Star Ford
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Las Vegas, NM, United States
Toptal member since October 12, 2016
Star has been consulting and developing software for twenty years, with special skills in capturing and communicating requirements, data modeling, and modeling business processes. Her experience largely focuses on media production workflow management, and she has an interest in optimization and complexity reduction in enterprise-level data systems. Her primary platform choices are C# and related Microsoft tools.
Portfolio
Experience
- C# - 15 years
- Microsoft SQL Server - 10 years
- Windows Forms (WinForms) - 10 years
- ASP.NET MVC - 10 years
- JavaScript - 10 years
- ASP.NET - 10 years
- Entity - 5 years
- Dart - 1 year
Availability
Preferred Environment
Visual Studio, C#
The most amazing...
...optimization I've designed is a Scrabble robot that analyzes every possible play on any board in 0.1 seconds.
Work Experience
Architect | Developer
Plug.events
- Led the co-founder team through the requirements process, creating detailed requirements documents.
- Created a scalable system architecture and designed database and server-tier components.
- Developed server-side code and integration tests: 18,000 lines in six weeks.
- Built and maintained server-side and client-side code and deployment tools.
Software Engineer
Divergent Labs, Inc.
- Built a tool for tracking lifecycle carbon emissions in food products, to be used by food producers to quantify what-if analyses of different ingredients, packaging, and shipping.
- Built a web front end for a broadcasting workflow management system, providing the same fluid experience as the existing Windows client, supporting 800 customizable entry forms, drag-n-drop graphical scheduling, and custom reports.
- Built a complete inventory and eCommerce system for a jeweler, supporting item tracking for one-off items as well as repeats, photos, and site management features.
- Added features to civnet.co, a civic engagement web system.
- Build an interactive kiosk using motion sensors to allow hands-free interaction in an immersive museum-like environment. Ultimately, the tool was used to demo an experimental advertising technique.
- Conceived of and developed slideword.com, a crossword-like game. This was written in Silverlight back when that was considered stable, then in 2020, rewritten in Blazor (WebAssmebly).
- Designed and developed NotifyPlex.com, a many-to-many messaging utility for use cases such as government transparency. This was developed using "serverless" computing on Amazon Web Services (Lambda, API Gateway, PostgreSQL and other AWS resources).
Software Consultant
Kaplan/Purdue University
- Added and modified CMS templates and solved longstanding quality issues in the codebase for a set of marketing web sites using CrownPeak CMS.
- Built a system for developer productivity that allows for local development and debugging (a missing feature of CrownPeak), and optimized page loads.
Senior Software Engineer
Amrock
- Developed an Azure-based document storage solution with OCR and type conversion.
- Built an error correction tool to compare details of insurance policies to public data sources, to find mistakes like misspelled names, property identification, and missing deeds.
- Created an analysis tool for fine-tuning the correction algorithms with visual trends and statistics.
Experience
Xytech Systems MediaPulse
http://www.xytechsystems.com/showroom/videos/SlideWord
NotifyPlex
Carbonostics
http://www.carbonostics.com/I did the requirements analysis, math model, database model, and software specifications, as well as coding for this project.
Dart Social Movement
https://github.com/starlys/dart-social-movementEducation
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Education
Earlham College - Richmond, IN
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Windows Forms (WinForms), AngularUI, jQuery, React, SignalR, Vue
Tools
Microsoft Access, Microsoft Silverlight, Visual Studio, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudFront CDN
Languages
HTML, CSS, Dart, JavaScript, ASP.NET Razor, C#, Scala, Visual Basic, Java, HTML5, TypeScript, Delphi, Ruby
Frameworks
ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET, Entity, Angular Material, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Angular, Blazor, .NET Core, PhoneGap, Telerik Kendo UI
Paradigms
API Architecture, Requirements Analysis, REST, Agile, Test-driven Development (TDD), Model View Controller (MVC)
Storage
Databases, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Azure SQL, Azure Blobs, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon, AWS Lambda, Crownpeak CMS, Amazon EC2, MacOS, Windows, Azure
Industry Expertise
Healthcare, Accounting
Other
Code Architecture, APIs, Back-end, Web Development, Requirements, User Requirements, System Requirements, Business Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Architecture, Software Development, Technical Project Management, eCommerce, Ajax, DevExpress, Games, Social Media Platforms, Amazon Route 53, WebAssembly (Wasm)
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