, Graphite, Ruby, Jenkins, Chef, Flask, Python, PHP

Experience

C - 4 yearsJavaScript - 4 yearsC++ - 3 yearsPython - 3 yearsJava - 3 yearsAgile Software Development - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Vim Text Editor, ITerm, Jupyter, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MacOS

The most amazing...

...project I've worked on was a hyper-local anonymous messaging platform that enables individuals in conferences to communicate hassle-free.

Work Experience

Software Engineering Intern

2016 - 2016
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  • Led the development of a multithreaded data processing and graphing architecture called StreamGrapher, built for capturing and monitoring spacecraft data streams.
  • Built StreamGrapher with a data flow architecture, multithreading, job queues, binary data packet processing from GMSEC and UDP, and a web-based graphical front-end.
  • Created a unit test generation tool that creates almost-complete unit tests.
  • Improved the performance with dedicated UI and background worker threads.
Technologies: Qt, Octave, MATLAB, Python

Contractor

2015 - 2015
Lagestee-Mulder, Inc
  • Updated the Drupal website to show greater organization of employees.
  • Reworked the SQL database employee records to match a new schema.
  • Cleaned old database records.
  • Created new pages and views to improve the employee display.
  • Updated the navigation to improve user experience.
Technologies: CSS, HTML, MySQL, Drupal, PHP

Software Development Intern

2015 - 2015
Rackspace
  • Aided in the transition from webmail code to a microservices architecture.
  • Extended a Python password phone-recovery API to include a delete functionality.
  • Coded an MVC-based UI with PHP, HTML, and CSS.
  • Tested with API mocking and integration tests in a Vagrant environment.
  • Developed a new logging and monitoring solution for webmail events.
  • Coded a daemon in Python for sending Syslog events to Flume and Carbon.
  • Helped configure a Jenkins build server to build a Python package for CI/CD.
  • Wrote the Chef cookbook (in Ruby) to use JMXTrans and manage related CentOS administration.
Technologies: CentOS, Flume, Carbon, Graphite, Ruby, Jenkins, Chef, Flask, Python, PHP

Software Development Intern

2014 - 2014
CommVault
  • Led the development of a cloud calendar application called liveCalendar for a Simpana Webconsole product.
  • Wrote natural, language-based event recognition.
  • Built an application that merges many calendar providers into one calendar and provides both smart event recognition and natural language parsing.
  • Helped set up and test the Meteor deployment and configured the Nginx balancing.
  • Coded the application using the Meteor JavaScript framework, Java, CSS, and HTML.
Technologies: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, NGINX, Apache Tomcat, Node.js, MongoDB, Meteor

Sorted Singly Linked List Implementation

Wrote the code for a sorted, singly linked list implemented from scratch in Python. To execute it, users must run the Python 3 interpreter in a terminal window, import the class, and initialize it with an array, e.g., "ssll = SortedSinglyLinkedList([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])." Then, users can test any of its provided functionality.
Image of Developer's Guide to Improving Project Structure in Meteor Applications publication
Publication

Developer's Guide to Improving Project Structure in Meteor Applications

https://www.toptal.com/meteor/improving-project-structure-meteor-framework

Platforms

Meteor, Parse, MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Drupal, Ubuntu, CentOS, Android, iOS

Languages

JavaScript, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, Ruby, Octave, C++, C, Swift, PHP, Python 3

Frameworks

Flask, Qt, Knockout (Knockout.js), Mithril.js, Bootstrap, OAuth 2, Ember.js, Django

Libraries/APIs

jQuery, jQuery UI, Twilio API, Node.js, Carbon, Facebook API

Tools

Atom, Xcode, Sketch, Jupyter, ITerm, Vim Text Editor, Apache Tomcat, NGINX, Chef, Jenkins, Flume, MATLAB, Homebrew

Paradigms

Agile Software Development, Scrum, Reactive Programming, Functional Programming

Storage

MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL

Other

Graphite, Coding, Development, Implementation

2017 - 2022

PhD in Computer Engineering

Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

2014 - 2017

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Mathematics

University of Virginia - Virginia

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