Dwight Dale Cummings, M.Sc.
Verified Expert in Engineering
Python & Data Science Developer
Kingston, St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica
Toptal member since June 18, 2020
Dwight, an experienced Python software and data engineer, has built a diverse career marked by a passion for problem-solving and learning. With computer science and MIS degrees, he's held roles such as Python RPA engineer, data engineer, and Oracle consultant. Dwight's skills include Python, SQL, PL/SQL, and PostgreSQL. He excels in industries like healthcare, finance, and telecom. He is warm, inquisitive, and an outstanding communicator.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Jupyter, PyCharm, DataGrip, Windows, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
The most amazing...
...machine learning model I built was used to predict customer churn from textual customer incident logs. It utilized NLP, LDA topic modeling, and classification.
Work Experience
Python Back-end/Data Engineer
Doowii, Inc.
- Developed and enhanced back-end data transformation processes used in onboarding new customers' data from their learning management system.
- Built tools using Google BigQuery API to transform and enhance the dataset schemas, such as generating, summarizing, and renaming columns.
- Added enhancements and features to the natural language-to-SQL engine used in generating SQL queries from natural language questions.
- Built data transformation steps in Python and published them as APIs using Google Cloud Functions.
Data Architect
Ambr-osia
- Analyzed requirements for a dataset consisting of various food items, ingredients, additives, produce, and food preparations.
- Developed and refined an appropriate Google search query with the best possible chance of returning websites containing the required textual data, as well as engineered large language model prompts for text extraction and summarization.
- Developed a Python application that asynchronously scanned an Excel spreadsheet of food items, searched Google for each food item, scraped text from the top two websites, and invoked a large language model to extract and summarize the data.
Python Developer
Indigovern LLC
- Built test suites using Python Pytest and created mock objects to replace calls to the database and other cloud services.
- Created Pytest fixtures as test doubles for database query results using mocked data from CSV files.
- Refactored Python-based data ingestion and the data transformation flow to use upgraded features in the codebase.
Python RPA Engineer
Frontier Communications
- Built a machine learning model to predict customer cancellations during the provisioning of internet services, using features extracted from textual logs recorded by service technicians.
- Updated a Python/Django-based website by providing convenient access to robotic process automation (RPA) scripts via a web portal.
- Built a generalized regression GUI tool to run single and multivariate regression analysis on an ingested dataset and provided model metrics from Python statsmodels as output.
- Created an RPA tool to download hundreds of PDF invoices from a paginated web portal.
- Developed a custom report mining tool to replace the Monarch report miner capable of extracting structured CSV data from ten different textual report formats.
- Built RPA tools to perform a series of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance tests using web automation, web scraping, document scraping, and computer vision.
Python Developer
PhysIQ, Inc.
- Built services in Python to ingest large quantities of data files from directory trees with a mechanism for saving a checkpoint location in the event of failures, thus enabling efficient resumption.
- Designed and engineered Python code to ingest a sequence of time series data files and pack the data into a FlatBuffer serialization format.
- Created a command-line interface tool using Python argparse, allowing researchers to quickly ingest large sets of time series data files and upload them to a cloud portal.
- Built a command-line interface tool to allow researchers to export data from a clinical portal into sets of CSV files downloaded to a local directory or exported as a compressed archive.
Data Engineering Developer
Afresh Technologies
- Developed Python libraries for parsing and loading raw customer data by refactoring over 1,000 lines of unstructured Python and Pandas code from Jupyter notebooks.
- Constructed Python APIs and client code to create an ETL data flow for the Ascend platform.
- Refactored a set of SQL transformations into Python code that generated the same data transformations using the Ascend platform.
Enterprise Python RPA Engineer
Frontier Communications
- Developed a Python application using Selenium, PyAutoGUI, TkInter, and pandas, which automated critical, labor-intensive audit processes, reducing the turnaround time from hours to minutes.
- Developed a Python application using pandas, PyMuPDF, and Python xlwings, which automated the manual scanning of dozens of PDF files for highlighted information and updated Excel spreadsheets from that information.
- Built a Python application using python-docx, automating a process involving document merging and creation using custom-built utilities to convert a word table to a pandas data frame and back.
Data Scraping Engineer
Yipit, LLC
- Coordinated with other data scraping engineers, analysts, and technical officers to develop specific standards for a data scraping project.
- Executed the most challenging data scraping projects in terms of volume and complexity by leveraging Python, XPath, and a custom infrastructure-as-a-service platform to which I contributed.
