Eran Cahana, Developer in Houston, TX, United States
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Eran Cahana

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Back-end Developer

Houston, TX, United States

Toptal member since July 27, 2020

Bio

With a passion for building software and over two decades of experience, Eran has worked on a multitude of projects for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and the military. He's successfully held versatile development roles ranging from designing information systems, integrations, and eCommerce to security-related research and low-level and embedded coding. Eran currently focuses on back-end server development, primarily in ASP.NET/Core and Scala.

Portfolio

C.N.A Group
Linux, SQL, GraphDB, RabbitMQ, Scala, ASP.NET, C#
Bill Young Productions
CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, Sitefinity, Controls, Telerik, SQL, NHibernate...
KG Cosmetics Group
Windows SBS 2000, PHP, Drupal, Joomla, ASP.NET, C#

Experience

  • SQL - 16 years
  • C# - 15 years
  • Entity Framework - 9 years
  • ASP.NET - 7 years
  • Hibernate - 6 years
  • Java - 5 years
  • NoSQL - 4 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

WebStorm, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio, Linux, Windows

The most amazing...

...project I've worked on was essentially the "cloud" before the concept even existed—syncing phone data with the web and other devices for cell telecoms all over.

Work Experience

Co-founder | Head of R&D

2013 - 2020
C.N.A Group
  • Founded a company to develop a unique platform for multi-channel eCommerce, specifically for products that challenge conventional platforms; utilized a self-developed platform for retail operations.
  • Developed a platform that included many different components: channel and marketplace integrations, inventory management, adaptive pricing, efficient product photography solutions, software-driven assembly-line style product data input, and more.
  • Delivered the following results: reached $1 million annual sales within two years and increased product-per-employee efficiency 5x compared to our industry competition.
Technologies: Linux, SQL, GraphDB, RabbitMQ, Scala, ASP.NET, C#

Software Development Leader

2011 - 2013
Bill Young Productions
  • Analyzed objectives and requirements for a wide array of customers from big Fortune 500 companies to small local nonprofits.
  • Designed and developed dozens of systems for clients and internal use, ranging from big web-based ASP.NET applications to stand-alone utilities.
  • Worked on a variety of projects included corporate legal survey administration and management, marine shipping route configuration, gas-energy site production administration, media encoding utilities, venue reservation & promotion systems, and more.
Technologies: CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, Sitefinity, Controls, Telerik, SQL, NHibernate, Entity Framework, ASP.NET, C#

Technical and eCommerce Operations Leader

2009 - 2011
KG Cosmetics Group
  • Managed and analyzed all technical and eCommerce operations as well as custom software development.
  • Analyzed company-wide requirements, vetted contractors, and evaluated external services and tech stacks for procurement and integration, including ERP, POS, security, monitoring, intranet knowledge base, brand marketing, and employee productivity.
  • Developed custom tools to assist in reporting, workforce accountability, and workforce sales managerial oversight.
Technologies: Windows SBS 2000, PHP, Drupal, Joomla, ASP.NET, C#

Software Engineering Consultant

2009 - 2009
TopScan
  • Stabilized and enhanced the original system design, innovated and added features, and characterized and solved existing technical difficulties for a startup developing budget-priced portable scanners with built-in OCR support.
  • Designed and developed a system for product registration by web services.
  • Developed a custom web-based CRM system for vendor and internal use and migrated the design and data from an existing legacy system.
  • Analyzed and fixed existing problems with legacy code, mostly written in Delphi.
  • Employed black box testing to determine problems in libraries for which we did not have access to source code.
Technologies: Microsoft SQL Server, IIS, Delphi, SQL, NHibernate, ASP.NET, C#

Lead Software Developer (Prototyping)

2006 - 2009
NewACT
  • Developed a Java/J2EE-based back-end server of a telecom-grade system for mass mobile usage in a startup developing mobile and cloud data synchronization.
  • Led the prototyping of product extensions, new technology introductions, and integrations of experimental services.
  • Developed proof-of-concepts to CTO and chief architect for review and provided initial prototypes for development teams to extend and stabilize.
  • Headed development on the core server framework, extendable by modular approach.
  • Extended server features to support 2-way sync of contact info (vCards) and the popular SyncML synchronization protocol, integration with widely used social services (Facebook app, Picasa, Flickr).
  • Performed deployment, systems integration, and verification with clients on-site.
  • Coded and deployed on-site real-time fixes to work around client’s faulty infrastructure, or compensate for their broken implementation of specs.
  • Optimized core system by hardened web and server security, and audited code for security compliance and good convention adherence.
  • Optimized persistence performance by fine-tuning ORM usage.
  • Automated the environment builds, code validation, and system deployment with JUnit, EasyMock for HTTP mocking, Ant, and Maven.
Technologies: Oracle, SyncML, PHP, Apache Tiles, Apache Velocity, Hibernate, SQL, ActiveMQ, Kannel, Spring, Java

Software Developer (Research and Development of Projects)

2003 - 2006
Israel Defense Forces, Intelligence Corps
  • Led the software architecture, design, and development of several systems designated for military-use applications.
  • Developed systems utilizing a .NET remote infrastructure for distributed systems in C#.
  • Upgraded the existing codebases to benefit from current technologies.
  • Defined and implemented data collection and data mining procedures.
  • Researched and analyzed implementations of various network protocols.
  • Analyzed a broad-scale system to ensure compliance with set regulations.
Technologies: Linux, TCP/IP, Controls, Win32, .NET, Active Server Pages (ASP), SQL, C#, C++, C

