David Baskin, Developer in New York, NY, United States
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David Baskin

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Full-stack Developer

Location
New York, NY, United States
Toptal Member Since
January 25, 2021

David has over a decade of experience in the fintech, healthcare, and SaaS industries at companies spanning three employees to thousands. Comfortable working with stakeholders at all levels, he also excels at working with ambiguous requirements and can run with minimal direction, drilling down to provide early value and iterating until the optimal product is delivered. David is quick to pick up new technologies and become an expert in delivering state-of-the-art solutions.

Portfolio

Notissia
Node.js, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JavaScript, Amazon DynamoDB...
Signpost
Node.js, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS Lambda, AWS ALB...
Baskin Consulting, LLC
DevOps, AWS DevOps, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Node.js, CircleCI, Splunk...

Experience

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Node.js, CI/CD Pipelines, Docker, AWS Lambda, TypeScript, Python 3, Terraform, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB

The most amazing...

...thing I've developed is an AI-based CRM for investors that ingests data from hundreds of sources and generates dashboards on potential investment targets.

Work Experience

Lead Engineer | CTO

2022 - PRESENT
Notissia
  • Inherited a legacy collaboration application for investors and led the technical effort to modernize and pivot the business to an AI-based CRM.
  • Worked directly with the CEO to outline the product roadmap and conduct Agile ceremonies. Responsible for executing all back-end and DevOps tickets. Led an offshore team of developers responsible for executing front-end tickets.
  • Implemented Agile processes to dramatically improve development team velocity.
  • Rearchitected application to move to a 100% serverless architecture. Reduced AWS bill by over 90% while maintaining application performance and continuously growing product functionality and usage.
  • Added modern observability, logging, and security to the application.
  • Developed a Chrome extension to work alongside the Notissia application to aid users in easily adding data to Notissia.
  • Added a freemium model for users to self upgrade from a free version of the product to a paid plan.
Technologies: Node.js, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JavaScript, Amazon DynamoDB, Terraform, Datadog, TypeScript, React, Investor Presentations, Agile, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Python 3, Docker, OpenAI, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Pinecone, AWS AppSync, Amazon Cognito, Amazon Cognito User Pools, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS IAM, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Stripe, Chrome Extensions, GitHub, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS Amplify, Webhooks, AWS CLI, Serverless, GraphQL, CTO

DevOps Consultant

2021 - PRESENT
Signpost
  • Migrated the entire CI/CD infrastructure from Amazon Codebuild + Lambda to CircleCI.
  • Led a DevOps team. Responded to all outages and led the recovery effort, post-mortem analysis, and process improvements.
  • Acted as a knowledge expert for the team, helping to unblock engineers via pair programming, Slack meetings, and code reviews.
  • Managed AWS expenses. Reduced the monthly AWS bill by over 40% in one business unit and 35% overall, resulting in a yearly savings of over $100,000.
Technologies: Node.js, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS Lambda, AWS ALB, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon RDS, Redshift, OpenVPN, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), CircleCI, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Python 3, Twilio API, Recurly, Facebook SDK, Google API, API Integration, Webhooks, REST, AWS Certified Developer, AWS Certificate Manager, Docker, Splunk, Datadog, SingleStore, Cost Control

President

2021 - PRESENT
Baskin Consulting, LLC
  • Worked as an independent consultant; helped meet the software, DevOps, and organizational needs of various startups and small businesses.
  • Designed and implemented the migration from an internally built CI/CD platform to CircleCI. Improved the data available to software engineers and increased the number of daily deploys to production.
  • Led and executed an enterprise-wide implementation of Splunk Observability Cloud, including migration of log messages, implementation of APM and RUM monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.
  • Audited client's AWS account and identified multiple areas for cost savings, translating into around 25% monthly bill reduction.
Technologies: DevOps, AWS DevOps, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Node.js, CircleCI, Splunk, Docker, Serverless, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, MemSQL, MySQL, APIs, Architecture, GitHub, CI/CD Pipelines, AWS Lambda, AWS ALB, VPN, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), PagerDuty, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), TypeScript, API Gateways, SDKs, Automation, Python, Scraping, Web Scraping