- Communicated findings, requirements, and issues with project owners to ensure the correct data was harvested with the appropriate frequency consistent with the business problem being solved.
Oracle Technical Consultant
Grace Kennedy Remittance Services (Money Services)
- Developed a supplier account audit report to display details of every instance of the supplier account modification: user, date, and data before and after the change. It also allowed restricted report access to specified responsibilities.
- Enhanced productivity by developing an accounting schedule report, eliminating the manual gathering and collating of the data needed to produce this report.
- Utilized the journal hook feature to correct effective dates of imported journals for a selected list of journal sources.
- Saved time and money in building a generic system to extract various data sources from Oracle EBS via a concurrent program to be used in the bank reconciliation system.
- Upgraded custom reports and form personalizations to Oracle EBS Release 12.
- Enabled users to enter Oracle Payables Invoice via a spreadsheet and upload them into Oracle for a high-volume supplier.
- Built a PL/SQL-based concurrent program to convert 18 bank statement file formats to a standard format to be uploaded into the bank reconciliation system.
Python Data Science Expert
Equeum.com
- Redesigned and developed a Python library to develop, back-test, and plot results of various algorithmic trading strategies.
- Designed and developed a Python/Flask web application to run and chain various time series statistical operations on security price data.
- Deployed a Python/Flask web app to run and scale in the cloud using Google App Engine's serverless computing architecture.
Oracle Database Trainer
Real World Technology Training & Solutions
- Taught the training course Oracle Database 11g Program with PL/SQL.
- Delivered the training course Oracle DBA Workshop I.
- Prepared course booklets and created development environments for students to practice and complete lab exercises.
Oracle E-Business Suite Consultant
Kingston Freeport Terminal Limited (via Adjoined Business Solutions)
- Unified the billing functions of the Terminal Operating System (TOS) with Oracle Receivables by designing and building an interface to streamline the upload of the invoice, credit memo, and debit memo transactions.
- Converted customer data from the TOS to Oracle Receivables while preserving the original customer numbering.
- Built a comprehensive customer statement report that visually depicts the aging of customer balances over time.
- Developed the receipting systems by customizing the AR Receipt form to automate the receipt number generation and customize the physical receipt report.
- Integrated the Champs Purchase Order module with Oracle Payables (AP) by developing an interface to transfer purchase order creation and changes to Oracle PO tables for AP invoice matching.
- Assimilated inventory movement transactions from the Champs inventory system into Oracle General Ledger.
- Integrated receipts from the online "E-Wharfage" system as miscellaneous receipts in Oracle Receivables.
Oracle Database Trainer
dotTech Ict Training & Consultants Co Ltd
- Delivered the training course Oracle Database 10g Introduction to SQL.
- Taught the training course Oracle Database 11g Introduction to SQL.
- Held the training course Oracle 11i WMS Fundamentals.
- Delivered the training course Oracle 10g Program with PL/SQL.
- Taught the training course Oracle 11g Program with PL/SQL.
- Delivered the Oracle DBA Workshop I training course as part of Oracle Database Administrator development.
Oracle Financials Technical Consultant
The Port Authority of Jamaica (Sea-Port Governance)
- Analyzed user requirements, procedures, and problems in generating a custom remittance advice format from Oracle Payables.
- Developed the modification and carried out the set up to automatically generate the remittance advice according to specified requirements.
- Added a new data entry form to Oracle Assets to allow budget costs by asset location entry.
- Enhanced system reporting by modifying or developing 25 Oracle Application reports from scratch to carefully meet user specifications. The modules include Oracle General Ledger, receivables, payables, and assets.
- Improved the user interface and business process efficiency by modifying the data entry screens following user specifications.
- Implemented automatic sequential receipt numbering for Oracle Receivables.
Oracle Technical Consultant
Kingston Container Terminals (Sea-Port Terminal Operations)
- Modified the check-printing program to print a blank check stub for checks with more than 10 invoices.
- Created a new automatic remittance advice program to print remittances only for checks with more than ten invoices.
- Modified the check printing set up to allow the printing of checks with any number of invoices and to call the new remittance advice program.
- Modified the receivables-payment register report and the general ledger report to meet user requirements.
- Modified the Oracle Receivables single invoice report to match the physical invoice form used.
- Investigated and resolved the long load time of the Oracle Payables invoice find screen.
