Lucas Taylor

Senior Software Developer - Lead

Hello! I have 18 years professional experience in software development and more than twice than in human experience.

I live and work with honesty, responsibility, and transparency. My professional intent focuses on working with and helping to craft systems that yield measurable results according to a set of shared priorities.

  • Requirements gathering • Goal setting • Organization • Leadership
  • Architecture • Distributed services • Messaging • Serverless • Containers
  • Hyperscale cloud experience (AWS/GCP) • Infrastructure as Code • Development methodologies
  • Continuous deployment and integration • Operational responsibility • Metrics & Monitoring

Buzzwords & Acronyms

  • Python
  • Twisted
  • Pyramid / Django / Flask
  • Apache / nginx
  • JavaScript
  • NodeJS, ExpressJS
  • HTML/CSS, ReactJS
  • AWS Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB
  • RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
  • Terraform, Ansible
  • Messaging (AMQP, Kinesis)
  • Containers, ECS + Fargate

Experience

Rackspace Technology

Senior Software Developer IV - Managed Public Cloud
http://rackspace.com/

June 2017 - Present
US - Work from Home

Lead and collaborate with distributed teams to deliver customer and internal-facing platforms for the Managed Public Cloud offering (AWS & GCP emphasis). Our teams facilitate security, availability, cost control, and billing integrations for our customers utilizing hyperscale clouds.

Work directly with Product Owners to establish timelines and scope of work.

Work with external teams to coordinate GCP access and billing requirements.

Promote a culture of learning, context sharing, and documentation.

Onboarding lead for new team members - developed a program of 1:1 and group sessions for knowledge sharing and high-level overviews of tech, systems, and business processes.

  • Recent projects (design/document/implement)
  • Audit/Compliance: Tooling to automate SOX/SOC1 compliance activities for AWS billing data (SFN, Lambda, Athena)
  • Migration: import pipeline for GCP billing data, moving from a 3rd party rerating system to direct ingestion from BigQuery.
  • Infrastructure, Orchestration, CI/CD
  • AWS: ECS • Fargate • ECR • Lambda • Step Functions
  • GCP: GKE • IAM • Billing
  • Terraform • Ansible • Docker • Git • Jenkins • CircleCI • Nginx
  • Technology / Languages
  • JavaScript • NodeJS • ExpressJS • ReactJS
  • MySQL • DynamoDB

Global Payments Inc.

Lead Developer
https://www.globalpayments.com/

January 2014 - May 2017
Charlotte, NC (REMOTE)

Lead distributed team across several timezones to efficiently prioritize work and engage the team in planning and code review.

Helped to establish and communicate project standards, test coverage and code quality assessments for Cloud Services and POS (point-of-sale) product groups.

Produced system and feature-based architectural specifications, with emphasis on visual diagrams to communicate intent and data flow.

Lead Developer - Heartland Commerce Cloud Services
June 2016 - May 2017

Architect data transformation platform on AWS to allow legacy POS products to utilize new and existing subscription services. A REST API coupled with a streams-based dataflow allows for on-demand Lambda functions (NodeJS) to consume and transform domain objects. The data pipeline facilitates mobile ordering for external integrators, reporting, and logging for on-premise systems.

Architect NodeJS data access layer and peer messaging solution for on-premise devices with a bridge to cloud services using NodeJS and socket.io room semantics.

{ Tech Stack }
  • AWS Lambda • Kinesis • API Gateway • Kinesis
  • NodeJS • socket.io

Senior Software Developer - pcAmerica
January 2014 - June 2016

Designed and implemented a multi-tenant POS reporting and analytics platform using Pyramid, PostgreSQL, and SQLAlchemy. The backend services utilize the Heroku platform.

Multi-tenant isolation achieved using PostgreSQL schemas and common declarative SQLAlchemy models. SQLAlchemy sessions are scoped to the current request and the schema search path is set for the duration, ensuring that data access in views remains simple.

Designed a lightweight ROLAP platform for POS reporting and analytics. Used a denormalized star schema and identified relevant facts and dimensions to provide ad-hoc reporting capabilities for the POS. SQLAlchemy is used to effectively enable a pattern for decorating models as facts and dimensions and simplify handling of slowly changing dimensions.

The ETL process is near-real-time-enough for operators to generate reports and drilldown into various dimensions of a sale within 5 minutes of posting at the store. HTTP + redis job queue system processes data as sales are generated by the onsite POS.

The UI is an Angular 1 app presenting current sales metrics and KPIs, and a dynamic reporting interface with filters and drilldown operators enabling the user to query for every dimension of a sale by employee, customer, station, date segments (Year, Month, Day, Quarter), etc. Created Angular directives for charting and dimension slicing/dicing.

{ Tech Stack }
  • Python • Pyramid • SQLAlchemy
  • PostgreSQL • Redis (caching/job queue)
  • AngularJS
  • Heroku Platform

Garagistry

Co-founder, CTO
http://www.garagistry.com/

2010-2013
Atlanta, GA (REMOTE)

Garagistry is a platform for the preservation of automotive history for all Classic cars, 25 years old or older. We respect the owners, all makes and models, and all participants in the hobby. Our goal is to seamlessly blend the commercial imperatives of the operation with a fantastic user experience without resorting to standard advertising or selling out our membership base. The initial product on the platform is a subscription website for individual owners and car clubs to document and record vehicle histories and engage with other club members.

Developed a content strategy, information architecture, and process for site development. Responsible for defining and articulating consistent planning and development methodologies while managing partner relationships and contract employees.

{ Tech Stack }
  • Python • Django
  • PostgreSQL • Memcached • Redis (job queue)
  • Ubuntu • Apache+mod_wsgi • nginx

PowerCard

Lead Developer & Architect

2003-2010
Wilmington, NC (REMOTE)

Architected the back-end transactional system for loyalty and gift card processing via dialup (VISA protocol) and TCP/IP. Responsible for developing client software and multiple interfaces for Restaurant POS and Hotel PMS systems (MICROS, Squirrel, Aloha, AutoClerk). These included Java-based software, Micros ISL, and Windows GUI client/server systems.

All software was designed to support unique multi-location, single-card loyalty and gift programs for independent restaurants. The success of this program has resulted in a nationwide coalition of thousands of local restaurants who now have access to a unique cooperative marketing, customer sharing, and distinctive rewards program.

Key Insights

We realized early that the success of our loyalty and gift programs depended upon being usable by merchants on many different point-of-sale solutions. In order to achieve that goal on disparate systems using different protocols (custom tcp and serial), I created a base platform using Twisted and Python and extended it to service clients on Windows and Linux. The success of our platform enabled us easily add new features and requests with a limited amount of developer time and budget.

{ Tech Stack }
  • Python • Twisted • wxPython
  • Java • Micros ISL
  • Windows 2K/XP/2003 • IIS • MSSQL (pyODBC)

Education

University of Arizona - Tucson, Arizona

B.A. Philosophy

Lucas Taylor — ltaylor.volks@gmail.com — 520.405.8479