Willem Odendaal, Developer in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
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Willem Odendaal

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Encryption Developer

Location
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Toptal Member Since
July 27, 2015

Willem is an accomplished web developer as well as a leader and mentor who builds public-facing websites focused on security, usability, and performance. He's been programming since he first encountered Basic at age 10, and his toolset encompasses a range of technologies, most prominently .NET with a working knowledge of Java.

WindowsC#Single-page Applications (SPA)Microsoft SQL ServerAgile Software DevelopmentASP.NETJavaScriptjQueryMoqASP.NET MVCTeamCitySQL Server 2008 R2Knockout (Knockout.js)AngularJSEncryption

Portfolio

New Media Labs
Git, TeamCity, Couchbase, NUnit, Knockout (Knockout.js), Microsoft SQL Server...
Fin24.com
Subversion (SVN), NUnit, MSBuild, CruiseControl, NAnt, Spring.NET...
Silverminute/Bytes (acquired 2007)
Subversion (SVN), NAnt, NUnit, MSTest, CruiseControl, Microsoft SQL Server...

Experience

C# - 12 yearsNUnit - 7 yearsEncryption - 6 yearsBrowserify - 1 yearWebStorm - 1 yearAngularJS - 1 yearAzure - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Windows, JetBrains, Git

The most amazing...

...application I've built was the Atura chatbot platform, an Azure-based cross-channel platform that makes it easy to build good chatbots.

Work Experience

Lead Architect and Team Lead

2011 - PRESENT
New Media Labs
  • Help develop the Nedgroup Investments secure investor website using ASP.NET MVC 3.
  • Guide the Logimeter team in building a new single-page app style web portal using AngularJS.
  • Help develop Sparrow Communicator, a Xamarin-based iOS application meant for use by parents to keep track of their kids' busy school schedules.
  • Architect an EDA (Event Driven Architecture) style system, using NServiceBus and Azure Service Bus and ensuring it is scalable enough to handle millions of messages per day.
  • Start various initiatives at New Media Labs, like conducting one-on-one feedback sessions, spearheading an innovation program, and ensuring teams adhere to good practices like continuous integration and automated testing.
  • Act as technical team lead for a team of 5 developers.
Technologies: Git, TeamCity, Couchbase, NUnit, Knockout (Knockout.js), Microsoft SQL Server, AngularJS, JavaScript, Xamarin, C#, Entity Framework, ASP.NET MVC, .NET

Team lead

2010 - 2011
Fin24.com
  • Extended a public-facing news website and ensured that it did not experience any down-time during deployments.
  • Ensured that the website could handle a large number of requests during peak times (especially during certain times of the year).
  • Added rich financial charting using Dundas web charts.
  • Led a team of 2 developers using the Scrum methodology.
Technologies: Subversion (SVN), NUnit, MSBuild, CruiseControl, NAnt, Spring.NET, SQL Server 2008, ASP.NET Web Forms

Senior Developer

2005 - 2009
Silverminute/Bytes (acquired 2007)
  • Implemented an SOA-style services layer at Pam Golding, a South African estate agency specializing in high-end properties.
  • Built an interactive WPF prototype to help sell the concept for a power plant-specific staff management application.
  • Developed Cradle, a pregnancy tracking application using Windows Forms for the local government.
  • Acted as deployment manager for the new smart-card system used by the State of Victoria in Australia.
  • Built a WPF application framework for use by developers at Lonmin Platinum, to help them develop their own business-specific applications faster.
Technologies: Subversion (SVN), NAnt, NUnit, MSTest, CruiseControl, Microsoft SQL Server, Axapta, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), C#, .NET

Developer

2005 - 2005
Saratoga
  • Integrated with Microsoft Money via its API.
  • Helped develop ActNow, a staff-management application for the tech support industry.
  • Built a Windows Forms product, styling it as much as possible to stand out from the crowd (a difficult feat with Windows Forms).
Technologies: Subversion (SVN), Microsoft Money, SOAP, Windows Forms (WinForms), C#, .NET

Developer

2003 - 2005
Microgen/AFA Systems (acquired 2004)
  • Designed the web-based version of Common Knowledge, a knowledge management system, using ASP.NET Web Forms.
  • Built an XML-based query engine used to query the Common Knowledge database.
  • Adopted unit testing, a first for the company at that time.
  • Maintained and extended the existing version of Common Knowledge, a VB6 application.
Technologies: TFS, ASP.NET Web Forms, Visual Basic, VB.NET, C#, .NET

Junior Developer

2002 - 2003
Delos/Software Futures (acquired 2002)
  • Extended the Kalahari.net eCommerce website using Classic ASP.
  • Extended in-house applications for Delos using ASP.NET Web Forms (still very new at that stage).
Technologies: SQL Server 2000, Classic ASP, ASP.NET, VB.NET

Junior Developer

2002 - 2002
Hawaii Clothing
  • Built a garment manufacturing database system using Java and Swing.
  • Acted as a line manager half of the time to learn how garments are really made.
Technologies: ODBC, Swing, Java

Fin24.com

http://www.fin24.com/Company/JSE-Ltd
Helped develop several Fin24.com market data pages, showing financial info and charts about companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Ensured that the site can handle large amounts of concurrent users by adding effective ASP.NET caching.

Nedgroup Investments

The Nedgroup Investments secure website is used by investors with existing investments. We ensured the new website is better looking, faster and more robust than the previous version. Among many features, we also added the ability for investors to transact via the internet, whereas previously investors had to transact via phone and physical forms.

Sparrow Communicator

Sparrow Communicator is an iOS app used by parents to track their kids' busy schedules, and to view public information like the school's official schedule and general school events.

Large Service Bus Implementation

Architected and helped develop an event-driven system (confidential in nature) that is able to handle millions of messages per day and to scale up and down as necessary.

Languages

C#, HTML, JavaScript, VB.NET, Visual Basic, Java, T-SQL (Transact-SQL), CSS3

Frameworks

NUnit, Entity, Knockout (Knockout.js), AngularJS, Entity 6, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET, .NET, ASP.NET Web Forms, Spring.NET, Classic ASP, Swing, Express.js, ASP.NET Web API, Bootstrap, Json.NET, QUnit, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Jasmine, Windows Identity Foundation

Tools

Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft Unity, TeamCity, Git, NAnt, MSBuild, Subversion (SVN), MSTest, Microsoft Money, TFS, JetBrains, NPM, Browserify, WebStorm, Grunt, Jira, Gulp, Bower

Platforms

Windows, Azure, MacOS, Ubuntu, Xamarin, iOS

Libraries/APIs

jQuery, AutoMapper, Moq, Entity Framework, Windows Forms (WinForms), ODBC, Node.js, NServiceBus, Moment.js, Underscore.js

Paradigms

Scrum, Asynchronous Programming, Agile Software Development, REST

Storage

Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 R2, Couchbase, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2000

Other

Single-page Applications (SPA), Azure Service Bus, CruiseControl, Axapta, SOAP, Encryption, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

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