Adjunct Lecturer
University College of the Caribbean
- Facilitated students' comprehension of the business issues, processes, and techniques associated with identifying organizational requirements for databases.
- Helped students understand the fundamental mathematical concepts underlying the theory of relational databases.
- Developed in students an appreciation for database design using the entity-relationship model, the object-oriented model, and case tools.
- Taught the syntax and use of Structured Query Language for database access and creation.
- Explained the implications of using relational databases in a multi-user environment.
- Demonstrated and explained the concepts of a commercial relational database management system using Oracle.
Oracle Financials Consultant
Lasco Distributors Limited (Food Manufacturing and Distribution)
- Utilized Oracle BI Publisher to deliver extensive high-level management reports from Oracle Applications to Microsoft Excel during post-implementation.
- Customized several seeded Oracle system reports meeting online reporting needs.
- Designed and built multiple interfaces to Oracle Applications.
- Built customized views to support real-time system audits and reporting.
- Reformatted the customer statement, invoice, and purchase order reports to match the existing format of preprinted forms.
- Proposed, designed, and developed additional system reporting functionalities.
Oracle Financials Consultant
H&L True Values Ltd (Retail)
- Improved user performance by conducting training sessions in the Oracle General Ledger and Oracle Receivables.
- Supported end users extensively in the production environment.
- Converted data for Oracle Receivables customer receipts and customer sales invoices.
- Synchronized customer numbers in Oracle Receivables with the retail point-of-sale system.
- Enhanced system reporting by modifying several reports, including the customer statement.
- Added a new functionality by extending the customer account analysis form in Oracle Receivables.
Oracle Financials Consultant
Hi-Lo Food Stores (Retail)
- Enhanced reporting through the customization of five Oracle Receivables reports.
- Enabled the profit-and-loss financial statement generation by configuring and setting up components of the Financial Statement Generator (FSG) reporting tool.
- Improved the financial reporting by setting up eight (8) additional balance sheet schedules using the Financial Statement Generator: a tool to design and specify custom financial reporting formats.
- Conducted data conversion for Oracle Payables invoices.
Oracle Technical Trainer | Consultant
Jamaica Producers Group (Food Production)
- Delivered a 5-day technical training course on Oracle's SQL Language successfully.
- Developed and delivered a 3-day technical training course on accessing Oracle Applications database tables with SQL.
- Researched and solved the problem of adding new business units for the accounts receivable customers and generating statements by business units.
Independent Consultant
National Commercial Bank (via Adjoined Consulting Inc.)
- Developed successful interfaces between Oracle applications and Finacle banking systems, including the payroll direct deposits interface for a major local bank and Oracle supplier direct deposits interface.
- Composed nine new reports to meet the Oracle Payroll user requirements, including payslips, payroll register, and statutory deduction reports.
- Improved financial reporting by customizing the general ledger consolidated trial balance report.
- Enhanced the Oracle Payroll security by configuring the Oracle application auditing system; also developed custom audit reports to meet user requirements and satisfy external auditing requirements.
- Automated the journal import process from Oracle Payroll to Oracle General Ledger.
- Improved the workflow efficiency of Oracle HR and Payroll users by incorporating automated alerts (triggers) using Oracle Alert.
Oracle Applications Technical Consultant
Urban Development Corporation (Urban Planning)
- Developed a new water billing extension to Oracle Receivables, providing easy entry of meter readings, automatic calculation, creation of sales invoices, and customized bill format.
- Built a custom module to copy Oracle Receivables invoices for rental income, providing an efficient means of entering invoices for the same amounts as in prior periods.
- Converted data from legacy or manual systems, including purchase invoices, customers, sales invoices, and trade receipts.
- Modified several reports and forms of Oracle General Ledger (GL), Oracle Payables, and Oracle Purchasing modules.
- Planned, developed, tested, and documented the customization to the Oracle Payables check format, applying knowledge of Oracle Reports and Oracle PL/SQL.
- Increased the security of Oracle GL by successfully implementing a modification to secure data based on accounting flexfield security rules.
- Designed and developed several SQL and PL/SQL scripts monthly to solve problems ranging from erroneous data correction to ad hoc reporting.
- Managed a disk crash crisis successfully, which led to the recreation of index tablespace structures in the production environment and 15 hours of non-stop work.
Oracle Technical Consultant
Digicel Jamaica Limited (Telecommunications)
- Implemented a data warehouse successfully with one fact and 16 dimension tables utilizing the partitioning and bitmap indexing capabilities of the Oracle8i database.
