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Phil Gebauer, Software Developer in Calgary, AB, Canada
Phil Gebauer

Software Developer in Calgary, AB, Canada

Member since February 16, 2018
For over 15 years, Phil has worked as a software developer for various fields including medical, eCommerce, social media, and blockchain. During his career, he's been a full-time employee and has worked remotely as a freelancer as well. Throughout those varied engagements, Phil was exposed to a variety of business and engineering challenges and learning opportunities.
Phil is now available for hire
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Portfolio

  • Veri
    MySQL, React, Swagger, JavaScript, Restify, Microservices, REST APIs...
  • Hootsuite
    JavaScript, Advertising, Billing, Payment Processing...
  • Freelance
    JavaScript, jQuery, osCommerce, Payment Processing...

Experience

Location

Calgary, AB, Canada

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

IntelliJ IDEA, MacOS

The most amazing...

...system improvement I've made is a real-time tweet-matching algorithm that drastically reduced system load while handling several thousands of tweets per second.

Employment

  • Systems Architect | Lead Software Engineer

    2016 - 2017
    Veri
    • Designed the application and structure of the REST API that serves Veri’s product (a mobile video chat app); built using Node.js and a microservice-ready approach.
    • Designed and deployed a scalable back-end infrastructure on AWS and Docker Cloud.
    • Set up a fully an automated continuous delivery pipeline using Docker Cloud.
    • Mentored the engineering team on development patterns and best practices.
    • Maintained a technical roadmap of feature development and app releases in coordination with product owners, engineers, and external mobile development team.
    Technologies: MySQL, React, Swagger, JavaScript, Restify, Microservices, REST APIs, Docker Cloud, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), Amazon CloudFront CDN, AWS Lambda, Node.js

  • Senior Software Engineer | Lead Software Engineer

    2011 - 2016
    Hootsuite
    • Led and managed the social advertising team, specifically the development.
    • Designed a billing and payments solution with anti-fraud measures for the ads product.
    • Integrated and scaled a real-time tweet archiving service using Twitter’s streaming APIs. Added self-healing mechanisms that detect and reopen degraded connections.
    • Designed a centralized solution for account authentication—allowing for multiple identity providers and protocols, including Twitter OAuth and SAML.
    • Created a REST API design that included the addition of OAuth authentication to the mobile API.
    • Researched and implemented a service that converts HTML into PDF documents to study the impact of partitioning and converting a shared code base into services.
    • Developed a suite of self-contained PHP libraries used by multiple internal clients.
    • Collaborated on the automation of infrastructure provisioning.
    • Developed an app for the Hootsuite app directory in my spare time to integrate the European equivalent of LinkedIn and XING into Hootsuite.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Advertising, Billing, Payment Processing, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), Vagrant, Ansible, Python, Scala, React, MongoDB, MySQL, Microservices, OAuth, APIs, Streaming, REST APIs, PHP

  • Freelance Web Developer

    2006 - 2011
    Freelance
    • Maintained an eCommerce system.
    • Improved the order fulfillment process and inventory management for multiple warehouses.
    • Added forecasting for purchase orders, fraud detection checks, and UX improvements for conversion optimization.
    • Developed an application that assists in managing document lifecycles.
    Technologies: JavaScript, jQuery, osCommerce, Payment Processing, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), Linux, MySQL, PHP

  • Web Developer

    2006 - 2007
    Invoke Company
    • Developed and maintained several client sites and tools with unique requirements, including a native Visual Basic application to convert and upload videos.
    • Collaborated on the development of an online music video platform.
    • Constructed online video contest websites that eventually evolved into a product for managing online contests.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Linux, FFmpeg, VB.NET, jQuery, MySQL, PHP

  • Software Developer | Network Administrator

    2005 - 2006
    Ohio State University Medical Center
    • Developed native and web tools for clinical trial patient management using the .NET framework and PHP.
    • Maintained the department's local network comprised of Windows servers and desktop computers.
    • Configured and built desktop PCs from individually ordered parts.
    • Provided IT support for the staff.
    Technologies: Microsoft Access, Linux, Azure Active Directory, Windows Server, .NET, PHP

  • Co-op Student Worker

    2001 - 2004
    Fraunhofer Institute for Security in IT
    • Researched and developed software for the security assessments of IT infrastructures.
    Technologies: Web Technologies, Information Security

Experience

  • REST API Design and Architecture

    In a recent position at a new startup, I designed a mobile REST API in Node.js and Restify that proved to be performant, reliable, and easy-to-maintain. The codebase is distinctively separated into individual services and the requests are processed based on the router model.

    The application is bundled into a Docker container and deployed onto multiple AWS EC2 instances via Docker Cloud in a continuous delivery fashion.

    Performance and uptime were outstanding which was a great validation of the architecture.

  • Refactoring of a High-volume, Real-time Tweet-monitoring Service

    A real-time tweet monitoring service that allowed users to track and archive tweets containing individual keywords was having trouble keeping up with volume after being acquired by Hootsuite.

    I rewrote the keyword matching algorithm to mimic the keyword filtering behavior of Twitter’s streaming API, which allowed for reverse matching with user-defined keywords. The new algorithm outperformed the original one by several orders of magnitude thanks to achieving constant-time lookups on its larger data set.

    While implementing these improvements, I also added a number of self-healing mechanisms that detect and reestablish degraded connections, resulting in very high uptime.

Skills

  • Languages

    SQL, JavaScript, PHP, TypeScript, VB.NET, Python, Solidity, Scala, Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET)

  • Libraries/APIs

    Node.js, REST APIs, React, Restify, jQuery, FFmpeg

  • Paradigms

    Agile Software Development, Microservices, Scrum

  • Storage

    MySQL, NoSQL, Memcached, MongoDB, Docker Cloud, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Azure Active Directory

  • Frameworks

    React Native, Swagger, OAuth 2, .NET

  • Tools

    Terraform, IntelliJ IDEA, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Microsoft Access, Vagrant, NGINX, Ansible, AWS Push Notification Service (AWS SNS), AWS ELB, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon EKS

  • Platforms

    Apache2, Docker, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockchain, MacOS, Linux, Windows Server, osCommerce, Kubernetes

  • Other

    SaaS, eCommerce, RESTful Microservices, Integration Testing, AWS Cloud Architecture, Payment Processing, Information Security, Web Technologies, Streaming, APIs, OAuth, Billing, Advertising

Education

  • Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Technology
    2001 - 2004
    Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University - Mannheim, Germany

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