Dwayne Crooks, Developer in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
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Dwayne Crooks

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

Toptal member since September 22, 2014

Expertise
LinuxJavaScriptGitjQueryCRubyREST APIPostgreSQLReact.jsReduxDjangoPythonSitefinityTelerik
Bio

Dwayne is a senior software engineer currently specializing in web application development with Python, Django, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, React and Redux. He has over five years of experience working for companies like Springboard Retail and Caribbean Ideas. He is a passionate craftsman, a lifelong learner, a challenge-seeker, and a determined professional who does whatever it takes to get the job done.

Portfolio

Springboard Retail
Redis, Webpack, Loggly, Node.js, Sidekiq, NGINX, Chef, Docker, Vagrant, Jenkins...
Caribbean Ideas
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backbone.js, AngularJS, WordPress, Django...
Medullan
Spring, Grails, Groovy, Telerik, .NET, Backbone.js

Experience

  • Linux - 6 years
  • JavaScript - 5 years
  • Ruby - 4 years
  • PostgreSQL - 4 years
  • React - 2 years
  • Redux - 1 year
  • Django - 1 year
  • Python - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Atom, Ubuntu

The most amazing...

...thing I've coded is a C implementation of Donald Knuth's Dancing Links algorithm to help me efficiently solve Sudoku puzzles.

Work Experience

Software Developer

2014 - PRESENT
Springboard Retail
  • Improved our promotion system by refactoring its DSL and changing the way the custom language is parsed and interpreted.
  • Migrated our Ruby-based asset pipeline to NPM and Webpack.
  • Developed our MailChimp integration.
  • Added support for multi-store multi-jurisdiction tax.
  • Built pivot table support into our reporting system.
  • Implemented bulk item deletion/deactivation.
  • Improved the logging and robustness of our customer background jobs.
  • Added token-based login support to our admin backend.
  • Optimized the Ruby implementation of our item imports system and improved its performance by 2x.
  • Fixed 100+ front-end and back-end bugs.
Technologies: Redis, Webpack, Loggly, Node.js, Sidekiq, NGINX, Chef, Docker, Vagrant, Jenkins, Git, Sinatra, RSpec, Sequel, PostgreSQL, Redux, React, Backbone.js, CoffeeScript, Emacs, JavaScript, Ruby

Senior Web Developer

2012 - 2014
Caribbean Ideas
  • Developed custom websites, web applications, content management systems, and mobile applications.
  • Built a trivia game.
  • Implemented a social feed that displayed content from our Twitter and Instagram accounts within an infinite scroll.
  • Created an interactive detective game for Facebook to teach people about invasive species within the Caribbean.
  • Built a single-page application, using AngularJS, for dressing avatars in traditional Carnival costumes.
  • Created RESTful APIs as the back-end for mobile apps.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backbone.js, AngularJS, WordPress, Django, Refinery CMS, Locomotive, Ionic, Heroku, PostgreSQL, MySQL, PHP, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby

Software Developer

2011 - 2012
Medullan
  • Helped to build a single-page Backbone.js application for psoriasis patients.
  • Helped to build the Medicare NewsGroup website using .NET and Telerik.
  • Helped to build a web application for Aetna using the Groovy, Grails, and Spring Frameworks.
Technologies: Spring, Grails, Groovy, Telerik, .NET, Backbone.js

Teaching Assistant

2008 - 2011
The University of the West Indies
  • Tutored COMP 1100 - Introduction to Computer Programming I.
  • Tutored COMP 1200 - Introduction to Computer Programming II.
  • Lectured for COMP 2600 - Theory of Computation I.
  • Lectured for COMP 1350 - Mathematics for Computer Science II.
  • Designed course content, set final exam questions, and graded papers.
  • Built an application in Racket to help illustrate how the data structures and algorithms for DFAs, NFAs, and regular expressions could be implemented in practice.
Technologies: Racket, Python, C

Entry-level Software Developer

2007 - 2007
Teleios Systems
  • Built SMS-based applications using their proprietary technologies.
  • Developed a C# API to control SMS messaging devices.
Technologies: C#

Java Game Developer

2006 - 2007
Parodice Games
  • Ported Quickit (now called PG-Cricket) from QBasic to Java.
Technologies: QBasic, Java

Experience

Whitespace Interpreter

https://github.com/dwayne/whitespace-python
A Whitespace interpreter written in Python.

Tic-tac-toe

https://github.com/dwayne/xo-python
A Python CLI game and library for Tic-tac-toe.

Education

2008 - 2011

Master of Philosophy Degree in Mathematics

University of the West Indies - Trinidad & Tobago

2004 - 2008

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science & Mathematics

University of the West Indies - Trinidad & Tobago

Skills

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, React, jQuery, Locomotive, Backbone.js, Sequel, Sidekiq, Node.js

Tools

Sitefinity, Atom, Vagrant, Git, Refinery CMS, Emacs, RSpec, Jenkins, Chef, NGINX, Webpack, Ansible

Languages

JavaScript, Ruby, ECMAScript (ES6), C, Python, PHP, Groovy, C#, Java, Racket, CoffeeScript

Platforms

Linux, Heroku, WordPress, Telerik, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Android

Frameworks

Redux, Django, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sinatra, Ionic, AngularJS, .NET, Grails, Spring

Paradigms

RESTful Development, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming (OOP)

Storage

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Memcached, Redis

Other

QBasic, Loggly

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