- Developed a large multi-processing PL/SQL application that examined millions of call details records to establish the revenue generated from a new USSD product release.
- Supported user ad hoc requests for information over the three months by implementing several SQL and PL/SQL scripts.
Oracle Applications Project Analyst
Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd. (Light and Power)
- Implemented several modifications and extensions to forms and reports of Oracle Applications modules using the CUSTOM library extensively and Oracle Reports.
- Designed, documented, and implemented interfaces from legacy systems to Oracle Payables.
- Built data conversion programs to convert vendors, employees, items, and assets and load them into Oracle Applications.
- Conducted multiple setups of Oracle Applications flexfields, value sets, flexfield security rules, users, document categories, folders, printers, profile options, responsibilities, and other application entities.
- Doubled the throughput of users by preparing a troubleshooting guide with detailed solutions to common check processing problems.
- Planned and prepared technical reports, memoranda, and instructional manuals to document extensions and customizations to the Oracle Financials suite.
- Modified the Oracle Application form code to correct application bugs before the patches were released.
- Demonstrated effective presentation skills in-house and at the Oracle User Group Conference.
Oracle Technical Analyst
Mutual Life Assurance Society (Life Insurance)
- Designed and built an Oracle Forms-based application to track medical requirements and integrated this custom application with Oracle Financials.
- Enhanced customer service by using Oracle CASE 5 (now Oracle Internet Development Suite) to rapidly generate database tables and forms for a new receipting module, replacing an old legacy system, then integrating this system into Oracle Applications.
- Applied knowledge of dBASE IV for Unix in developing a new module to track all new business processing.
- Consulted with users extensively to identify current operating procedures and clarify information system objectives.
- Developed Unix shell scripts, including the extensive use of regular expressions.
- Planned, developed, tested, and documented systems, applying knowledge of SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, and Oracle built-in packages.
- Prepared flow charts, entity relationships, and function hierarchy diagrams to illustrate the database design, the sequence of steps in the business process, and the decomposition of functions that the system must implement.
Experience
Python Courses
• Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp
• Machine Learning A-Z: Hands-On Python & R In Data Science
• Data Science: Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Python.
• 30 Days of Python | Unlock your Python Potential
• The Python Mega Course: Build 10 Real World Applications
• The Complete Python & PostgreSQL Developer Course
Education
Master of Science Degree in Computer Based Management Information Systems
The University of the West Indies - Kingston, Jamaica
Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science
The University of the West Indies - Kingston, Jamaica
Certifications
Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization and Optimization
Coursera
Neural Networks and Deep Learning
Coursera
Data Analysis with Python
Coursera
Data Visualization with Python
Coursera
Databases and SQL for Data Science
Coursera
Python for Applied Data Science
Coursera
Data Science Methodology
Coursera
Open Source Tools for Data Science
Coursera
Data Science Orientation
Coursera
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Scikit-Learn, NumPy, Pandas, SQLAlchemy, Beautiful Soup, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Puppeteer, TensorFlow, FlatBuffers, PySpark, Google API
Tools
Pytest, Microsoft Power BI, DataGrip, Microsoft Excel, Cloud Dataflow, Apache Beam
Languages
XPath, SQL, Python, Snowflake, Pascal, dBASE
Frameworks
Flask, Scrapy, Selenium, Apache Spark
Paradigms
ETL, Automation
Platforms
Jupyter Notebook, Oracle, Google App Engine, Oracle Database, Linux, Windows, Unix, MS-DOS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Oracle PL/SQL, Databases, PL/SQL, Data Pipelines, PostgreSQL, JSON
Other
Regular Expressions, Deep Learning, Data Science, Scraping, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, Time Complexity Analysis, Space Complexity Analysis, Data Structures, Sorting Algorithms, PL/SQL Tuning, ERD, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Argparse, Reports, CSV, CSV File Processing, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), ETL Tools, Google BigQuery, Data Visualization, Oracle EBS, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Tkinter, OCR, Formal Methods, Networking, Operating Systems, File Systems, Discrete Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ascend, Management Information Systems (MIS), Data Architecture, Big Data, Online Banking, App Integration, ICT Training, BI Reports, Higher Education, Lecturing, Web Scraping, Topic Modeling, Graphical User Interface (GUI), Computer Vision, Data, Data Scraping, LangChain, Language Models, Orchestration, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), OpenAI GPT-4 API, Google Cloud Functions
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