Stephen is available for hire

Stephen Villee

Verified Expert in Engineering

Software Developer

Location

Dover, NH, United States

Toptal Member Since

January 8, 2016

Stephen has been a software engineer for over 30 years. From developing software for the Unix platform in the 1980's to producing enterprise-level financial and eCommerce software on PHP, JS, and the C language family, he prides himself on being meticulous and developing high quality software. He is a dedicated, efficient individual and a great communicator, and looks forward to contributing valuable skills to your project!

C++Pascal C PHP MySQL Visual Basic jQuery CodeIgniter Back-end Development WordPress Facebook API Bootstrap Java ZURB Foundation Ada

Portfolio

Plymouth Design Group

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Microsoft Excel, JavaScript, PHP

Atlas Learning (via Toptal)

Google Native Client (NaCl), C

UTStarcom

Real-time Operating System (RTOS), C

Experience

Assembler x86 - 20 years C - 20 years Visual Basic - 10 years MySQL - 10 years PHP - 10 years Drupal - 5 years JavaScript - 5 years jQuery - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux

The most amazing...

...software I've written is a marketplace for software development that ties developer income to performance, including penalties for bugs.

Work Experience

Software Engineer

2006 - PRESENT

Plymouth Design Group

Upgraded a client's online store from X-Cart 3 to X-Cart 5. This involved writing X-Cart 5 modules to implement custom functionality that had previously been implemented as hacks to the X-Cart 3 core.
Worked with a team to redesign the user interface for an online shipping marketplace. I acted as lead developer for the back-end software.
Developed a utility to allow an Excel application on the Macintosh to generate several reports and combine them into a single PDF.
Created a system to allow several Excel software products to be licensed for 30 days at a time. This included code on the server to calculate the expiration date, along with Excel macros to enforce it.
Added a "what if" sheet to an investment analysis spreadsheet to let the customer make incremental changes to key assumptions, and immediately see the effect on various metrics.
Developed a system to add a banner to each eBay listing for a given seller, encouraging buyers to use a particular company for shipping.
Developed a web application to show market value for wet shaving gear, based on data from eBay sales, obtained through Terapeak.
Enhanced the partnership section of an investment analysis spreadsheet to show the effects of waterfall tiers in partner distributions.
Added macros to an Excel application to allow data to be imported from an earlier version of the application.
Modified the admin section of a shipping marketplace to show a variety of sales analytics, and to download this information in CSV form.

Technologies: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Microsoft Excel, JavaScript, PHP

PNACL Chrome Extension Developer

2016 - 2016

Atlas Learning (via Toptal)

Created a Google Native Client application to make a voice recording, encode it as MP3, and upload it to Google Drive.

Technologies: Google Native Client (NaCl), C

Software Engineer

2000 - 2003

UTStarcom

Developed a call control module to allow an analog phone to be connected to an H.323 network.
Tracked down and fixed several bugs in a vendor's H.323 protocol stack.

Technologies: Real-time Operating System (RTOS), C

Systems Analyst

1993 - 2000

Ticketmaster

Developed firmware for a portable device to read barcodes on concert tickets, allowing venues to collect statistics about attendance.
Developed an ODBC driver to allow direct access to a ticketing database from applications such as Microsoft Excel. This consisted of over 10000 lines of C++ written in about three months.
Wrote a version of the Kermit file transfer program in Pascal, for use under a proprietary operating system used for ticketing.
Rewrote some accounting reports to use a Microsoft Access database to store sales data.
Wrote numerous utilities to import data about sold and reserved seats into a proprietary ticketing system.

Technologies: Assembler, ODBC, C++, Microsoft Access, Pascal

Software Engineer

1988 - 1993

Viasoft

Sped up several Viasoft product components by rewriting some database access modules. The performance of the analyzer improved by about 30%.
Wrote a utility to take the JCL for a COBOL compile and convert it into JCL to run the Viasoft analyzer. This was important because customers had such varied ways of running the COBOL compiler.
Developed a system to allow Viasoft products to be split into packages that would be dynamically loaded as needed.
Integrated the Viasoft editor into the regular ISPF editor so that there would be no performance penalty until one of the special Viasoft commands was invoked.
Found a bug in another vendor's product that was manifesting itself as a failure in a Viasoft product. Suggested a fix.

Technologies: Assembler, Mainframe, COBOL, Pascal

Software Engineer

1987 - 1988

Vidnetics

Helped port an interactive cable video system for hotels and cruise ships to Unix System V.
Completely rewrote some firmware that served as a gateway between the in-room video board and the Unix System V head end. This was several thousand lines of Z80 assembler code.

Technologies: Assembler, C, Unix

Software Engineer

1984 - 1987

Anasazi

Developed general purpose network software for Unix.

Technologies: Assembly, Assembler x86, C, Unix

Software Engineer

1980 - 1984

Honeywell

Developed and maintained components of the GCOS 8 operating system.

Technologies: Assembler

Experience

Gea Web App

A web application to manage contracts for software development and other services. It used e-gold for payment, so it can't actually process payments now that e-gold has shut down. However, the app can still be installed and tested for other functions outside of payment.