John Weldon - Creating value with Software

Maricopa, AZ / 85138 / USA / +1 (503) 941-0825 / [email protected]

Core Strengths:  Excellent results in working with clients and customers.  Strong communication skills, clear reasoning, and tactful and direct interaction. Works well with diverse groups of people at all levels of seniority and technical experience.  Calm, and peaceful presence in stressful and dynamic situations; leads in crisis. Consistent, faithful, kind, and perseverant.  Active sense of humor and an ability to see the big picture. Does not get overwhelmed by circumstances. Thrives in fast moving situations. Over twenty years of software development experience.

August 2015 to Present: Lead Software Developer, MustWin LLC / Lovable Technology - MustWin is a boutique software development firm, with a broad range of experience and skill sets.  At MustWin I provide senior level experience, with emphasis on back end systems and infrastructure.  Primarily in Go and JavaScript, but also Python and Java. Some accomplishments:

• Built a commercial real estate evaluation tool in React.js with Redux with a microservice back-end.
• Produced robust implementations of several micro-service design Go applications.
• Built a “function router” using AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, Node.js, and a little React.js
• Blockchain proof-of-concept project writing an Ethereum smart-contract “Oracle” service.
• Kafka producer and consumer for decoupled Continuous Delivery infrastructure.
• Several Docker based services built with Go, and various storage backends: Cassandra, Swift, S3, Postgres.
• Cloud systems using Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos, AWS, Azure, and GCE / GKE.

Client engagements include:

• Building a real estate evaluation tool from no front-end code, to a fully functional React.js application, built on Redux, and performing calculations on raw data obtained from RESTful backend services.  Also some work on the RESTful backend written in Python, and using Airflow to migrate and transform data from Redshift.
• A “state-machine-as-a-service” project - three others on my team; building RESTful web services and a React based front end for loading, testing, validating, and running arbitrary state machines as defined in the JSON formatted Amazon States Language spec. Built to run on Kubernetes, and using etcd for HA storage of state machines.
• A “function router” project; combining serverless functions with network proximity/latency to route serverless function calls to the endpoints with the most desirable profile, usually low latency.  It worked with AWS Lambda, and OpenWhisk on-prem clouds. This project involved closer day-to-day interaction with the client team, and involved four others.
• Management portal and services for IoT devices that are geographically dispersed.  The client had previously settled on using LDAP to catalog and manage the devices, and the infrastructure was built out on Azure.
• An integrated set of micro services around storage, metadata indexing, authorization, and state machine management.  This project was for building a backbone of infrastructure to build internal websites on top of. The project involved several people and teams, but I was directly working with three others.
• An ambitious project built on top of an HA architecture that integrated source code management, automated builds and testing, deployment and health checking of developer project applications, and providing configuration, debugging, and logging visibility into the full lifecycle.  This was another large project, with technologies from cassandra, kafka, drone, to mesos, GCE, AWS EC2, and more.  Many people were involved in the project with a total of around six or eight others in regular daily collaboration.

Open Source, and internal projects include:

• Multiple contributions to Open Source projects.
• Bringing up and managing an Openshift cluster on AWS. Managing a Java web application and services dev environment on Openshift including Jenkins, SonarQube, MongoDB, Pa11y, OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (zaproxy).
• A blockchain and smart-contract payment service, allowing micropayments for content built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, and involving an “oracle” for DNS verification of content ownership.

July 2010 to Present: Software Consultant, John Weldon Consulting - I consult and develop software solutions for business clients and partners.  My projects have included open source contributions using Go and MongoDB to the Juju service orchestration project,  designing and building an online parts catalog with ordering, warranty management, and price list exports for third party inventory management systems for a heavy logging machinery company.  I’ve done work in the front end (SVG / D3.js and Angular.JS, React, Redux), and specialize in systems and back end (Go, C#, Python, SQL Server, AWS, and much more).  Another recent project involves architectural guidance and support, as well as day to day direction of a dev team building a new client and business valuation portal from the ground up in ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework.  I also have considerable open-source development experience, and have been involved in both small and large open-source teams, with strong peer-review and testing processes.

