Leah Sapan
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Scarborough, ME, United States
Toptal member since August 31, 2015
Leah is a product-minded software engineer with over 15 years of professional software development experience. She has an extensive background in tech lead and architect roles with various clients spanning healthcare, fintech, eCommerce, and more. Leah takes pride in building products that delight users and exceed her client's expectations.
Portfolio
Experience
- Full-stack - 13 years
- Security - 10 years
- Python - 10 years
- Django - 10 years
- Web Scraping - 9 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 9 years
- Docker - 6 years
- Vue - 4 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Xcode, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Terminal, Linux, MacOS
The most amazing...
...thing I've ever created is a complete employee management suite that allows businesses to bring their employee data and schedules into the cloud.
Work Experience
Chief Technology Officer
Doctor's Choice
- Coordinated architecture, development, and DevOps of a HIPAA compliant platform to support clients in exploring best Medicare options and enrollment.
- Gathered data from multiple services using a Starlette and FastAPI microservice, improving the performance by 450%.
- Produced an algorithm to sift through more than 10,000 plan options, helping to find the best plan based on each client's specific situation and needs.
- Designed a flexible data architecture allowing the layering of multiple public data sources together in PostgreSQL.
- Ingested 500GB of public data using Python scripts, Puppeteer, and consumable datasets to build a taxonomy of providers, practices, and pharmacies.
- Reduced time to update production data by 99%, saving over 12 hours on each run.
- Integrated the platform with Salesforce via dynamic and efficient two-way syncing and tailored Salesforce instances to dramatically improve efficiency for the team.
- Built unique experiences tailored to internal agents and clients, allowing users to use the platform effectively and efficiently.
Chief Technology Officer
Negotio
- Designed and implemented a Shopify app for Negotio, allowing customers to automatically negotiate lower prices, driving more sales and higher conversion rates.
- Developed a dynamic Vue-based plugin that automatically embeds itself in the merchant’s website without manual intervention, regardless of theme or custom code.
- Created a performant back end to manage target prices, handle negotiations, create discount codes, and more using Django and Django Channels.
- Built a marketplace front end to explore all of the products in Negotio's vast database.
Senior Full-stack Software Engineer
Parity Healthcare Analytics
- Developed a patient acuity-based benchmarking tool to calculate nurse staffing needs and track specific productivity metrics.
- Architected a modular design to facilitate vast amounts of the core functionality while allowing additional modules to be easily added.
- Reduced duplicate code from another consultant's prototype by 80% while embracing Python's DRY principles and OO patterns.
- Built a flexible reporting framework to analyze data from any module without the need for module-specific code.
Container Solution Architect
Caterpillar
- Led the effort to promote the use of Docker containers within CAT.
- Established best practices for image creation and management.
- Authored a guide for working with Docker on CAT machines, including troubleshooting steps for common issues related to corporate security policies.
Senior Full-stack Software Engineer
Minervini Private Access
- Designed an innovative platform for MPA to broadcast very time-sensitive alerts to financial clients in real-time.
- Re-architected the app to deliver alerts 300 times faster than the previous generation platform.
- Automated the client management and billing processes to save more than 120 hours per month.
- Improved editor preparation to be 1,000 times faster than before.
- Developed automatic detection of clients breaching the T&C by using automated scripts or bots to ingest alerts from the site.
- Deployed services securely to AWS using Kubernetes while supporting automated builds, tests, and deployments using GitHub Actions.
- Created native apps for iOS and Android with NativeScript and Vue.
- Achieved 100% test coverage with both unit tests and functional tests.
Senior Full-stack Software Engineer
Cobalt Archive
- Built a platform for archiving the web, email, and social media content using Django and Vue.
- Implemented a touch-free onboarding process to guide users through independent configuration and direct payment on the site to activate personal accounts.
- Created a proof of existence page that leverages hashes stored on blockchains to prove that files existed in a certain state at a specific time.
- Developed an efficient, cross-medium search functionality using Elasticsearch.
Director of Software Development
RowdMap
- Led an international, remote team of 15 developers, software engineers, data engineers, and various technical employees to create and refine a healthcare analytics platform.
- Built custom analytic visuals using D3, along with a user-friendly query builder.
- Transformed 5TB of healthcare data into a highly-optimized PostgreSQL database.
- Developed an internal platform to automate and manage data loads and transformations.
- Designed optimized tables derived from source data to be efficiently queried by the platform.
- Managed all AWS infrastructure and controls, including container servers, databases, network security, high availability, CI/CD flows, and ensured secure employee device provisioning with encryption and VPNs.
- Led and passed a NIST 800-53 security and privacy control audit.
- Achieved service level agreements (SLAs) by deploying high availability via Docker Swarm.
Senior Full-stack Software Engineer
Funtown Splashtown USA
- Architected and implemented a full employee management suite with distinctive features for the amusement park industry.
- Utilized the Ford-Fulkerson method to generate daily ride operator assignments based on training knowledge and previous assignments stored in the database.
- Implemented a complete scheduling system for employees to access schedules online, receive shift notifications, and propose shift swaps.
- Improved the guest experience with a companion app that helped guests better navigate the park.
Experience
ToonHQ
https://toonhq.orgStalks.io
https://stalks.ioStarblock Valley
https://starblockvalley.lukesapan.comEducation
Coursework Toward Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering with Computer Science Concentration in Computer Engineering
University of Southern Maine - Portland, ME, USA
Coursework Toward Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering in Computer Engineering
University of Maine - Orono, ME, USA
Certifications
Blockchain Specialization
Toptal
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Backbone.js, jQuery, Vuex, Vue 2, Vue, Node.js, Puppeteer, Socket.IO, Python Asyncio, Chart.js, Shopify API, D3.js, Slack API, React, Facebook API, X (formerly Twitter) API, LinkedIn API
Tools
Terminal, PyCharm, Xcode, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Ansible, Docker Swarm, Docker Compose, Terraform, Jenkins, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), VPN, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Webpack, Celery, NativeScript-Vue, GitLab CI/CD, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon EKS, AWS IAM
Languages
Swift, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Objective-C, SQL, Python, Python 2, Python 3, Pug, HTML5, Java, Excel VBA, Solidity, PHP, C++, C, C#
Frameworks
Android SDK, Django, Django REST Framework, Selenium, iOS SDK, Starlette, NativeScript, Django Channels, CakePHP, Mezzanine, Truffle, Flask, React Native, Angular, Electron
Paradigms
Back-end Architecture, Mobile Development, Microservices, Test-driven Development (TDD), Functional Testing, Unit Testing, REST, HIPAA Compliance
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Docker, Android, MacOS, iOS, Amazon EC2, Salesforce, DigitalOcean, Shopify, Netlify, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Blockchain, Kubernetes, Ethereum, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Elasticsearch, Neo4j, MongoDB
Other
Data Encryption, Scalable Architecture, Authentication, Back-end Development, IT Security, Security, Scraping, Web Scraping, Full-stack, Mobile App Development, FastAPI, Amazon Route 53, Web Security, Amazon RDS, Card Payments, Billing Systems, CI/CD Pipelines, Analytics, Security Policies & Procedures, Web Crawlers, APIs, Back-end, Fintech, Containers, Data Engineering, Architecture, System Architecture, Data, Code Review, Source Code Review, Task Analysis, Technical Hiring, Interviewing, Team Management, Chrome Extensions, Fraud Prevention, Algorithmic Trading, Trading, Algorithms, DApps
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