Kevin Sparks, Developer in Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand

Kevin Sparks

Software Developer

Location
Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
Toptal Member Since
January 23, 2014

Kevin is a self-motivated full-stack Python and JavaScript engineer with a bias for action and proven experience in delivering reliable software. He is passionate about learning and is particularly fascinated with collecting and analyzing data. He values people, relationships, communication, and Vim.

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Portfolio

Forwod, Ltd.
Celery, Redis, AngularJS, MySQL, Django, Flask, Python
ClearCare (www.clearcareonline.com)
Amazon Web Services (AWS), AngularJS, Redis, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, Celery...
Yellow Pages Group
Fabric, Vagrant, Debian Packaging, CSS, HTML5, MySQL, Memcached, Solr, Django...

Location

Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Docker, Git, Vim Text Editor, Ubuntu, Linux

The most amazing...

...platform I've written is a search feature for one of New Zealand's top ten most-visited websites.

Work Experience

2016 - PRESENT

Co-Founder, Head of Engineering

Forwod, Ltd.
  • Designed and implemented the full system.
  • Architected data for the web tier and data processing tier (OLAP warehouse). This was my first attempt at using an FRP paradigm to handle the data stream that rolled up into insights presentation (Athlete + Coach dashboards).
  • Fully automated CI + CD and all infrastructure as code using Ansible (and Fabric).
  • Bootstrapped local development using Docker.
Technologies: Celery, Redis, AngularJS, MySQL, Django, Flask, Python
2014 - PRESENT

Software Engineer

ClearCare (www.clearcareonline.com)
  • Provided general maintenance as well as new features for the flagship SaaS web app (built with Django) and accompanying services (Flask, GraphQL).
  • Created a microservice to track usage metrics throughout the platform in order to aid client billing using Serverless (AWS Lambda).
  • Implemented security features around user sessions to better support HIPAA + PII compliance goals.
  • Served on the on-call DevOps SRE rotation, helping keep platform up-time on our AWS stack at 99.99%.
  • Integrated a third-party background-check vendor using Restful APIs and webhooks.
  • Extended the core accounting system to support advance billing as well as migration scripts for historical data.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), AngularJS, Redis, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, Celery, Django, Python
2010 - 2014

Python Tech Lead, Senior Web Developer

Yellow Pages Group
  • Served as tech lead for seventeen Python developers. Facilitated TDD, code reviews, system design, and continuous integration. Ensured that features built actually matched business requirements.
  • Worked as lead developer for the rebuilding of Yellow's flagship properties (yellow.co.nz, whitepages.co.nz) in Python. Contributed to a search feature (Solr) built as a platform to service multiple client front-ends and third party apps.
  • Worked as lead developer for the sales and provisioning web tool. Built the components for servicing content/asset administration and provisioning.
  • Contributed to the design of a custom JavaScript framework for handling a multi-component AJAX approach to the UI, codenamed "Helio."
  • Served as lead developer for the hyperlocal property YellowLocal.co.nz.
Technologies: Fabric, Vagrant, Debian Packaging, CSS, HTML5, MySQL, Memcached, Solr, Django, Python
2009 - 2010

Senior Web Developer

The Folio Society
  • Flew solo as the developer in a small online team, responsible for all development and maintenance of the company's primary eCommerce website (www.foliosociety.co.uk).
  • Implemented a fresh new "skin" along with a "gift certificates" feature, a tremendous feat considering FS's complex marketing channels.
  • Handled database administration, which constituted around 30% of my overall workload. Wrote and optimized queries for large-ish datasets (200k - 2M rows in some cases).
  • Handled all development operations, deployment, and system administration (Linux, MySQL, Python).
Technologies: jQuery, CakePHP, JavaScript, Ajax, MySQL, PHP, Python
2008 - 2009

Director

Just-digital.net
  • Built a range of smaller websites (agency type work).
  • Wrote my own light-weight proprietary CMS in PHP to facilitate rapid implementation.
Technologies: MySQL, JavaScript, PHP
2007 - 2008

Web Developer

Trader Media (TNT Publishing)
  • Created new features and maintenance for www.tntmagazine.com as the sole developer.
  • Built a job/accommodation directory for the site.
Technologies: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, MySQL, PHP
2004 - 2007

Software Developer

Sweet Mamma Software
  • Handled the full development life cycle on small websites (PHP). Supported key clients' corporate intranet.
  • Designed and implemented the desktop app Liquid Metal.
Technologies: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, VB.NET, Visual Basic 6 (VB6), JavaScript, ASP.NET, ASP, PHP

Experience

Yellow® NZ

http://yellow.co.nz
I was the lead developer for rebuilding Yellow's flagship property (yellow.co.nz) in Python. I built a search feature (Solr) platform to service multiple client front-ends and third party apps. Yellow.co.nz is one of New Zealand's top 10 most visited sites.

Axle (sales and provisioning web tool)

https://axle.yellow.co.nz/
I was the lead developer for our sales and provisioning web tool. I built the components for servicing content/asset administration and provisioning.

Skills

Languages

SQL, JavaScript, Python, GraphQL, PHP, Bash Script, HTML5, CSS, HTML, Visual Basic 6 (VB6), VB.NET, UML

Frameworks

AngularJS, Django, Jinja, Serverless Framework, ASP, ASP.NET, Flask, CakePHP, Jasmine, Selenium

Storage

MySQL, Memcached, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon DynamoDB, Google Cloud, Neo4j, MongoDB

Other

Full-stack, Single-page Applications (SPA), GitFlow, Debian Packaging, Sentiment Analysis, Natural Language Processing (NLP), GUI, Data Mining, Loggly, WebSockets, QA Automation, Sprints, Amazon Route 53, Tornado, Ajax, Mailchimp API, mod_wsgi, GPT, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT)

Libraries/APIs

React, Chart.js, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), React Redux, jQuery, Fabric, Gevent, Bottle.py, Beautiful Soup, Facebook API, Tastypie, Backbone.js

Tools

Bitbucket, Apache, RabbitMQ, Subversion (SVN), Git, Vim Text Editor, GitLab, GitHub, Adobe Photoshop, Solr, Celery, Gulp, Mocha, Jira, uWSGI, Crucible, PyCharm, Haystack, Jenkins, NGINX, Apache Solr, Vagrant

Paradigms

Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Deployment, Continuous Integration (CI), Model View Controller (MVC), Scrum, Agile Software Development, Responsive Layout, REST, Kanban, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Test-driven Development (TDD), Concurrent Programming, Distributed Programming, Load Testing, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), DevOps

Platforms

Ubuntu, Docker, Amazon EC2, Linux, New Relic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Raspberry Pi, DigitalOcean, Google App Engine, Django CMS, Heroku, Arduino

Education

2002 - 2004

Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Degree in Computer Science

Torque IT - Johannesburg, South Africa