Lead Software Engineer | Senior Software Engineer

2017 - 2021
Signpost
  • Acted as the technical team lead for the expansion team; a team of four software engineers focused on developing Signpost's new mobile app from MVP to 100 daily active users in six months.
  • Designed and built an internal feature enablement framework.
  • Created and led the development of an internal service to handle all billing operations.
  • Developed a custom build and deploy framework used by all Signpost components.
  • Led a team of three engineers to double the number of third-party integrations with the Signpost platform, collecting customer user and transaction data. Streamlined the integration process so that it could be outsourced to an offshore team.
  • Served as the lead DevOps engineer, responsible for executing all AWS operations in development environments up to production. Supported the development efforts of 15 engineers.
  • Interviewed and hired back-end and front-end engineers at the junior and senior levels.
Technologies: APIs, Stripe, Twilio API, Twilio, Serverless Architecture, Software Engineering, Microservices Architecture, ECMAScript (ES6), DevOps, REST API Architecture, Asynchronous Programming, Test-driven Development (TDD), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Full-stack, Interviews, Expo, Android, iOS, React Native, Chai, ESLint, Nodeunit, Mocha, Bash Script, jQuery, Agile, OAuth 2, Recurly, Amazon Route 53, Elasticsearch, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Kinesis, GitHub, Jira, Docker Compose, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS CodeBuild, Jenkins, Python 3, AWS IAM, Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS CloudFormation, Linux, PagerDuty, AWS Lambda, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS ALB, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MySQL, JavaScript, Node.js, Docker, DevOps Engineer, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), TypeScript, API Gateways, SDKs, Automation

Senior Software Engineer

2016 - 2017
Newport Private Group
  • Worked as the sole internal developer and the main point of technical contact leading the development of HealthConnect, a joint venture between Northwell Health and Newport Health Solutions.
  • Served as the lead developer for HealthConnect, a C# application used in three New York City emergency rooms and dozens of local outpatient medical facilities to refer discharged patients to local specialists and primary care physicians.
  • Developed HealthConnect Engage, a proprietary C# rule engine that allows a non-technical admin to create guidelines for phone and email client support representatives supporting various medical offices.
  • Created an Avaya phone record ETL pipeline and incorporated this data into Health Connect's data reporting.
  • Served as the Newport Technical Lead in all meetings between Northwell Health and HealthConnect stakeholders.
  • Worked with a team of consultants to pitch and win several new business contracts to secure growth of the platform.
  • Designed and built a WordPress site for Newport Health's parent company at Newportrealestatepartners.com.
Technologies: Full-stack, CSS, HTML, Knockout (Knockout.js), jQuery, Agile, Azure, Visual Studio, SQL, C#.NET, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Automation

Lead Sales Engineer (2014-2016) | Senior Product Support Engineer (2013-2014)

2012 - 2016
S&P Capital IQ
  • Developed an automated WPF application to resolve over a dozen of the most common issues with installing and running the S&P Capital IQ Microsoft Office Plugin.
  • Led a team of ten global software engineers responsible for troubleshooting client issues with the CIQ Office plugin and Realtime Stock Quote application.
  • Built a knowledge base of over 100 articles discussing technical issues with CIQ products, allowing over 75% of issues to be handled by non-technical support agents and growth of an offshore technical support team.
Technologies: Full-stack, C#.NET, .NET, Windows, SQL, Subversion (SVN), C#, Automation

Applications Engineer

2011 - 2012
Crestron
  • Provided programming solutions to dealers, enterprises, and university partners, integrating Crestron equipment in the field.
  • Traveled onsite to support high-value projects and ensure successful deployments.
  • Worked on a team to build the Crestron Electronics technical presentation for CES 2012.
Technologies: Embedded Software, Embedded Systems, Crestron