• Managed the selection and hiring of an offshore software development company, providing developer team members to the project, and integrated the developers into an existing development team.
• Initiated and coordinated software project processes and implementation of Scrum and Agile, including the recruiting of a Scrum coach.
• Hiring and coaching mid-level .NET developers on a C# ASP.NET MVC / Entity Framework / JavaScript data-driven interactive web portal for a boutique valuation advisory firm.
• Day to day oversight, code reviews, training of developers and testers.
• Implemented Authentication and Security code in several .NET web applications.
• Sub-contracted a .NET application performance audit, leading to greatly improved performance in an important document processing application in the transportation industry.
• Built, and supported over the last several years, a small C based service that periodically gathers data from an Oracle DB, uploading summary information to a third party back-end.
• Built and supported an MVC.NET website using SQL Server and leading edge client and backend technology for an international heavy machinery parts company.

March 2014 to April 2015: Software Consultant, Canonical, Inc. - Working on Juju Core has been a fantastic opportunity for me to get involved in both open-source and the Go programming language.  I’ve spent a year working closely with Canonical employees around the world.  I’ve was involved with implementing the Juju Actions feature, using Go, MongoDB, Ubuntu Linux, git, bzr, on launchpad.net and github.com, and using other open source tools and projects.

• Implementing Juju “Actions” - enables Charm authors to provide custom features with their charms.
• Working with beta users of the new Actions feature to gather requirements and prioritize features.
• Communicating regularly and successfully with team members in several time zones and worldwide.
• Code review and mentoring of and being mentored by other developers.
• Designing APIs and backend implementation for various aspects of the new feature.
• Fixed bugs, and continuing to contribute to various aspects of the project.

August 2011 to August 2014: Software Architect, SoftSource Consulting, Inc. - Lead roles with a few different clients in the healthcare industry and in the retail industry, in business intelligence and in online health advisor and management tools, as well as sales planning and forecasting.  I’ve provided expertise in behind-the-scenes development best practices, as well as designed and built new modules within client applications.  I’ve worked primarily in Microsoft .NET software solutions using technologies including ASP.NET MVC WebForms, Entity Framework, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, Azure, WCF, etc.  At Nike the technology stack was Java, Spring, MongoDB, IBM TM1, IBM Cognos BI, Oracle, and JavaScript and Angular.js on the front end.

• Released first version of a Financial modeling tool for retail sales and planning at Nike.
• Tech Lead on a multi-year, cross technology and department project at Nike.
• Led a team of six to a successful release in 4 months, through two architecture changes, and team growth to 16.
• Integration between Tomcat Java web application and Cognos using HTML JavaScript and Cognos SDK.
• Solved complicated cross domain authentication and integration using TM1, and Cognos, and JavaScript.
• Implemented five new condition management programs for WebMD’s Digital Health Assistant.
• Implemented 7 JavaScript/AJAX/JSON widgets for tracking health information (Weight, Nutrition, etc.).
• Implemented several new ETLs for a Business Intelligence project with Huron HealthCare.

Primary Technology Skills and Experience

• Go - although Go is a young language, I’ve been developing in Go since 2011, and Go has been my primary language of choice for most projects in the last few years.
• Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes, HA - almost all of my recent work has been in the context of containers and cloud based services, with HA and distributed computing as fundamental building blocks of resilient architecture.
• Networks, Hosting, Routing - in the same vein, much of my work has been around solving and maintaining problems in networks, and with hosting and service routing issues.
• C#/.NET - Beginning in 2004 I’ve written a lot of code for dozens of projects continually, and every year since then, until now.  With my recent move to Go I have had less exposure to the recent C#6 features, but have still been involved in .NET projects.
• JavaScript - I have had solid experience in Javascript for at least the last nine years.  Mostly with hand built code, React (with Redux), Angular.js, Node.js, and many libraries.
• Python - First worked with Python in the ‘90s, but have been more active with Python 3 in the last year for powerful scripting, numerical analysis, and web services use.
• C/C++ - Not a lot of C/C++ recently, but several years of experience, and I’ve gone back to C or C++ a few times for certain specific projects.
• Java - another recurring theme in my development experience, I’ve been using Java off and on for the last two decades. Most recently using Spring Boot and Hibernate to maintain an existing application.
• SQL Server - a major component of most business applications I’ve developed.  ADO.NET and Entity Framework have been a part of many projects.
• Oracle - Experience building an OCI application in C for moving data between environments on a schedule.
• MongoDB, Cassandra, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite - most common with Linux platform projects in Java and Go, I’m very comfortable with these SQL and No-SQL databases.
• PHP, HTML, CSS - Decades of experience with web technologies, and have been actively keeping up with latest changes in standards like CSS3, HTML5, and modern web development in general.