R&D Software Developer

2001 - 2003
Celletra
  • Developed and characterized applications for the control and reporting of cellular RF repeaters providing range extension and capacity enhancement.
  • Researched and prototyped new embedded capabilities using the TINI microcontroller, utilizing its unique integrated JRE to develop in Java running on embedded systems.
  • Contributed to the system development and integration, maintained and extended test utilities in C++.
Technologies: Linux, Visual Basic, Java, C++

Mobile Sync | Synchronize Mobile Data Between Devices and Online

A revolutionary mobile data syncing platform at the time, we developed a platform around the world that instantly synced and shared data such as meetings, contacts, multimedia, files, and more, between your different mobile devices and the web. Cell telecoms around the world implemented the system but have since been superseded by suites from Google and Apple.

I was the first back-end developer hired by the startup founders. I started with porting the initial prototype into a production telco-grade system, while also integrating with the then-popular SyncML protocol. Afterward, I was the leading developer on the primary sync features (those being contacts and events across timezones) and also tasked with data layer optimizations and precision query tunings.

My many varied roles had me traveling to client facilities to perform onsite system integrations and live problem solving and also turned me into the main point of contact for collaboration between our team and web GUI and DBA teams.

I led parts of development, such as security hardening and enterprise features, including permission-based enterprise groups. I was also chosen to head the development of new tech prototyping and new platform integrations.

eCommerce Multi-channel Operations Platform That's Geared Towards One-of-a-kind Products

I designed and developed the system (delegating some testing and isolated small development tasks), with client-server architecture—comprised of a back-end server (.NET), desktop apps (WPF), a web UI (C# / Razor), and a web API (Scala)—each communicating through a message broker (RabbitMQ).

The complete solution streamlined the processing of receiving inventory, its classification, cataloging, product processing, photography, image post-processing, inventory management, and reporting of sales, inventory, and workforce productivity.

To minimize human error and maximize efficiency at each juncture, human operators were given limited options, as the system had already preseeded data for most products based on previously scheduled scraping, and cross-referenced shared data between products.

I supported several marketplaces, including eBay auctions and fixed price, Amazon, and WordPress's WooCommerce. Prices were adaptive, with listing prices updating over time depending on several factors such as availability, days on market, and more.

Since the system was geared towards one-of-a-kind products with shallow inventory, actions on one marketplace (such as a purchase) required immediate action on others (such as de-listing).

Legal Survey System Including Tracking, Feedback, and Reporting

I developed an internal survey web system for a multinational Fortune 500 company to replace the legacy system in place with enhancements and a newer tech stack (ASP.NET MVC). The system served the legal department to survey tens of thousands of employees annually, classify their responses, follow-up by legal representatives, view statistics, and run various reports.

Requiring frequent changes to survey layout, verbiage, and content, nearly all elements were developed to be customizable by the admin back end, including a customized editor for composing email templates.

A robust emailing component generated and sent hundreds of thousands of annual templated emails to employees, such as auto-reminders and confirmations, based on their respective states or actions.

Reports could be dynamically user-built in addition to those predefined, and could be run and viewed on the web, or downloaded in PDF or Excel format.

Because the format of the source data files received was often changing, I added flexible mapping methods to easily be able to import data files from the backend admin.

I created another similar system for viewing and reporting historical surveys and where survey data was archived once wholly addressed.

Libraries/APIs

Entity Framework, REST APIs, React, EasyMock, Windows Forms (WinForms), Win32 API, React Redux, jQuery

Tools

Visual Studio, xUnit.net, xUnit, Sitefinity, Interactive Disassembler (IDA), JiBX, Telerik JustTrace, PostSharp, Apache Tomcat, Eclipse IDE, IntelliJ IDEA, ReSharper, Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio 2015, ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ, Apache Maven, C#.NET WinForms, YourKit, WebStorm, PhpStorm, Apache

Languages

C#, C#.NET, SyncML, Java, SQL, JavaScript, Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET Razor, VB.NET, VB, PHP, Scala, JavaScript 6, Assembler x86, Assembler 68000, Assembler, Assembly Language, C, C++, TypeScript, Delphi, CSS, Visual Basic

Frameworks

ASP.NET, .NET, NancyFx, Nancy, Razor, MVC Razor, Spring, Hibernate, NHibernate, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET Core 2, Apache Struts 2, JUnit, Ant Design, Apache Velocity, Apache Tiles, VB.NET WinForms, Redux

Paradigms

Aspect-oriented Programming, REST, Actor Model, Actor Programming, Functional Programming

Platforms

Linux, Java EE, Telerik, Unix, IRIX, Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio 2017, Win32, Solaris, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Apache2, Oracle, Windows

Storage

NoSQL, ArangoDB, OrientDB, MongoDB, MySQL, JSON, PostgreSQL, MySQLdb, MariaDB, Memcached, Microsoft SQL Server

Other

Back-end, Coding, GraphDB, IIS, Kannel, Remoting, APIs, Web Scraping, Reverse Engineering, Web MVC, Akka Actors, DNS, DNS Servers, Domain DNS Setup, Domain Name System (DNS), SMS Gateways, SOAP, RESTful Microservices, DLL, Controls, Ajax, Windows SBS 2000, TCP/IP

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