Will Beddow, Developer in New York, NY, United States
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Will Beddow

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Full-stack Developer

Location
New York, NY, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 19, 2021

Will is an experienced and passionate full-stack developer. He's been freelancing since 2014 and prides himself on communication, flexibility, and a range of skills. His past projects include everything from satellite data analysis and ride-sharing apps to AI-driven industrial automation. Professionally, he's worked in startups and small businesses as small as three people and for organizations as large as the federal government.

Back-endFull-stackWeb ScrapingNatural Language Processing (NLP)AWS DevOpsMachine LearningAmazon RDSCTOPythonPython 3API/Services ArchitectureJavaScriptDjangoDevOpsWeb DesignSolanaMulti-CloudSchemeHybrid CloudEncryptionJWTCryptography

Portfolio

Waverly AI
Machine Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), TypeScript, Office Add-ins...
LaunchScience (Acquired by Octane11)
Django, OpenAI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI, React, TypeScript...
Explore Philanthropy
Python, JavaScript, React, Django, ETL, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, Chart.js...

Experience

Python - 8 yearsWeb Design - 7 yearsDjango - 7 yearsJavaScript - 7 yearsReact - 5 yearsFlutter - 3 yearsGo - 3 yearsRust - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, Flutter, Dart, React, Linux, Cloud, Rust

The most amazing...

...project I've built is an AI-assisted college application review and guidance system for a non-profit that helps underprivileged kids get into colleges.

Work Experience

Co-Founder | CTO

2023 - PRESENT
Waverly AI
  • Created a semantic layer for tabular spreadsheet data - involved finetuning an LLM, writing some dynamic chunking algorithms, and building a system to query arbitrarily structured spreadsheets with SQL.
  • Built a system that acts like AI-assisted Excel macros. It records a complex series of events in a spreadsheet, puts them in a graph, and parameterizes it with AI.
  • Built a WebSocket-based RPC system that allowed rapid syncing of spreadsheet states between Excel and an AI supervision process.
  • Designed a custom LLM eval framework - evaluated our AI tasks on several different models and scenarios in a test harness that communicated in real-time with Excel.
Technologies: Machine Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), TypeScript, Office Add-ins, Fine-tuning, FastAPI, Pydantic

Founding Software Engineer

2022 - 2023
LaunchScience (Acquired by Octane11)
  • Acted as engineer #3 at venture-funded SaaS for marketing startup, helped bring the company from pre-product to acquisition.
  • Solved a large and diverse set of technical challenges in areas ranging from search systems to AI agents. Used the following core technologies: Django, React/TypeScript, OpenAI, AWS CDK, and PostgreSQL.
  • Owned and designed many of our systems end-to-end, including our AI agent framework, control plane, rich text parser, and search system.
Technologies: Django, OpenAI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI, React, TypeScript, SDKs, PostgreSQL, Pydantic

Full-stack Developer

2022 - 2022
Explore Philanthropy
  • Developed a React and Django web platform for institutional philanthropists to find nonprofits to donate funds. The platform includes complex visualizations, filters, and options to browse versioned and detailed information about 650,000+ organizations.
  • Designed a custom, spare and robust data model allowing for efficient storage and querying of versioned data across 190+ different parameters about an organization and implemented said model in PostgreSQL.
  • Created a complex and fault-tolerant ETL pipeline to parse data from government and private sources at regular intervals and load it into the web platform's database.
  • Managed cloud infrastructure, using Google Cloud to tie together containerized apps, managed services on Google App Engine using a CI/CD pipeline, cloud databases, a headless CMS, and an integration with an interactive data notebook service.
  • Created complex interactive data drilldowns, charts, and other visualizations, allowing for deep insights into an organization's activities and financial information.
Technologies: Python, JavaScript, React, Django, ETL, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, Chart.js, Google App Engine, Pydantic

Lead Developer

2021 - 2022
Optifi
  • Led a team of developers to create a decentralized options and futures trading exchange on the Solana blockchain, using Rust, Serum, and Anchor. The implementation included complex financial calculations, system design, account management, etc.
  • Created a high-performance, fault-tolerant Rust data orchestration system that monitors hundreds of on-chain data sources, calculates financial metrics, and generates a stream of critical system data through scheduling and event-driven polling.
  • Created a TypeScript SDK to use a complex on-chain system, delivering a completely portable and ergonomic interface for first- and third-party use, abstracting complex blockchain instructions into simple, safe, and easy-to-use functions and interfaces.
  • Leveraged experience in fintech, options trading, systems design, and cryptography to advise team members on best practices and system structure and oversaw deployment, security, and strategy details.
Technologies: Rust, Solana, Blockchain, Fintech, System Design, TypeScript, Anchor, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, AWS Amplify, PostgreSQL, Cryptography, DevOps, API/Services Architecture, API Integration, AWS DevOps