Integration Engineer

2010 - 2011
Videon Central
  • Imported, verified, and merged weekly software packages from various customers and partners.
  • Created and managed code releases to prospective and existing customers.
  • Ported the codebase to allow it to compile and function on numerous different hardware platforms.
  • Implemented various improvements to the integration process, such as automating Java package imports, simplifying board provisioning procedures, and developing new tools to help with identifying debugging information.
Technologies: Embedded Software, Embedded Systems, Android, Automated Testing, Java, Bash Script, Linux

Signpost Mobile

http://www.signpost.com
A React Native mobile app that provides users with a unified inbox for managing customer communications. Business owners can answer business inquiries, confirm appointments, and share information about ongoing jobs or projects with their customers via text, Facebook, or web chat, and following up on feedback or reviews via email.

I served as the team lead for this project, responsible for architecting new features, integrating them with the greater Signpost offering, and leading the development effort to ship releases.

HealthConnect

A C#-based application for connecting patients discharged from New York City emergency departments with primary care doctors and specialists for follow-up care. Also included is a rule engine to guide phone and email medical support representatives through handling patient inquiries, scheduling requests, and follow-up questions.

I was the sole in-house developer on this project, responsible for leading development, managing the technical relationship with external consultants and internal stakeholders, and working out technical details with the client hospital network.

Major CI/CD Migration

Migrated a company's entire CI/CD infrastructure from AWS CodeBuild to CircleCI. This involved identifying the current aspects of the existing system that worked well for the client while looking for opportunities to implement process improvements.

I was able to centralize all of the common build logic into a custom CircleCI orb and created a standardized process to build and deploy over 20 GitHub projects.

As part of this migration, I was able to add new features for the client, including live, isolated deployments of code when it is submitted for pull requests, auto deployments upon merging, and custom workflows for easily managing manual deployments and rollbacks.

Languages

JavaScript, C#.NET, TypeScript, Python, Python 3, SQL, C#, Bash Script, Java, HTML, CSS, ECMAScript (ES6), Bash, GraphQL

Libraries/APIs

Node.js, Twilio API, jQuery, Nodeunit, Chai, Stripe, React, AWS Amplify, Facebook SDK, Google API

Tools

AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), GitHub, CircleCI, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS IAM, Jenkins, AWS CodeBuild, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Docker Compose, Jira, Amazon CloudWatch, Recurly, Visual Studio, Subversion (SVN), Mocha, Expo, WebStorm, Git, Splunk, Terraform, VPN, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon ElastiCache, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS CLI, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Cognito, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), AWS AppSync, OpenVPN

Paradigms

Asynchronous Programming, DevOps, Automation, REST API Architecture, Microservices Architecture, Agile, Automated Testing, Test-driven Development (TDD), Serverless Architecture, REST

Platforms

AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, AWS ALB, PagerDuty, Linux, Amazon EC2, Azure, Windows, Android, iOS, Twilio, AWS NLB

Other

Full-stack, Back-end Development, Scraping, Web Scraping, APIs, CI/CD Pipelines, Serverless, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), API Gateways, SDKs, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Route 53, ESLint, Interviews, Crestron, Embedded Systems, Embedded Software, Software Engineering, DevOps Engineer, AWS DevOps, Architecture, Amazon RDS, Amazon Cognito User Pools, AWS Management Console, Investor Presentations, OpenAI, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Pinecone, Chrome Extensions, Webhooks, Amazon API Gateway, API Integration, AWS Certified Developer, AWS Certificate Manager, SingleStore, Cost Control, CTO

Storage

MySQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Elasticsearch, MemSQL, Datadog, Redshift

Frameworks

OAuth 2, .NET, Knockout (Knockout.js), React Native

2006 - 2010

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering

The Pennsylvania State University - University Park, PA, United States

AUGUST 2023 - AUGUST 2026

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

Amazon Web Services

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