About Me#

I have been writing software professionally for 18+ years, and I like documenting the systems and decisions behind it. I’m especially interested in low-level and embedded systems, hardware, performance, and the craft of building reliable software.

You can expect topics on enterprise software development, operating system development, home-labbing, and my general thoughts on software and tech. I care about understanding how things work under the hood and making conscious trade-offs; when simplicity beats cleverness, when performance matters, and when “good enough” is the most professional choice.

This space is part reference, part portfolio. A collection of write-ups, experiments, patterns worth repeating, failures worth remembering, and projects I want to be able to explain clearly.

If you’re curious, like to learn by building, and appreciate practical opinions backed by real attempts, I hope you’ll find something here that helps you pick up a new perspective or learn something along the way.

Summary of Qualifications#

Programming professional with 18+ years of experience using Microsoft Technologies like Sql Server Integration Services, Sql Server Reporting Services, Microsoft Sql Server, Web Services, Internet Information Services, and Visual Studio, Microsoft Azure
Familiar with Object Orientation and Functional programming practices
Excellent understanding of the programming and scripting languages; Zig, Rust, Microsoft .Net, C#, T/SQL, JavaScript, and HTML
Familiar with the web frameworks and libraries; HTMX, JQuery, ASP.Net MVC and WebForms, and React & Redux
Thorough understanding of concepts such as Database Normalization, Table Locking, Security, Data Loading, Cleansing and Transformation
Experience working with customers, both in person and over the phone, of varying levels of technical backgrounds
Excellent leadership, time management, problem solving, and communication skills

Professional Experience#

Valmark Financial Group – Akron, Ohio#

Sr. Software Developer | Manager#

January 2020 – Present

Moved into an official leadership role with 2-4 direct reports at any given time of varying skill levels
Moved sensitive information out of source control and environment variables into the Azure Key Vault
Added additional service integrations to support faxing and SMS automations as well as tooling around automatically deploying console applications since it is not natively supported
Replaced OnBase integration with a custom integration to Box saving money and opening more capabilities with their AI services
Designed a new Rule Engine that supports arbitrary workflows written in dotnet upgrading the workflow system for Investment Operations to be more cloud friendly
Helped navigate IT, and the firm as a whole, through the use of AI and the challenges that being in financial services brings

Sr. Software Developer#

January 2017 – January 2020

Mentored interns and Jr Developers to help the team grow
Implemented the code review system Review Assistant to increase code quality and allow for project stewards to both get help implementing features and streamline the pair programming process
Implemented many web based integrations with other financial firms and products allowing member firms to push data directly to Valmark and vendors further reducing the need to hand key data between different systems. Some such products and vendors include; Schwab, TD Ameritrade, RedTail, OnBase, Tamarac and DocuSign
Spearhead internal tooling around;
- Logging and Metrics increasing system visibility allowing the team to be proactive when issues arise
- CRM Replication pulling performance costly reporting away from the OLTP systems
- Data Request Hub a place to implement batch request systems and trap doors taking the burden from IT and empowering the business units to perform their duties and correct issues without having to submit tickets
Designed a smart workflow system for Investment Operations to automatically move cases between different states based on the data and a set of rules. This allowed the staff to focus on what they were trained to do and less on needing to know where the next place or person a case needs to go. This also provided major efficiency boost increasing processing speed and accuracy taking processing time down from days to mere hours

IT Developer#

June 2014 – January 2017

Started the DevOps journey of the company, taking it from hand deploying software to a scripted and repeatable process using the Jenkins platform
Setup a private internal NuGet repository for all of our in house shared libraries
Tasked with maintaining and writing integrations with third-party vendors, involving bulk extraction and transformation of data
Spearhead the choice of a new firm facing content management system moving off from Microsoft SharePoint onto something more modern and customizable for receiving business from our member firms
Tasked with learning and implementing a deep integration with the LaserApp form filling platform to help streamline filling financial forms with speed and accuracy as well as receiving data back to be ingested digitally without the need for staff to hand key into company systems
Designed tooling for managing the integration and form data mappings to and from LaserApp
Designed and Implemented a core library that all applications can share, reducing code duplication and application specialization, when interfacing with the company CRM system

InfoCision Management Corporation – Akron, Ohio#

Lead Application Developer – Consumer Services Division#

November 2011 – June 2014

Tasked with setting best practices and insure the quality of data provided to Consumer Services clients
Performed code reviews of peers insuring best practices being upheld
Worked closely with internal account teams to develop tools like web portals allowing management of their clients with little IT intervention
Worked on corporate projects providing enhanced call routing solutions
Developed Extract Transform Load framework standardizing internal client data management and cleansing
Attended Microsoft Dev Connections Conference for SQL Server, Integration Services, and Entity Framework

Application Developer – Business Intelligence Group#

April 2009 – November 2011

Head up the development and implementation effort surrounding a predictive dialing strategy
Oversaw data harvesting and delivery processes for the corporate data warehouse
Implemented a systems monitoring solution used to make sure all processes maintained by the Business Intelligence Group are running quick and efficiently

Data Analyst – Business Intelligence Group#

August 2007 – April 2009

Provided analytical services to internal divisions using the corporate data warehouse like segmentation files, historical call analytics, and donor research
Developed a collection of tools and a front end web interface that centralized services such as data overlays into an automated request platform

Professional Recognition#

(October 2011) – Working Smarter Award winner for developing an automated Power Point solution saving close to 40 hours a month in manual work
(November 2010) – InfoCision Employee of the Month

Education#

University of Akron – Akron, Ohio#

Associates in Computer Information Systems: Programming Specialist
Certificate in Programming and Database Management