Ian Erickson

Over the span of 9 months, I was the sole developer responsible for designing, implementing, testing and deploying a new tile map server responsible for map visualizations across the company’s entire product line. Written in Java and C++, and based on a number of OSS technologies, the new map server rendered billions of customized map image tiles supported by OpenStreetMap (OSM) vector content for the entire world. The map server supported multiple locales and languages as well as varying styles and geospatial layer combinations.

The service was ultimately deployed to an AWS cluster across 4 different AWS regions, augmented by a custom-built cache mechanism and geographic DNS to support low-latency delivery to a worldwide customer base. Once deployed, the service provided clients with an experience that surpassed any performance and uptime metrics provided by the previous third-party vendor. In the space of three years of operation until my departure, the service had a 100% uptime record.

While at Kespry, I developed a prototypical workflow execution engine capable of performing a number of analytic and computational functions related to the company’s core domain of photogrammetry. Written primarily in C++, I leveraged a number of OSS libraries that included Boost, Qt, GDAL/OGR and multiple Structure from Motion (SfM) components to deliver 3D artifacts assembled from UAS imagery. The initial concept was to deliver a cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS/Windows) desktop solution with the ability to coordinate and manage remote workflows in AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure with a simple visual interface.

In my time at Alteryx, I built and deployed numerous web services responsible for running ETL and analytic workflows for cloud-based users. The infrastructure was written entirely in C# using WCF patterns to expose RESTful services for everything from authentication to workflow execution. Initially deployed on AWS infrastructure, the entire server platform was adapted to allow for installation in on-premise environments thereby opening a completely new revenue stream for the company.