Randall Schmidt, Developer in Knoxville, TN, United States
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Randall Schmidt

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Chatbots Developer

Location
Knoxville, TN, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 2, 2018

Randall has over eight years of development experience, including four years in the industry, working across various domains and languages. He is known for his thorough planning and careful execution that enables him to deliver exactly the right product without unnecessary iteration. His varied experiences make him quick to adapt to the unexpected and never be intimidated by the unknown.

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, C#

The most amazing...

...thing I've coded is an algorithm to distinguish between intentional "bump" actions and other movements, using the accelerometer and gyroscope in an iPad.

Work Experience

Staff Software Engineer

2014 - 2017
National Instruments
  • Developed cross-platform test and measurement applications for Windows and iOS, using Xamarin tools and C#.
  • Acted as the main point of contact between the development and localization teams, taking initiative to streamline localization by creating tools to automate significant parts of the localization testing process.
  • Consistently delivered requirements ahead of schedule. As the sole developer on one minor release, I enabled the product itself to release a week ahead of schedule.
  • Communicated directly with customers via email, forum messages, and in person at trade shows to understand their goals and needs. Used customer feedback to inform feature design and prioritization, resulting in a practical product that efficiently addressed customer use cases.
  • Developed and documented group-wide coding practices to avoid memory leaks in the Xamarin.iOS runtime environment.
  • Mentored interns and new hires—helping them to understand development processes, company culture, and business goals.
  • Was awarded Rookie of the Year 2014 for outstanding achievements as a new hire.
Technologies: Jenkins, GNUMake, Perforce, Visual Studio, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), C#, iOS, Xamarin

VirtualBench iOS and Windows Application

http://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/electronic-test-instrumentation/virtualbench/what-is-virtualbench.html
VirtualBench is a 5-in-1 hardware product for scientists and engineers. It contains a mixed signal oscilloscope, function generator, DC power supply, digital multimeter, and logic analyzer. The iOS and Windows applications are used to interface with the hardware product and act as its user interface.

Having worked on the project for the majority of my three years at National Instruments, I was responsible for implementing many major features including the XY graph mode, reference waveforms, device discovery and pairing, hands-free mode, and more.

Automated Trading Algorithms

Working together with a client, an experienced forex trader, I developed automated trading algorithms for the JForex trading platform.

The algorithms automatically execute trades based on the complex behavior of various market indicators (such as moving averages and volume).

The client designed the algorithms, I implemented them in Java, tested, measured, looked for potential oversights in or possible improvements to the algorithm, reported my findings to the client, and we iterated repeatedly to make improvements.

The algorithms can either run inside of the JForex client and indicate what they are doing by drawing on charts and emitting log messages, or they can run headlessly on a remote server.

The client highly valued my initiative and ability to detect corner cases and oversights in the algorithms that they designed.

KotobaWeb

http://kotobaweb.com/
KotobaWeb.com is an educational website for Japanese learners that I am developing in my spare time. The main feature consists of two simple WebSocket-based multiplayer vocabulary games that test players on their ability to read and use the Chinese characters that are used in Japanese writing.

The site is written using React, Express, MongoDB, and Google Material Design principles.

The code is open-source: https://github.com/mistval/kotobaweb

Kotoba Discord Bot

Kotoba is a chatbot that I develop and operate on the Discord chat service. It targets Japanese language learners and offers dictionary lookups, text rendering, educational games, and more.

The bot is currently deployed in more than 2,000 Discord servers and responds to 1,000-2,000 commands daily from 100-200 unique users.

The code is open-source: https://github.com/mistval/kotoba

Metaneva

Metaneva was an experimental workbench funded by the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) for storing and querying data from experiments in the neurosciences. While still in high school at the time, I was responsible for developing and implementing a domain-specific database query language for it and a module for viewing query results in a tree-like view.

Languages

JavaScript, C#, Java, C++, Objective-C, Swift, TypeScript

Frameworks

Cocoa Touch, Express.js, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Libraries/APIs

Xamarin.iOS, Node.js

Platforms

iOS, Visual Studio 2016, Android, Windows, Linux, Xamarin

Other

Discord Bots, Freelancing, Xamarin Studio, Chatbots, Technical Forex Concepts

Tools

Git, Visual Studio, Atom, Jenkins, GNUMake, Perforce, Xcode

Paradigms

Agile

Storage

MongoDB

2010 - 2013

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Troy, NY, USA

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