John Ginsberg, Developer in Southend-on-Sea, United Kingdom
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John Ginsberg

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Full-stack Developer

Location
Southend-on-Sea, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
December 10, 2013

John is a developer and entrepreneur with 15+ years of hands-on coding experience. He has worked on a variety of projects, including developing large-scale websites, an email marketing platform delivering millions of emails per day, and social media integration with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Windows, Linux, MacOS

The most amazing...

...thing I've built is a real-time interactive analytics dashboard that updates its display every few seconds.

Work Experience

CTO

2014 - PRESENT
Cofundraising
  • Designed and architected the full technology stack.
  • Built a Chrome browser extension actively used by 1m+ users.
  • Implemented and maintained back-end infrastructure with 99.99% uptime.
  • Created an affiliate tracking, reporting, and payment solution.
  • Assisted with evaluation and recruitment of team members.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vagrant, Redis, React, DevOps, JavaScript, PHP

Developer

2017 - 2017
DSI
  • Built a simple Ionic app that integrates with Zendesk, across both iOS and Android platforms.
  • Customized Cordova plugins.
  • Enabled push notifications and built a simple web-based UI for sending.
Technologies: Ionic 3

Developer

2017 - 2017
Silverback IS
  • Built an Ionic application for Android.
  • Integrated with various hardware devices via custom Cordova plugins.
  • Wrote to remote PouchDB server via local CouchDB library.
Technologies: CouchDB, Ionic

Developer

2016 - 2017
Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency
  • Built a hybrid iOS and Android application using Ionic 2 and subsequently Ionic 3.
  • Enabled offline use and automated online sync of data when connected.
  • Synchronized with various third-party and custom APIs.
Technologies: CouchDB, Ionic 3, Ionic 2

Lead Developer

2014 - 2014
SynMedia
  • Implemented a mobile app development framework based on Ionic and AngularJS.
  • Created a mobile app builder and CMS.
  • Integrated with third-party services like PhoneGap Build, Google Maps, and Pushwoosh.
  • Deployed apps via Testflight.
  • Designed an app experience that can be changed in real time via SaaS-based CMS.
Technologies: MySQL, JSON, PHP, JavaScript, Google Maps, Pushwoosh, PhoneGap, Ionic, AngularJS

PHP Developer

2013 - 2014
Zendesk (via Toptal)
  • Created a PHP wrapper library around the existing REST APi.
  • Wrote a test suite for each endpoint.
  • Implemented the PSR-0 standard.
  • Integrated with and implemented a composer package.
  • Implemented OAuth2 authentication.
Technologies: PHP 5

Product Director

2000 - 2013
Ensight
  • Built an email and SMS delivery engine employing parallel processing and job queues to increase send speed while intelligently managing load at the server level. Created using PHP and shell scripting.
  • Developed a social media management and publishing platform featuring integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Klout. The system downloads and calculates daily performance statistics and creates a PDF “social infographic” report. The report is designed using HTML5/CSS3, and creates a PDF using a headless browser (PhantomJS).
  • Created a real-time campaign dashboard dynamically updating its display every 5-10 seconds to show users up to date statistics. Used PHP to load and cache results in real time (including unique user counts) and jQuery to serve data to the screen.
  • Built a dynamic form builder allowing users to create forms with any number of fields, capture data, filter entries, and even target those entries for campaigns. Allowed the form builder to handle suppression management, validity checking, and automated cleanup of spam entries. Used PHP, MySQL, and a bit of JavaScript for the UI.
  • Developed a background job processor built entirely using PHP and XML for management of scheduled and automated tasks.
  • Developed a product currently used by hundreds of organizations and millions of end users across a wide range of industries, including retail, travel, financial services and utilities. Oversaw the production of over 4 major releases and hundreds of minor releases and updates.
  • Created and deployed all supporting marketing and sales materials for the product, including websites, white papers, and user guides.
  • Ran face to face and online (webinar) training programs for hundreds of users across dozens of client groups.
Technologies: Shell Scripting, CSS, HTML, PHP, JavaScript

MTNfootball.com

Built the site and back-end management interface, allowing for capturing of all content, scores, and match updates in real time, with distribution across web, mobile app, social media and SMS. Handled a large scale rollout during the 2010 World Cup, and have been supporting half a million users per month ever since.

Flash to HTML Conversion

In this project, I converted an app from Flash to JavaScript, ensuring pixel-perfect accuracy, using jQuery and HTML5 Canvas. The converted app has also been adapted to provide full support for mobile devices.

To-do App

Built a to-do list manager that allows users to create, organize, and manage tasks or items on a list. It uses Backbone.js on the front end, communicates with a REST back end, and was created exclusively using HTML, JavaScript, and PHP.

Languages

HTML, JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, SQL, CSS3, CSS, PHP 5, Bash Script, Bash, C

Libraries/APIs

jQuery, Zendesk API, Node.js, Twitter API, Backbone.js, Facebook API, jQuery UI, Pushwoosh, Google Maps, React, HTML5 Canvas

Tools

AWS SDK, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Vagrant, Git, Zend Studio, Atom

Platforms

Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, MacOS, Linux, Windows, Amazon Web Services (AWS), NetBeans, iOS

Storage

Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, JSON, Redis, CouchDB, PostgreSQL

Frameworks

AWS HA, Bootstrap, Ionic, Ionic 2, Ionic 3, AngularJS, PhoneGap, Zend Framework

Paradigms

Iterative Programming, DevOps, Test-driven Development (TDD), Agile Software Development, Load Testing, REST

Other

Slackbot, Bots, Shell Scripting, UI Testing

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