Don Benjamin
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Don is a programmer and entrepreneur specializing in back-end web development with Python and PHP. He has vast experience taking over the support, maintenance, and updates of undocumented, outdated code. He took a company to the multi-national level by incorporating a bespoke eCommerce system, providing the stability and scalability needed to expand into new markets. He enjoys learning new skills and technologies and is an expert in supporting legacy software systems.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
MySQL, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Apache, NGINX, Linux
The most amazing...
...bespoke eCommerce system I've developed provided the scalability needed to expand into new markets and grow the company multi-nationally.
Work Experience
Python Developer
Style Space Inc.
- Developed the back end for an app connecting customers to personal stylists. for video-style consultations, this took the form of a GraphQL API that was called by a React single-page front end.
- Specced and built database and APIs for handling user registration, profile and portfolio management, browsing and purchasing styling sessions, and initiation of zoom video sessions.
- Integrated various external APIs for payment like Stripe, video chat like Zoom, and gift voucher management like GiftUP.
Senior Developer and Consultant
Freelance
- Built bespoke eCommerce systems, including a unique used equipment dealing site, which allowed the company to grow to support offices in Brighton, New York, and (soon) other locations.
- Supported legacy systems, maintaining and modernizing clients' existing systems. Maintained and extended a bespoke legacy system for a national events organization while phasing in a newer, more standardized, testable Laravel-based architecture.
- Worked with a web agency to develop their own bespoke in house eCommerce content management systems and roll the system out onto client sites.
- Assisted an agency building Laravel-based content managed websites.
- Built a financial dashboard for an engineering company pulling in data from multiple sources. Combined them to showcase company-wide and project-by-project status. This produced a variety of graphical and tabular reports using D3.js.
- Integrated web-services via REST, SOAP and others, also provided REST and SOAP api interfaces to bespoke projects. Used these technologies to provide connectivity between client sites and remote services, and to connect different remote services.
- Built a reporting tool for medical data, built a secure API for importing patient medical data into a CMS for reporting.
- Built a price comparison tool using web-scraping to pull in prices from a number of sites then using pytorch and NLP techniques to fuzzy match product titles between sites.
- Developed bespoke WordPress plugins and WordPress based sites. One search plugin is now publicly available and has been downloaded 160,000 times.
Senior Back-end Developer
3rd Eye Vision
- Developed a CMS for an online version of the Sportsman newspaper-the first national daily newspaper launched in a decade. Incorporated feeds from sports results services, odds from betting agencies, and content from the newspaper's own staff.
- Built and supported various TYPO3-based client sites. Integrated TYPO3 with bespoke remote systems.
- Maintained and monitored client and company servers.
Junior/Senior Developer
Darwin Technologies, Ltd.
- Developed PHP-based web applications, most notably ip4properties.com; an online portal for estate agents to advertise their properties.
- Oversaw the office IT infrastructure and maintained the public-facing servers.
- Drew up training materials and client-facing work.
Experience
MPB Bespoke eCommerce System
http://mpb.comCeroc Intranet and Franchise sites
http://intranet.ceroc.comI took over a pre-existing PHP codebase in 2008 and provided support and maintenance while updating and extending their systems. More recently we have begun a process of migrating module by module to a new Laravel-based architecture using SSO and shared API interfaces to share functionality between containerized services. This project includes a huge pre-existing MySQL database so has tested my abilities in managing table indexing, denormalization, and caching.
BozBoz CMS
http://bozboz.co.ukFinmo Accounting and Bookkeeping
http://finmo.co.ukI managed the back-end development, consisting of a Python/Django API and various AWS Lambda functions managing the import process. The Django back end provides a GraphQL API for the various front-end clients, including the website and mobile app, as well as a REST API for integration with the bank systems. I am also responsible for managing DevOps in AWS.
Skills
Languages
Python, PHP, SQL, GraphQL, Python 3, Bash, Java, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, SCSS
Frameworks
Django, Laravel, Django REST Framework, Flask, TYPO3, Angular
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Stripe, Stripe API, API Development, Django ORM, React, jQuery, Stripe Connect, WordPress API, D3.js, Node.js, Amazon EC2 API, SQLAlchemy
Tools
Apache, Git, NGINX, Bitbucket, Pytest, Amazon EBS
Paradigms
Unit Testing, Marketplace Platforms, REST, DevOps, Continuous Integration (CI), Microservices
Platforms
WordPress, Linux, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), WooCommerce, LAMP, Ubuntu Linux, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Twilio, Azure
Storage
MySQL, Relational Databases, PostgreSQL, JSON, Databases, MariaDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Cloud Deployment, SQL Performance, Data Pipelines, MongoDB, Elasticsearch
Other
Content Management Systems (CMS), WordPress Plugins, APIs, Servers, Online Payments, API Integration, eCommerce, Back-end, Plugin Development, WordPress Themes, Webhooks, Web Servers, CI/CD Pipelines, Plugins, Web Scraping, Payment Gateways, Ajax, Marketplaces, QA Automation, Fintech, Single Sign-on (SSO), FastAPI, Full-stack, Performance, Performance Optimization, System Architecture, Caching, Architecture, Data Scraping, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), AWS Auto Scaling, WooCommerce Subscriptions 2, Data Encryption
Education
Master of Science Degree in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems
University of Sussex - Sussex, England
Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science
University of Sussex - Brighton, England
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