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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

C(34 years)
C++(29 years)
Management(16 years)
Linux(15 years)
Mentorship(12 years)
VMWare(9 years)
Windows(8 years)
Heroku(6 years)
Career Experience

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

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

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

      • Built automated test code in Ruby and Cucumber to automate the testing of embedded hardware.
      • Enabled new markets by creating and maintaining a custom Ubuntu-based OS that supported 32-bit Intel, 64-bit Intel, and ARM-64 based embedded systems.
      • Achieved first-to-market amongst other divisions in a transition to the ARM platform by developing and implementing custom kernel patches for ARM-64 systems.
      • Lowered hardware platform costs by maintaining a single application architecture for 32-bit Intel, 64-bit Intel, ARM-64, and Android devices.
      • 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

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

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

          • Maintained excellent application availability by building infrastructure that processes millions of requests background jobs per day.
          • Increased application uptime and fault tolerance by building and deploying an AWS infrastructure and software deployment strategy, including multi-zone redundancy.
          • Continually lowered operational costs by migrating infrastructure from one server in a closet through a data center transition to a scalable Amazon Web Services based architecture over the course of the application's lifetime.
          • Ensured continuity of business functions by building disaster recovery policies and code, including offsite content and database backups.
          • Opened new hardware markets by developing Linux and Android software and custom Linux distributions to run on embedded and PC platforms.
          • Increased platform reliability and uptime of thousands of remote devices by creating a custom Ubuntu-based operating system designed to boot from a single squashfs root filesystem combined with an overlay filesystem allowing for secure and reliable remote upgrades.
          • Increased the number of hardware platforms supported by patching Linux hardware drivers for device incompatibilities and missing features.
          • Reduced the complexity of supporting a diverse array of platforms spanning over 30 hardware configurations, from custom system-on-chip to off-the-shelf hardware, including migrations from 32 to 64-bit operating systems and software.
          • Expanded markets to new customers by designing and building an interactive editor for creating digital signage presentations containing multi-zone and multi-screen configurations.

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

          • Innovated the use of commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and software (COTS) as a senior software architect on the Ballistic Missile Range Safety Technology program.
          • Achieved Flight Category 2 certification (one level below the safety category for human space flight) for tracking launch vehicles, downloading telemetry, converting real-time telemetry data into actionable information, and plotting the Instantaneous Impact Point of launch vehicles.
          • See:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMRST

          Senior Software Engineer, Teltronics, Sarasota, Florida2000 - 2002

          • Senior software engineer building C++ and Windows-based software for managing networks of PBX phone systems.
          • Contributed to embedded systems software in C and C++
          • Created and executed unit, system, and acceptance tests.

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

          • Built, marketed, and sold products (InstallWatch and InstallRite) for documenting and automating the remote deployment of software on Microsoft Windows networks.

          Senior Consultant, CFT Consulting, Sarasota, Florida1995 - 1999

          • Designed and built software systems for nationwide system deployments and migrations of POS terminals, inventory management systems, warehouse management systems, and accounting systems for GAP, Egghead, Totes, and Adidas.
          • Managed the RFP process for large POS and Merchandising system selections.

          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

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