Michael Sterle-Contala
Verified Expert in Engineering
Cloud Engineer and Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since December 27, 2021
Michael has been delivering software solutions for over 15 years, specializing in distributed systems and data applications. After starting his career as a self-employed, he has spent ten years in the industry and has returned to freelance work to bring his experience to a broader range of clients and projects. Michael is most interested in roles as an architect, developer, and adviser for distributed systems development, data and ML implementations, and cloud configuration and management.
Portfolio
Experience
- Software Architecture - 8 years
- Kubernetes - 5 years
- Node.js - 5 years
- Distributed Systems - 5 years
- API Design - 5 years
- Python - 3 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 3 years
- CloudOps - 3 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Python, Node.js, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Kubernetes, APIs, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Microservices, CloudOps
The most amazing...
...thing I've built is a traffic prediction system for the Port of Montreal, allowing truck drivers to better plan their routes and reduce carbon emissions.
Work Experience
Software Engineer
Shopify
- Led projects to improve global shipping performance by designing instrumentation to measure and optimize accuracy and timeliness.
- Created best practices for data collection and analysis in the shipping domain.
- Improved Shopify's product-market fit for French and German merchants through new regional features.
Distributed Systems Engineer
3Box
- Decentralized the core identity product by implementing peer-to-peer address resolution.
- Scaled the network architecture to allow federated nodes for partners.
- Contributed to the Ceramic protocol implementation.
AI Developer
Element AI
- Led the development process on a mixed-discipline team that brought a truck wait time predictor for the Port of Montreal into production.
- Developed a suite of modeling tools to augment businesses' input and decision-making processes with large volumes of manual data entry.
- Built an internal solution for one-button containerized deployment, training, and performance tracking of probabilistic models.
Software Developer
Shutterstock
- Led the design and development of an API to serve both the website and other clients. Performed JSON API implementation for remote relational queries while maintaining REST compliance.
- Helped migrate a video website from monolithic to microservice-based.
- Developed CI and monitoring pipelines for a video API.
Web Developer
Freelancer
- Developed and maintained websites and web apps for clients including the Cement Association of Canada, Bitchin' Kitchen, and Monde Osé.
- Built Joomla and WordPress custom extensions to suit clients' requirements.
- Provided technical training to clients and their partners.
Research Assistant
Shared Reality Lab — McGill University
- Coordinated and led the development of research pilot projects in the first response and disaster recovery fields.
- Developed an augmented reality training system for first responders in partnership with US Ignite and the Bonner Springs Fire Department.
- Took over and delivered the real-time emergency response project, allowing emergency operation coordinators to collect and manage citizen-sourced live video for disaster response.
Developer and Network Administrator
Blind Ferret Entertainment
- Scaled and extended Blind Ferret's offering of webhosting and advertising solutions for webcomic publishers.
- Built websites and provided support for webcomic publishing partners.
- Reduced intrusions through improvements to security tools and policies, code auditing and network restructuring.
- Developed tools and dashboards to track ad performance by campaign and inventory.
Analyst, Internet Solutions
BDC
- Developed metrics to be used in clients' marketing strategy and website analysis.
- Performed analysis on the site's design and infrastructure, SEO, and social media presence.
- Built individualized web presence optimization roadmaps for clients.
- Conducted client-facing investigative interviews and report delivery.
Experience
Port Truck Wait Time Predictor API
https://www.portmtlcamions.com/Real-time Emergency Response
http://srl.mcgill.ca/projects/rterAugmented Reality Tools for Improved Training of First Responders
http://srl.mcgill.ca/projects/responderShutterstock Footage API
Serverless AI Model Evaluation Pipeline
• Allows running datasets against multiple models, storing inferences, and calculating and aggregating performance metrics
• Integrates with Mechanical Turk to calculate subjective metrics
• Integrates with Amazon Transcribe to calculate transcript-based metrics
• Calculates objective scores using audio analysis
• Manages deployment with AWS SAM using Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, MTurk, Transcribe, DynamoDB, and S3
• Deploys models as Jit artifacts using a generic Docker-based Lambda
• Performance results are queryable through the client's dashboard solution
Certifications
Deep Learning Nanodegree
Udacity
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, REST APIs, API Development, Shopify API, JSON API, Pandas, SQLAlchemy, Liquid, PyTorch, OpenCV, FFmpeg, Flask-RESTful, NumPy, Scikit-learn, React, Web3.js
Tools
Terraform, ELK (Elastic Stack), Grafana, Ansible, CloudOps, Jenkins, Adobe Creative Suite, GitHub, Pytest, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Sumo Logic, Google Analytics, Puppet, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), CircleCI, Docker Compose, Amazon CloudWatch, Helm, Logging, NGINX, Git, Jira, AWS SDK, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon ElastiCache, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Languages
Python, JavaScript, Python 3, TypeScript, PHP, GraphQL, SQL, HTML, CSS, Go, Java, C++, C#, Ruby
Paradigms
DevOps, Microservices, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), REST, Microservices Architecture, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Functional Programming, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Agile, Automation, Application Architecture, Automated Testing, Test-driven Development (TDD), Prototype-based OOP, Serverless Architecture, Agile Project Management
Platforms
Docker, Joomla, WordPress, LAMP, Kubernetes, Shopify, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Apache Kafka, New Relic, Android, Magento, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2, Drone CI, Buildkite, Mobile, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure
Storage
JSON, Datadog, Redis, PostgreSQL, Databases, Relational Databases, RDBMS, MySQL, MongoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Database Management, Database Management Systems (DBMS), MariaDB, Elasticsearch, NoSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Graph Databases, Neo4j
Frameworks
Express.js, Swagger, Jest, Angular, CodeIgniter, Serverless Framework, Flask, Ruby on Rails (RoR), .NET
Industry Expertise
Project Management
Other
APIs, Software Architecture, Distributed Systems, API Design, CI/CD Pipelines, Code Review, Source Code Review, Technical Hiring, Task Analysis, Architecture, Distributed Software, Lambda Functions, API Integration, Web Development, Back-end, System Architecture Design, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, RESTful Web Services, Prometheus, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Build Automation, Network Architecture, Serverless, Webhooks, IT Systems Architecture, Technical Documentation, eCommerce, Cloud, Container Orchestration, Full-stack, System Design, Technical Leadership, Scalable Architecture, Software Design, PIP, Technical Project Management, Cloud Architecture, Leadership, Team Leadership, System Architecture, Amazon RDS, IPFS, Web Video, Decentralized Applications, Decentralized Systems, Peer-to-peer Networking, P2P, MinIO, Computer Vision, Time Series Analysis, AIOps, OOP Designs, Natural Language Processing (NLP), 12 Factor, Monitoring, Events, Shipping Management, Shipping, Internationalization, EMEA, SaaS, HAProxy, Multithreading, Concurrency, Algorithms, Amazon API Gateway, Data Collection, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Predictive Modeling, Amazon Route 53, Pipelines, Slack App, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Conda, Advertising Technology (Adtech), Ads, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT)
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