Georgia Institute of Technology

Solutions Engineer at GitHub

El Cerrito, California, United States

- Supported ~3.5 million dollars in net new revenue for July-Dec 2021.
-  Presented to >100 companies and supported >50 trials of GitHub Enterprise + GitHub Advanced Security in 2021.

Job Responsibilities:
-  Highlight GitHub best practices and features across DevOps, CI/CD, security (SAST, SCA), project management, automation, user management, InnerSourcing and more.
-  Craft custom technical solutions, presentations, demos, and resource guides based on unique customer requirements.
-  Guide prospects through "proof of concept" trials, working closely with customers on implementation, optimization based on engineering organization's existing tools and processes.
-  Support internal Solutions Engineer enablement through organized retrospectives, pre-recorded demos, CodeQL configuration samples, and troubleshooting guides.

GitHub

Solutions Engineer

Game developer building "Nectar of the Gods". An unquenchable multiplayer real-time strategy game where bugs clash over the sweet nectar of sugary beverages.

Store Listing - <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421410/Nectar_of_the_Gods/">https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421410/Nectar_of_the_Gods/</a>

Solo Development Responsibilities:
-  Tackled every game design challenge including: game balancing across 24 unique units, UX, accessibility, play time, difficulty curve, etc.
-  Performed all programming in C# with the Unity game engine. Leveraged and wrote tutorials on open source multiplayer networking code - <a href="http://bthomas2622.github.io/gamedevblog/2020_12_09_post.html">http://bthomas2622.github.io/gamedevblog/2020_12_09_post.html</a>
-  Hand drew and animated all game art with Krita open source paint program.
-  Project management done with Trello. Tracked 168 user stories.
-  Audio engineered game sounds with Audacity open source, audio software.
-  Writing done with Google Docs.
-  Managed 2 independent contractors for music and promotional art.
-  Directed, recorded, and edited 2 game trailers for promotion.
-  Collaborated with PR firm for launch code distribution, influencer engagement, press releases, etc.

Game Development Blog - bit.ly/bwt-gamedev-blog
Presskit - <a href="http://bthomas2622.github.io/bt-presskit/notg/">http://bthomas2622.github.io/bt-presskit/notg/</a>

Release: January 27, 2021

Ben Thomas Games

Independent Game Developer

- The Replate technology platform (<a href="http://replate.org">replate.org</a>) "enables businesses to schedule on-demand pickups for their surplus food. Replate’s food rescuers bring your donated food directly to those experiencing food insecurity in your community."
-  Part of 2 member full stack engineering team on Ruby on Rails/React/Postgres/Heroku stack.
-  Completed user stories to ensure <a href="http://replate.org">replate.org</a> web portal was feature rich and bug free for 1000+ monthly food donations from 150+ businesses to hundreds of non-profits and individual recipients.
-  Owned end to end implementation of new features including DB schema changes, Doordash/Google Maps API integrations, and custom React components.
-  Implemented engineering team "workflow KPI dashboard" and supporting documentation to enable engineering team to evaluate percentage of feature stories vs. tech debt, bugs, and hotfixes for sprint planning.

Replate

Software Engineer

Developer Enablement Team

-  Applied and configured Resilience4J/Hystrix resilience and fault tolerance frameworks to backend web services to take advantage of circuit-breaking pattern and graceful degradation. This allowed production services to achieve 99.9% availability under high volumes.
-  Built Spring/Node/Python microservice metric tools, for standardized scraping by Prometheus monitoring system. Built Grafana data visualization dashboards and PagerDuty/Slack alerting off of Prometheus metrics to support service SLOs.
-  Built Node.js frontend and backend for self serve performance testing tool that batch deployed (Nomad) dockerized Jmeter/Taurus tests to cloud environment and served html/csv reports.
-  Configured "Automated Canary Analysis" on microservice deployments using Kayenta framework.

Pandora

Service Reliability Engineer

Catalog Infrastructure Team

-  Built data pipeline utilizing Google Cloud Platform "Pub/Sub" and "Dataflow" (Apache Beam) technologies that processed up to 100mb of published XML messages daily.  XML messages were received by front door "Listener" Spring web application and then published to Pub/Sub queue. Dataflow job subscribed to Pub/Sub and transformed messages into PostgresDB upserts across 30 logically defined tables.
-  Built Continuous Integration / Continuous Development (CI/CD) pipeline to deploy "Listener" and "Dataflow" applications across 3 cloud lifecycles after version, unit test, and security scan steps.

