Steven Kryskalla, Developer in Commerce Charter Township, MI, United States
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Steven Kryskalla

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Commerce Charter Township, MI, United States
Toptal Member Since
November 10, 2014

Steven is a full-stack software engineer and web developer with nearly a decade of experience working on large consumer projects for some of the world's most easily recognizable companies. Recently focused on DevOps, he is a smart and personable professional who can tackle solo or team challenges with equal ease.

LinuxPythonRedisGitHubGitNagiosFlaskMySQLSQLMercurialMacOSDevOpsTornadoWindowsjQuery

Portfolio

Dropbox
Bash, Bitten, Trac, VMware vSphere, Jenkins, Puppet, Python
CommandIQ
RQ, Redis, Boto, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Redshift, Amazon EC2, Python
Lumosity (Lumos Labs)
CentOS, HAProxy, Graphite, Nagios, Python, Redis, MySQL, Chef...

Experience

Linux - 15 yearsPython - 13 yearsJavaScript - 8 yearsGit - 5 yearsRedis - 5 yearsFlask - 4 yearsDevOps - 3 yearsRuby - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Terminal, Linux, Git, Firefox, Vi

The most amazing...

...thing I built in 24 hours was a distributed MySQL traffic replayer (dumping packets, parsing the MySQL protocol, filtering, distributing queries to clients).

Work Experience

Software Engineer, Release Engineering

2015 - 2017
Dropbox
  • Operationalized and automated manual processes related to desktop client builds (Windows, Linux, and OSX).
  • Maintained and improved the existing build system (Trac, Bitten, py.test) for desktop clients.
  • Designed and deployed a new desktop client build system using Jenkins, VMware vSphere, and Python.
  • Participated in on-call rotation for build issues.
  • Wrote custom puppet modules for OS X and Linux to provision build infrastructure.
Technologies: Bash, Bitten, Trac, VMware vSphere, Jenkins, Puppet, Python

Senior Back-end Engineer

2014 - 2015
CommandIQ
  • Improved the reliability and functionality of back-end systems (data processing pipeline).
  • Used auto-scaling groups for deployment (Netflix-style red/black deploys of new AMIs).
  • Integrated Rollbar for better visibility of platform errors and exceptions.
  • Added monitoring via CloudWatch.
  • Managed a Redshift data warehouse cluster (data loading, unloading, monitoring, cluster resizing, etc.).
Technologies: RQ, Redis, Boto, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Redshift, Amazon EC2, Python

Senior Software Engineer, Operations

2012 - 2014
Lumosity (Lumos Labs)
  • Fixed hardware failures, network failures, MySQL and Redis crashes, bad deploys, DDoS attacks, failed maintenance windows, and more at all hours of the day.
  • Managed 150 dedicated servers (dedicated hardware from SoftLayer).
  • Sharded and scaled clusters for MySQL, Redis, and Memcached.
  • Added automation and monitoring for all levels of the stack.
  • Managed configuration with Chef and Ansible.
Technologies: CentOS, HAProxy, Graphite, Nagios, Python, Redis, MySQL, Chef, Ruby on Rails (RoR)

Software Engineer, Operations

2011 - 2012
Lolapps
  • Rewrote copy-pasted Bash deployment scripts as clean, re-usable Python code (with Fabric).
  • Migrated internal Subversion repos to Git and GitHub.
  • Set up a continuous integration and deployment system using Jenkins.
  • Implemented automated rolling of MySQL table partitions to safely rotate out old data on live database servers.
  • Helped manage 200+ dedicated servers in many capacities including provisioning, automation, and maintenance.
Technologies: HAProxy, Memcached, MongoDB, MySQL, Bash, Fabric, Pylons, Python

Software Engineer

2008 - 2011
ePrize
  • Built online promotions for top brands such as Xbox, Disney, Gap, Condé Nast, Dell, and Coca-Cola.
  • Led development on Xbox Live Rewards.
  • Built custom CMS and internationalization functionality on top of Django.
  • Did back-end engineering work for large scale email marketing campaigns via ExactTarget.
  • Developed Facebook applications.
  • Integrated and built data exchanges for clients using a broad range of technologies (SOAP, REST, SFTP, Java, C#, Perl, Python, etc.).
  • Created custom reports and dashboards for clients to help them visualize their programs' metrics.
Technologies: Twitter API, Facebook Open Graph API, MySQL, SOAP, REST APIs, Django, Python, JavaScript, Perl

Robotics Lab Assistant

2005 - 2007
Lawrence Technological University
  • Built software to generate thousands of pages of printed material for Robofest competitions (certificates, name badges, signs, etc.).
  • Did web development for Robofest.net using Java, JSP, and Python.
  • Taught classes and led workshops on robotics for people of all ages (grade school through adult).
  • Helped organize and run Robofest events.
  • Conducted systems administration for robotics and computer labs on campus (Linux, Windows, Solaris).
Technologies: SVG, Robotics, C++, C, Python, Java

Journal of Brief Ideas

https://github.com/physicsdavid/journalofbriefideas
An open access journal (like arXiv) for scientific ideas. Winner of the Communications category at Science Hack Day SF 2013.

OpenXC Taximeter

https://github.com/lost-theory/ingenuity-taxi
A program that shows drivers the real-time cost of their trip using data from OpenXC. Winner of Best Use of Data at BoingBoing Ingenuity 2013.

Xbox Live Rewards

Microsoft's loyalty program for Xbox Live members. I built out the back-end (integrating with Xbox Live and partners), CMS functionality and internationalization, and front-end features (surveys, data visualization, other interactive functionality).

Disney Movie Rewards

http://www.disneymovierewards.go.com/
Disney's movie rewards program. I performed maintenance and built out custom functionality including custom reporting, promotions, and integration with Disney and other vendors.

My StackOverflow profile

http://stackoverflow.com/users/75956/lost-theory
Rated top 10% for Python development.

Languages

Python, JavaScript, SQL, Bash, Java, C, C++, Ruby, Perl

Frameworks

Flask, Pylons, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Django

Tools

Nagios, GitHub, Git, Mercurial, Terminal, Chef, Boto, Puppet, Jenkins, VMware vSphere, Trac, Subversion (SVN), Adobe Photoshop, Audacity, Paint.NET, Inkscape

Platforms

Linux, MacOS, Firefox, CentOS, Amazon EC2, Android, Windows, Mailgun

Storage

Redis, Memcached, MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Redshift, PostgreSQL, MongoDB

Other

Graphite, Vi, HAProxy, SOAP, Robotics, SVG, Bitten, Tornado

Paradigms

DevOps, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Functional Programming, Agile Software Development, Asynchronous Programming, Scrum, Concurrent Programming

Libraries/APIs

Fabric, REST APIs, Facebook Open Graph API, RQ, Twilio API, Twitter API, Underscore.js, jQuery, Facebook API

2003 - 2008

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics

Lawrence Technological University - Southfield, Michigan