Mike Dotty, Developer in Swieqi, Malta
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Mike Dotty

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Swieqi, Malta
Toptal Member Since
April 11, 2017

Mike is an experienced software engineer who also excels in software architecture and requirements engineering. He has experience in technical team management, from processes setup for development teams and engineer guidance to coaching. He produces software that works as expected. Mike steers clear of wishful thinking, work that isn't rooted in concrete requirements, and engineering for the sake of engineering.

Portfolio

Ridge
Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Go, Agile Software Development, Git, Google Cloud...
Debian
Debian Packaging, Ubuntu, Git, SQLite, Shell, POSIX, TCP/IP, SSH, X11...
Hola!
Elasticsearch, AngularJS, MongoDB, Node.js, Agile Software Development, Shell...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Linux, MacOS, PostgreSQL, Django

The most amazing...

...project I've developed was a hybrid cloud that hosts workloads in data centers worldwide. It's highly scalable and light on compute resources for orchestration.

Work Experience

Head of Engineering

2018 - PRESENT
Ridge
  • Created the system's architecture that connects geographically and technologically splintered data centers across the world into a single cloud experience. Implemented large swaths of it.
  • Built and managed highly efficient work processes on the development team.
  • Set up and maintained engineering requirements and software architecture processes.
Technologies: Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Go, Agile Software Development, Git, Google Cloud, Functional Design, Shell, POSIX, Concurrent Programming, TCP/IP, SSH, System Testing, Unit Testing, REST, Software Architecture, libvirt, KVM/Qemu, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Cloud Architecture, Technical Leadership, CTO, GoLand, Back-end, Software Design, Back-end Development, Architecture, Docker, Cloud Platforms, DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Virtual Machines, APIs, REST APIs, RDBMS, API Integration, Stripe Payments, Webhooks, SQL, XML, JSON, Open Source, Open-source Software (OSS)

Package Maintainer

2006 - PRESENT
Debian
  • Managed libssh2, a package installed on nearly all Debian and Ubuntu installations in the world,.
  • Maintained several Perl module packages and Python packages.
  • Sustained Debian packages related to support of Russian language.
Technologies: Debian Packaging, Ubuntu, Git, SQLite, Shell, POSIX, TCP/IP, SSH, X11, Virtual Machines, APIs, REST APIs, RDBMS, XML, JSON, Open Source, Open-source Software (OSS)

Senior Software Engineer

2012 - 2017
Hola!
  • Improved insight into the performance of Hola services by adding centralized application-level logging and application-level metrics, which made it much easier to pinpoint and resolve performance problems and bugs.
  • Created several internal statistical dashboards for Hola VPN.
  • Built a customer-facing statistical dashboard for Hola CDN.
  • Streamlined and simplified customer onboarding for Hola CDN, making the customer experience smoother.
  • Introduced and promoted Slack in the company for better knowledge sharing between remote contractors and employees at HQ.
Technologies: Elasticsearch, AngularJS, MongoDB, Node.js, Agile Software Development, Shell, POSIX, Concurrent Programming, TCP/IP, SSH, Unit Testing, Software Architecture, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Back-end, Software Design, Back-end Development, Cloud Platforms, CI/CD Pipelines, Virtual Machines, APIs, REST APIs, NoSQL, RDBMS, API Integration, Express.js, Webhooks, SQL, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), XML, JSON

Senior Software Engineer

2011 - 2013
CFEngine
  • Introduced continuous integration pipeline to the team.
  • Included automated unit- and system-testing tied into the CI system, resulting in a vastly superior quality of software releases and ended the plague of regressions in every minor release.
  • Migrated version control from Subversion to Git and pushed to move hosting to GitHub, which resulted in a surge of new contributors to the open-source part of the product.
  • Introduced a repeatable release process for the product.
  • Fixed enormous amount of bugs uncovered by regular unit- and acceptance testing.
  • Broke up a monolith source code into separate modules and significantly decreased the coupling of the modules.
Technologies: AIX, Solaris, Linux, Unix, C, Agile Software Development, Buildbot, Shell, POSIX, Make, CFEngine, CFEngine 3, Concurrent Programming, TCP/IP, SSH, Object-oriented Design (OOD), System Testing, Unit Testing, REST, Software Architecture, Software Design, Back-end Development, DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Virtual Machines, REST APIs, RDBMS, SQL, XML, JSON, Open Source, Open-source Software (OSS)

Senior Software Engineer

2004 - 2007
Parallels International
  • Specified and implemented a packaging format for web applications for interoperation between hosting panels (e.g., Plesk).
  • Implemented a system to transfer contents of various hosting panels to Plesk as part of client migration procedure.
  • Developed a backup and restore system for Plesk's hosting panel.
  • Specified and applied a single-sign-on protocol for hosted applications in a containerized environment.
Technologies: BSD, Linux, Unix, SOAP, Perl, Python, Python 3, Agile Software Development, C++, Shell, POSIX, Make, TCP/IP, SSH, Object-oriented Design (OOD), REST, Software Architecture, Software Design, Back-end Development, Architecture, Virtual Machines, REST APIs, RDBMS, SQL, XML, JSON

Ridge

https://www.ridge.co/
IaaS/PaaS cloud in countries with no hyperscalers presence, providing Kubernetes, containers, virtual machines, object storage, block storage, and isolated networks.

I was the architect, technical leader, and lead engineer.

OpenInkpot

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Openinkpot
The Linux distribution and software suite for e-book readers that is lauded by users for its usability and versatility in book formats.

I was a project leader, project manager, lead engineer, and infrastructure engineer.

CFEngine

https://github.com/cfengine/core
CFEngine is the open-source configuration management system that pioneered the approach of desired-state automation, now employed by Kubernetes, Terraform, and many other systems.

I was a senior software engineer on the team, responsible for CI and release management.

Languages

Go, Python 3, C, Python, SQL, XML, Lua, Perl, Clojure, Erlang, C++, Embedded C++

Frameworks

CFEngine, CFEngine 3, AngularJS, Django, Express.js

Libraries/APIs

POSIX, REST APIs, libvirt, Node.js, React, Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), Stripe

Tools

Git, Shell, Make, KVM/Qemu, GoLand, Buildbot, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), GNOME, Terraform, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)

Paradigms

Concurrent Programming, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Design (OOD), Agile Software Development, Unit Testing, REST, DevOps

Platforms

Linux, Debian, Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Embedded Linux, MacOS, Unix, AIX, BSD, Apache Kafka, Solaris, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenStack

Storage

JSON, SQLite, NoSQL, RDBMS, Elasticsearch, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Google Cloud

Other

Functional Design, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Back-end, Software Design, Back-end Development, Architecture, CI/CD Pipelines, Virtual Machines, APIs, API Integration, Webhooks, Containerization, Multitenancy, Open Source, Open-source Software (OSS), Debian Packaging, SSH, TCP/IP, System Testing, CTO, Cloud Platforms, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Embedded Systems, Internet of Things (IoT), Embedded Hardware, WebSockets, SOAP, Software Development Management, X11, Team Management, X.Org, Software Engineering, Cloud Architecture, EPUB, PDF, Containers, VMware vCloud, FastAPI, Stripe Payments, Firmware

2000 - 2005

Specialist's Degree in Computer Science

Novosibirsk State University - Novosibirsk, Russia

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