The Home Depot

Contract with The Home Depot IT

-  Built Product Catalog end to end web applications deployed to production Google Cloud Platform environment. Collaborated with over 10 teams to ensure the 40+ endpoints were available for 5,000 requests per minute SLO. Tech stack utilized Spring, Node.js, Express.js, Chai/Mocha testing, Docker, and Cassandra/Postgres DBs.
-  Built TeamCity and Concourse CI CI/CD pipelines to automate app GCP deployment alongside unit tests, integration tests, stress tests, github tagging, and approval checks.
-  Maintained Java web applications built with Spring Boot Framework. Support included managing DB2 JDBC connections, complex SQL pagination queries, and H2 database engine testing.
-  Performed various Google Cloud Platform admin functions in development environment including exporting StackDriver logs to BigQuery tables for performance dashboards, linking Google Storage Buckets to applications, scaling managed Postgres DB, and incorporating service accounts into automation.

Brooksource

Junior Software Engineer

Ecosystem & Innovation - "Finished Goods" Team

-  Configured Elasticsearch database with Logstash data collection to ingest up to 10GB of logs daily.
-  Developed Python based microservice that performed SQL queries on Vertica database and parsed RabbitMQ notification files to produce near real time audit of Virtual Machine activity. Discovered 10 missing VMs in 6 month time range and determined root cause of average latency.
-  Created end to end (server to dashboard) OpenStack log and RabbitMQ notification pipeline for metric creation.
-  Performed Unix admin tasks such as cronjob creation, rsync file transfer, and background task management.

AT&T

DevOps Engineer

Power Planning - Global Technology Optimization and Implementation

-  Manage and maintain capacity for DC power plants in over 200 central offices within the Wisconsin Bell.
-  Conduct DC power plant forecasting through growth and feasibility studies. Ex. Battery reserve calculation, rectifier system study, fuse board allocation.
-  Create financial projects to meet power demands. This includes power plant study, budget creation, business case, and collaboration across all deployment teams.
-  Ensure that all AT&T power standards and Infrastructure Deployment Guidelines are met. This includes environmental policy, equipment reuse metrics, and emergency backup.
-  Collaborate with field teams and vendors to maintain health of power footprint. This includes replacing faulty batteries, ensuring database integrity, and optimizing power plant designs based on variable equipment drains.

Power Engineer

Infrastructure Planning and Optimization for Technology Planning & Engineering

-  Interface across AT&T Labs and engineering teams to author process documentation methods and procedures ensuring network readiness in support of First Field Applications for emerging technologies and legacy equipment decommissioning
-  Specific initiatives supported include: Virtual Firewall, Media Gateway IPV4/IPV6 transition, Signaling Transfer Protocol X.25 to TCP/IP upgrade, consolidation of budget software applications, and Telecommunication Service Priority initiative
-  Develop Excel VBA Macros in support of database reconciliation and budget change control measurements
-  Create “Service Level Agreements” to promote accountability and standardize communication between businesses resulting in more efficient project completion
-  Creation of team collaboration space through online networking tools to streamline document creation, implementation, and approval processes

Network Design Engineer

- Write benchmarking plans and conduct testing
-  Publish reports and findings
-  Take thermal camera readings and generate reports
-  Use data aquisition (DAQ) to graph temperature profiles
-  Experiment with PID control terms and RTD placement
-  Conduct Norman Abrasion Tests
-  Design Pro Engineer 3D models and convert to Rapid Prototypes for testing
-  Research current kitchen electric trends and present product ideas
-  Run burner-grate non-stick coating tests
-  Assemble 80/20 extruded aluminum test fixtures
-  Use machine tools to shape raw materials

Calphalon

Kitchen Electrics R&D Intern

The first summer of my 2 summer rotation at Calphalon.

Duties include taking food to tables, clearing and setting tables, and providing customers with bread and water. Waiter duties included taking customer orders and serving food