Randall Hogan, Developer in Fort Worth, TX, United States
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Randall Hogan

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Full-stack Developer

Fort Worth, TX, United States

Toptal member since February 9, 2022

Bio

Randall has 20+ years of software engineering experience with two of the top Fortune 100 companies in the world. His expertise ranges from sophisticated network and process automation to real-time data collection and wrangling to rapid data access with complex filtering schemes to top-performing interactive web interfaces. He has been an innovative full-stack solutions provider solving some of the networking industry's most difficult challenges with automation and performant user interfaces.

Portfolio

Major International Bank
React, React Redux, Node.js, Jira, Git, SQL, JavaScript, Java, REST, CSS, HTML...
Freelance for Jerky
React Redux, React, Redux Form, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Web UI Design...
ExxonMobil
JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Perl, Angular, SQL, DevOps, Networking, Web UI Design...

Experience

  • SQL - 20 years
  • Agile DevOps - 8 years
  • Web Development - 7 years
  • React Redux - 4 years
  • React - 4 years
  • REST APIs - 4 years
  • Full-stack - 4 years
  • Node.js - 4 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Jira, React, Git, SQL, Node.js, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MacOS, Windows, Linux, Agile DevOps

The most amazing...

...project I've developed is a top-performing automated network device upgrade process from execution to real-time data collection to interactive web dashboard.

Work Experience

Senior Lead Full-stack Developer

2017 - PRESENT
Major International Bank
  • Led a team of 11 developers comprising junior, mid-level, and senior developers. Ran the daily standups, assigned work, provided design guidelines, code reviews, and training, and assisted pair programming as needed.
  • Developed a centralized web portal with a React front end and Node.js back end, pulling all the disparate network data from diverse applications into a centralized web portal for rapid access to critical data.
  • Built a fully automated end-to-end network device upgrade process from execution to data collection and wrangling to rapid data access via a Node.js REST API to an interactive and performant React front-end dashboard and management pages.
  • Created a rapid configuration Regex search ending using Node.js to develop the search engines, Node.js REST APIs for data access, and a React web front end for managing searches and search results.
Technologies: React, React Redux, Node.js, Jira, Git, SQL, JavaScript, Java, REST, CSS, HTML, Bootstrap, Regex, DevOps, Networking, Web UI Design, GitHub, Agile, MongoDB, Full-stack, Web Development, Redux, REST APIs, Material UI, Firebase, HTML5, HTML UI, HTML DOM, APIs, Leads, Express.js, Remote Team Leadership, Team Leadership, Back-end, Front-end Development, Back-end Development, API Integration, TypeScript, Leadership

React Web Developer

2017 - 2019
Freelance for Jerky
  • Delivered a dynamic web report dashboard to show month-over-month progress in sales over the last five years.
  • Developed the pages for managing the automated distribution of monthly Jerky subscription orders.
  • Created management pages for managing user profiles and management roles.
  • Developed a page for users to maintain their accounts and preferences.
Technologies: React Redux, React, Redux Form, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Web UI Design, GitHub, Agile, MongoDB, Web Development, Redux, REST APIs, HTML UI, HTML DOM, APIs, Front-end, Express.js, Front-end Development, API Integration

Network Software Engineer

2011 - 2017
ExxonMobil
  • Automated most level 1 network operations such as circuit and power outages, opening tickets with vendors, and managing outage status communication and escalations.
  • Developed a web portal view into all our disparate network data dispersed over multiple applications with rapid access to data and the ability to interact with various applications without having to leave the centralized web portal.
  • Automated lockdown of new network devices and remediation of device configurations when they would fail policy compliance checks.
  • Created an automated config generator that would take minimal user input via a web interface and generate all configurations needed to fully deploy a new site.
Technologies: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Perl, Angular, SQL, DevOps, Networking, Web UI Design, Agile, Web Development, HTML UI, HTML DOM, Leads, Front-end, Back-end, Front-end Development, Back-end Development

Senior Network Automation Engineer

2001 - 2011
Citigroup
  • Developed and maintained the automated load balancer configuration generators for managing all user VIP/WIP requests.
  • Developed and maintained an automated interactive network configuration change routine. Live script interacted with the engineer to manage full pre-change routine, change routine, and post-change routine with diffs logging and alerts.
  • Developed and maintained various device automation scripts for deploying configuration changes and investigating issues across the entire global enterprise network population.
Technologies: Perl, VBScript, PHP, Cisco, F5 Networks, Citrix, SQL, Riverbed, Networking, Front-end

React Web Portal for Network Device Information

Developed a React front-end web portal with a Node.js back end to provide rapid centralized access to disparate network data sources. Each page on the front end loads in under a second and provides the user the capability to real-time search all fields as they type, combined with sorting and complex regex multi-column filtering, all with two seconds or less response time. The result sets can then be actioned for automated change creation, incident creation, and project creation.

Automated Network Upgrade Process

The project was to develop a fully automated network device upgrade process capable of upgrading up to 15,000 devices in a 24-hour window without causing outages. This was a team project where I was both team lead and key contributor. My key contributions were developing the auto-execution engine, the REST APIs for access, and the front-end dashboard and management pages.

The execution engine starts the upgrades according to a predefined schedule and then monitors the task status and determines when to start new devices optimally, restart the devices that have issues, or remove the devices from maintenance mode when they are completed. The execution engine interfaces with the network automation tool to start and stop upgrade scripts as needed.

The Node.js REST APIs allowed performant access to the data collected near real-time upgrade process. This allowed users to update and action the data as needed, with updates taking effect immediately for other users to see and action accordingly.

Finally, I developed an interactive React dashboard to provide monitoring and near-realtime actionable data with drill-down management pages for more information and to trigger automated actions as needed.

Rapid Network Configuration Search Engine

One critical challenge for large networks is performing a complex Regex search of all network configurations quickly. Tools are even considered performant if they complete a config search in less than an hour. In operations, this can cause costly delays in accessing critical data.

I developed a solution for a full Regex search with multiple and/or conditions against 50,000+ network configurations to be completed in ten seconds or less on average. Leveraging Node.js on the back end. The service distributes the search load over several processors, so each worker searches less than 10,000 configurations at a time. Each worker retrieves and optimizes their own configs for rapid searching, and the service manager then maintains a compiled cache of all the search results.

The service leverages two load-balanced servers which keep their cache in sync. The REST APIs serving the front end also maintain a cache, keeping the load off the search engine while keeping their cache current and in sync. Finally, the intuitive and responsive React Web UI provides the users an interface to perform searches and leverage results into various automated actions such as creating projects, changes, or incidents.

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, React Redux, REST APIs, Redux Form

Tools

Jira, GitHub, Git

Languages

SQL, Perl, CSS, VBScript, JavaScript, HTML, Regex, HTML5, Java, PHP, TypeScript

Frameworks

Bootstrap, Redux, Express.js, Angular, Material UI

Paradigms

Agile, Web UI Design, DevOps, REST, HTML DOM, Management

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Citrix, Firebase, MacOS, Web, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Storage

MongoDB

Other

Cisco, Networking, Agile DevOps, Full-stack, Web Development, HTML UI, Front-end, Back-end, Front-end Development, Back-end Development, F5 Networks, APIs, Leads, Remote Team Leadership, Team Leadership, API Integration, Riverbed, Web UI, Data Wrangling, Agile Sprints, Leadership

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