Software Engineer

2021 - 2021
Boston Consulting Group
  • Integrated, expanded, and deployed a React/Django application in a large corporate AWS environment. Built, collaborated on, and managed an ETL pipeline that loaded millions of rows a day into and out of said application.
  • Refactored and advised on large React application according to best practices, introducing thousands of lines of TypeScript into the application, increasing developer productivity, and informing conventions going forward on team.
  • Built, managed, and adapted custom Ansible scripts to manage deployments and infrastructure of application in constrained environment, and coordinated with operations teams to ensure stability, performance, and availability of application across.
Technologies: Python, Django, React, Ansible, Amazon Web Services (AWS), ETL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Data Engineering, TypeScript, API/Services Architecture, API Integration, AWS DevOps

Software Engineer

2021 - 2021
Neural Concept
  • Integrated with Azure Marketplace and fulfillment and Graph APIs to create a Flask and Vue.js landing page for a SaaS Azure Marketplace offer, delivering on time to satisfied stakeholders.
  • Connected the Azure Marketplace offer configuration with a stateless JWT scheme that allowed administrators to activate and monitor user subscriptions.
  • Wrote the Azure Marketplace webhook integration to respond and notify administrators and send responses to Azure upon receipt of subscription change or cancellation.
Technologies: Python 3, Flask, Vue, Vuex, Azure, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Webhooks, API/Services Architecture, API Integration

Full-stack Developer | Project Manager

2018 - 2021
Quest for Success
  • Designed, developed, built, and maintained an AI-integrated system with over 2,000 active users to help high school students and the nonprofit organization guide them through the college application.
  • Designed and built a Django web application to administratively manage said system, integrating with Google Docs, College Scorecard, and various other services.
  • Developed a hybrid-cloud strategy to transition from traditional Windows server-based technology to CI/CD cloud deployment pipelines. All stakeholders were satisfied with the budget, timeline, and performance.
  • Designed, developed, and deployed mobile Flutter app for iOS and Android, which integrated with hardware NFC scanning, and previously built back-end systems to implement mobile check-in and education systems for students.
  • Directed a team in producing a suite of advertisements, promotional videos, and tutorials about the systems and services we built.
  • Planned, built, and launched emergency remote teaching services for staff at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in one week, enabling essential processes to continue with almost no downtime in March 2020.
  • Developed, deployed, and maintained an automatically managed enrollment system in React and TypeScript, Firebase, and Google Cloud.
Technologies: Django, Python, JavaScript, React, Flutter, iOS, Android, Ansible, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, GPT, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Web Design, API/Services Architecture, API Integration, Google Chrome

Software Engineering Fellow

2020 - 2020
Civic Digital Fellowship | US Federal Government
  • Collaborated with the login.gov team members to maintain, produce, and develop technologies across their product stack, from building AWS KMS encryption modules in Rails to writing React integrations for document capture processes.
  • Researched, developed a plan for, and presented a proposal on the feasibility of new encryption technologies as applied to the work of login.gov.
  • Built tools and scripts to improve the testing and debugging processes of login.gov, integrating with existing CI/CD infrastructure.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails 5, React, Webpack, Encryption, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Cloud

Web and App Developer

2018 - 2020
Carleton College Web Services
  • Redesigned and optimized existing legacy Android and iOS apps, delivering improved and expanded apps on time and coordinating with teams across campus.
  • Collaborated with the web services staff to migrate from a legacy custom PHP system to a WordPress stack hosted on Google Cloud and deliver end-to-end unit and integration testing framework.
  • Proposed and launched a project to create an accessible consolidated campus GraphQL API, organizing stakeholders and working with teams across campus.
  • Wrote custom React integration with WordPress Gutenberg, reducing the friction in the workflow for content editors, and decreasing friction for content stakeholders.
Technologies: PHP, GraphQL, WordPress, Java, Swift, Android, iOS, Web Design