Miscellany

Community and Open Source

Previously regular, and recently occasional, contributor to Stack Overflow (top 0.87% rep score).  Most voted tags include C#, C++, .NET, JavaScript, Go, C, svn, git, vim, and version control: http://stackoverflow.com/users/102371/john-weldon 

Maintainer of a cluster of popular Open Source libraries: Go LDAP, and Go ASN1.BER

Active on GitHub, with a mix of Open Source and proprietary projects.

Active on Bitbucket, although more of those projects are proprietary.

On the board of a couple nonprofits, including The Greater Love, and Marked For Greatness.

A Selection of LinkedIn Recommendations

I’ve been using LinkedIn for several years, and I’ve added a small sampling of my recommendations on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnweldon/ 

“John Weldon just finished a one-year engagement with a software development team I manage. His work impressed us, and I would engage him again without a second thought. We took him on for his .NET expertise and architectural judgment, but came to value equally his tact, humility, and breadth of interests. He's an expert software architect and a delightful person to work with.”

Bryan Myers - Director, Software Development at WebMD Health Services

“John was a great asset to our agile development team. I functioned as the product owner/business owner of a team which was developing an online health coaching product and John was a mainstay of this team. During one specific time when the team was shorthanded, John pushed himself and inspired the others on the team to push so that we met the delivery commitments for that release. He showed innovation, drive and focus, on many occasions pointing out ways in which we could better achieve our objectives.

“John is a team player and has shown himself to be a calming presence in times of stress and deadlines. Even though he was a contractor, he became well versed in the overall product platform showing his commitment to more than simply the products he worked on.

“John has already been greatly missed by his colleagues at WebMD Health Services where he contracted for just over a year. He will be a great asset to any organization he joins.”  

Lynne Chartier - Product Manager, WebMD

“John is the consummate team player, passionate about his work, and an effective leader. The attributes that stand out most are how he maintained generosity and grace through a couple of very difficult projects. I wish we had him back on our team”

Keith Hamilton - QA Manager at DAT Solutions

“The combination of business understanding, communication, and technical skill is a tremendous asset for any organization. John has this combination. He applies technology intelligently, asks great questions, and helps lead the team to excellent solutions.”

John Stewart - Product Manager, TransCore

“Working with John was great. As team lead, he facilitated an environment where I was able to jump right in and contribute to the team's effort. His talent in being positive and confident, even amidst risk, was encouraging. Our efforts were successful and I really enjoyed the experience. I certainly recommend him.”

Russ Martinez - Software Engineer, TransCore

“John, is just an awesome person to work with and for -- professional and inspiring team lead, knowledgeable and innovative developer and a great person - never impatient, always understanding, kind, thoughtful and helpful. I have learnt great deal from him and hope to work with him again.”

Denis Morozov - Software Engineer, TransCore

LinkedIn Recommendations, continued

“John possesses outstanding technical talent and a real love of learning, which he combines with humility and a great ability to connect with people at a human level. He understands the needs of business and the needs of good code and how to balance the two for best effect. He's a strong addition to any team, and brings a great energy to his work that inspires those around him.”

Bryn Keller - Director of Development, Jenkon

“John was an excellent asset at Jenkon, and we miss him. While here, he held the title of Senior Software Engineer, and he was a perfect fit for that position. John is an outstanding person who on a daily basis goes “above and beyond”, an innovative self-starter who needs no supervision, and one who motivates and guides others working with and for him. He always exceeds expectations and handles pressure well. He assumed and settled into his leadership role well, and I know that he was inspiring and motivating to his team and to other Jenkon employees, as well. Management and other personnel throughout Jenkon praised his work.

“John was extremely helpful in other areas of the company, too. He always was willing to provide assistance to other employees whenever called upon. He organized and conducted programming training classes for other employees during the lunch hour. And, on several occasions gave up his personal time when the situation at work demanded it. And through it all, his constant cheerful attitude makes him a person that I wanted to be around.

“In short it is with great pleasure that I find myself writing a recommendation for John. I highly recommend him for any position that he would choose to apply for. He is dedicated, knowledgeable, competent, and a team player that would make a great asset to any organization”

Cary Ellis - Client Services, Jenkon