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Gavin Stark

gavin@gstark.com727-560-3116Saint Petersburg, FL, 33703
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Software engineer with broad experience in Back End Web, Front End Web, DevOps, and Operating Systems who creates, maintains, audits, and improves systems to fulfill clients’ requirements. Proficient in determining requirements, coordinating developer teams, and creating and deploying applications.

Skill Areas

Technical Proficiencies

Ruby(16 years)
Java(16 years)
Ruby on Rails(16 years)
Management(16 years)
MySQL(15 years)
Linux(15 years)
TDD(14 years)
Mentorship(12 years)
Nginx(11 years)
Heroku(6 years)
PostgreSQL(6 years)
Docker(5 years)
C#(3 years)
Career Experience

Principal Software Engineer (Contractor), STRATACACHE (Real Digital Media division), Saint Petersburg, FloridaJun 2022 - Current

  • Continuing previous role in a contractor capacity.
  • Lowered installation costs of in-store media playing devices by implementing a wifi and mobile based device configuration system in React
  • Achieved first-to-market for ARM based tablet and shelf-edge display devices by porting existing Intel based operating system.
  • Lowered AWS costs through analyzing and right-sizing EC2 and RDS instances.

Principal Engineer, Kin Insurance, Saint Petersburg, FloridaJan 2022 - June 2022

  • Contributed to an Event Source architecture for an accounting and billing system
  • Mentored developers at all levels (associate through staff)
  • Reviewed architecture proposals as part of the Architecture Review Board
  • Performed code reviews for pull-requests across the organization
  • Developed libraries and patterns for building internal APIs
  • Contributed to the organization's Tech Vision on behalf of the CTO and VP of Architecture

Principal Engineer, STRATACACHE (Real Digital Media division), Saint Petersburg, Florida2017 - Dec 2021

  • Developed, maintained, and improved a large-scale Ruby on Rails project for over 15 years. Migrated from Rails version 0.9 through Rails version 6.1
  • Built a Ruby back-end API that processes millions of requests and background jobs per day.
  • Migrated a Ruby on Rails system to a JSON-API-based back-end, improving the marketability of the NEOCAST digital signage management system.
  • Built automated test code in Ruby and Cucumber to automate the testing of embedded hardware.
  • Used RSpec to provide full test coverage of the authorization layer in the Rails JSON-API
  • Built Ruby based AWS automation software to deploy and scale a docker-based infrastructure. This led to a reduction in hosting costs.

Senior Instructor, Suncoast Developers Guild, Saint Petersburg, Florida2018 - Dec 2021

  • Designed and implemented an interactive and engaging curriculum for multiple courses.
  • Contributed to internal app generator:app-app. Based on react-scripts, builds student starter projects.
  • Expanded market from full-time in-person classes into remote, part-time courses by developing an open-source curriculum for Ruby, C#, Entity Framework, ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, Responsive Web, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Deployment, and Algorithmic Thinking.
  • Reduced overhead by developing a Rails-based student management system to effectively handle multiple operations, including enrollment, homework assignment, grading, and student progress reports.

Instructor and Product Development, The Iron Yard, Saint Petersburg, Florida2015 - 2017

  • Increased enrollment at one of the most profitable campuses at the largest in-person code school through developing and implementing a curriculum for Ruby, Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node, Express, Algorithmic Thinking, and Deployment.
  • Built a learning management application in Ruby on Rails to manage student information, assignments, and performance.

Principal Software Engineer, Real Digital Media, Saint Petersburg, Florida2005 - 2015

  • Designed, architected, and implemented a Ruby on Rails based software-as-a-service digital signage platform recognized as the most adaptable and easy to use in the market.
  • Managed a team developing Ruby on Rails applications to provide a remote management web application to operate our customer's digital signage networks.
  • Improved customer support by creating Ruby API for customer service dashboards and alerts.
  • Built online Ruby on Rails report generator producing CSV, XML, JSON, and PDF reports.

Principal Engineer, Honeywell Space Systems, Clearwater, Florida2002 - 2005

    Senior Software Engineer, Teltronics, Sarasota, Florida2000 - 2002

      Owner, Epsilon Squared Software, Saint Petersburg, Florida1999 - 2000

        Senior Consultant, CFT Consulting, Sarasota, Florida1995 - 1999

          Community Leadership

          BarCamp Tampa Bay-2007 to 2017 - Founding member of BarCamp Tampa Bay

          Ignite Tampa Bay-2011 to 2017 - Founding member of Ignite Tampa Bay

          Coder Night-2017 to 2021 - Organized a meetup designed to help developers of all skill levels practice and receive feedback in a supportive and collaborative environment.

          Tampa Ruby Brigade-2006 to Present - Organized the Tampa Ruby Brigade meetup.

          Education

          University of Arizona

          Masters in Management Information Systems

          University of Rochester

          Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science / Applied Mathematics

          Open Source

          ruby-Rubygems - added the initial implementation of “did you mean” for misspelled gems during install

          rake-Updated output to print the list of tasks in full width if not printing to standard output. Allows for piping to other commands such as grep

          rvm-Disabled color output when the terminal is not standard out

          jruby-Implemented language features and fixed issues in JDBC drivers

          honeybadger-Fixed data context issues

          libva-Patched memory leaks

          gstreamer-Resolved memory leaks in video and audio codecs

          About