Software Development Intern

2018 - 2018
Acceletrade
  • Designed and created a real-time Django, Redis, and Google Charts financial visualization system, to assist traders with visualizing order flow and other information.
  • Wrote an ETL pipeline to coordinate the high-speed and secure transfer of financial data between teams, setting up a secure Redis server in the process.
  • Discovered network security vulnerability in the course of work, followed proper procedure for documenting, and provided advice on patching.
  • Built a cross-platform and cross-browser testing framework, including Selenium testing structure, and instrumented the system to distinguish automated and developer-supported tests. Found and fixed existing application errors in the process.
  • Proposed, built, and deployed a new Docker containerization stack for the existing system, resulting in an updated, standardized, and secure deployment pipeline.
Technologies: Redis, Python, Django, High-frequency Trading (HFT), ETL

W.I.L.L

https://github.com/ironman5366/W.I.L.L
A Python-based personal assistant I started as a hobby project. After attaining feature parity for a time with Siri and Google Assistant, the project garnered over 3,000 users at its peak before I eventually sunset it, as other projects gained priority.

W.I.L.L won Python Weekly magazine's Module of the Week in February 2017.

KRLX Mobile and Desktop Apps

Mobile (Flutter) and desktop (Electron) apps for my college's local radio station, allowing students to see what songs are playing and add them to their Spotify or Apple Music accounts. Integrated with campus systems and published in 2019.

Desk.js Word Processor

https://github.com/WriteDontThink/desk.js
A TypeScript paginated word processor I wrote and open sourced, developed originally as an accessory to a larger writing app I was working on. It automatically handles page breaks, different content types, and keyboard shortcuts.
Image of Code Writing Code: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Modern Metaprogramming publication
Publication

Code Writing Code: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Modern Metaprogramming

https://www.toptal.com/julia/code-writing-code-modern-metaprogamming

Languages

Python, JavaScript, Dart, TypeScript, SQL, CSS, HTML, Python 3, Go, Java, Ruby, GraphQL, C, Rust, Julia, Prolog, Kotlin, Lisp, Scheme, PHP, Swift, C++

Frameworks

Flutter, Django, Flask, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Selenium, Bootstrap, Ruby on Rails 5, React Native, Redux, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Next.js, Electron

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, Socket.IO, SQLAlchemy, SpaCy, REST APIs, Pydantic, Protobuf, Vue, TensorFlow, Stripe, AWS Amplify, jQuery, Vuex, Stripe API, Chart.js

Tools

Git, GitHub, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Ansible, Photoshop CC, Premiere Pro CC, SendGrid, GoLand, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudFormation, AWS AppSync, MongoDB Atlas, Webpack, After Effects CC

Paradigms

ETL, DevOps, Penetration Testing, REST, Mobile Development, Serverless Architecture, Functional Programming, Functional Reactive Programming, API/Services Architecture

Platforms

Linux, Web, iOS, Android, WordPress, Firebase, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, AWS Lambda, Blockchain, Amazon EC2, Kubernetes, Mobile, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Chrome, Google App Engine

Industry Expertise

Web Design, High-frequency Trading (HFT)

Storage

NoSQL, Amazon Aurora, Databases, Redis, Cloud Firestore, MongoDB, Data Pipelines, PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, MySQL, Neo4j, SQLite, Graph Databases, Google Cloud

Other

Cloud, Computer Science, Encryption, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Chatbots, API Design, System Design, Machine Learning, APIs, Progressive Web Applications (PWA), Full-stack, Back-end, Webhooks, Web Scraping, Amazon RDS, Architecture, Software Architecture, API Gateways, Serverless, SSH, Web Development, API Integration, IT Security, Security Audits, Security, AWS DevOps, GPT, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), CTO, Mobile App Development, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Web Animation, Algorithmic Trading, Video Editing, Firebase Cloud Functions, Google Cloud Functions, Zustand, WebSockets, Data Analysis, Algorithms, Trading, Amazon API Gateway, Solana, Anchor, Cryptography, Lottie, WebAssembly, Chrome Extensions, AWS SAM, Enterprise Architecture, Containers, Amazon Route 53, FastAPI, Data Engineering, Fintech, OpenAI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI, SDKs, Office Add-ins, Fine-tuning

2018 - 2021

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Carleton College - Northfield, MN, USA

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