Kevin Locke

Senior Software Engineer and Consultant

Summary

A motivated pragmatist with a strong work ethic and a detail-oriented approach. Excels across a variety of roles and technologies; from architect to developer to sysadmin, front-end to back-end, Windows to Unix-likes to Android, with the flexibility to do whatever is needed to get the job done in the best way possible. Works well in small-teams, early-stage startups, and independently, where productivity and reliability are paramount.

Professional Experience

Independent Developer and Consultant August 2016 – Present

Worked with many clients to identify, design, develop, and maintain a variety of solutions to address diverse business needs. Notable achievements include:

• Designed and prototyped a web-based construction work order management system using ASP.NET Core MVC 2 with Entity Framework Core (C#). Subsequently facilitated outsourced development through requirements analysis, iterative design and evaluation, and user testing.
• Developed a web-based payroll module for an existing home health care agency management system using ASP.NET WebForms (C#).
• Migrated an ASP.NET project from an ad-hoc source-based deployment system to pre-compiled WebDeploy to facilitate automation and pre-deployment checks, significantly reducing issues for developers and users.
• Authored OpenAPI definitions for multiple REST APIs (AppVeyor CI, BambooHR, Procore (partial)) with client code generation for C# using AutoRest and Java using OpenAPI Generator.
• Developed tools for data synchronization to integrate BambooHR (via REST API) and Viewpoint Spectrum (via XML Web Services, WSDL, and SQL), including sophisticated reconciliation algorithms.
• Developed an optimized string edit distance (Longest Common Subsequence, Levenshtein, Damerau-Levenshtein) library in C with Python bindings. Contributed C library to CCAN.
• Developed Excel-based job planning and analysis platforms integrated with Viewpoint Spectrum via SQL.
• Developed Excel-based P&L analysis workbooks integrated with Jonas Enterprise via SQL.
• Developed web-based vehicle inspection forms with PDF-to-email rendering for a vehicle fleet in PHP.

Honored to assist with hiring in-house developers, migrating projects to collaboration platforms (GitHub, Azure DevOps), co-developing with and mentoring junior developers.

Director of Engineering — Quantpost May 2013 – June 2015

Designed, built, maintained, and administrated multiple iterations of stock option analysis platform, infrastructure, and tooling around an existing C++ core as part of a small team. Primarily used MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js (MEAN Stack) on Google Compute Engine with Ansible automation. Managed contract developers for additional UI, graphical design, and specialized front-end tasks. Successfully launched multiple public versions of the product with very positive user feedback. Notable achievements include:

• Co-developed multiple iterations of public website, webapp, and REST API, from scratch, in coordination with other developers and designers.
• Developed MongoDB-based task queue with C++ and Node.js clients for managing portfolio optimization requests in real time.
• Developed Java-based consumer for Devexperts dxFeed market data which prepared and stored data for real-time portfolio analysis by the C++ core.
• Managed development of D3 visualization of optimization results and payout curves across predicted probability curves.
• Developed Ansible automation scripts for deploying all GCE machines and services from scratch.
• Contributed to solving challenging performance issues with multi-GB matrix operations using BLAS and Intel MKL on GCE to deliver complex portfolio optimizations in seconds.
• Created lead generation tools for scraping Twitter follower data and applying machine learning techniques.
• Created Twitter chatbot to provide real-time optimizations on demand.

Co-founder, CEO — Digital Engine Software, LLC June 2009 – December 2011

Built a business to design, create, and customize a wide variety of software to meet the needs of a diverse regional clientele. Coordinated, planned, and conducted operations to successfully promote and grow the business, determine and fulfill client needs, and produce quality software. Notable achievements include:

• Created web-based information management system for a home health care provider serving over 1000 active clients and employees, across 10 regional offices. Significantly improved information sharing between offices, data entry efficiency, and ability to gather operational analytics.
• Configured, deployed, and maintained MS SQL Server Merge Replication to allow offline data entry and retrieval. Overcame significant technical obstacles on an ongoing basis.
• Conducted environmental monitoring database consolidation and migration project merging structure and data for millions of records of field data from Access to SQL Server.
• Developed and integrated IPsec support for OpenWrt router firmware project.
• Created prototype for a historical information exploration website using Google Maps.
• Implemented stream prediction algorithm as an ArcGIS module for analysis of digital elevation model LIDAR data.

Technician/Programmer — Computer Troubleshooters April 2008 – May 2009

Applied sound investigative techniques to isolate and resolve a wide variety of complex technical problems across several industries and systems. Designed, setup, and administered multiple Windows domains for small businesses, including SBS 2003, 2008, Exchange, and SQL Server products. Created and tailored utility programs to facilitate ongoing maintenance and to speed recurring tasks for clients.

CS Intern — Air Force Research Lab Summer 2007

Contributed to design and implementation of Java-based wargame development platform and Asynchronous Chess (an AFRL-invented strategy game) AI research projects. Achievements include:

• Development of a 3D chess-playing agent and a viewer supporting animations and status tracking in real time.
• Design and preliminary implementation of environment system for the SimVentive wargame development platform.
• Presented SimVentive work at Huntsville Simulation Converence 2007

GIS Intern — Gallatin Valley Land Trust Summer 2006

Gathered and manipulated field data to create and update trail maps using ArcGIS. Implemented Google Maps-based interactive online map of GVLT's conservation easements.

Educational Experience

BS in Computer Science — Cornell University December 2007

• Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University College of Engineering.
• Cumulative GPA of 3.77. Dean's List for Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Spring 2006.
• Specialization in mathematics: Cryptography, Statistics, Discrete Mathematics.
• Notable advanced courses: System Security, Web Info. Systems, Database Systems, Computer Networks.

Relevant Personal Experience

• Contributed patches to the Linux kernel: fix awk-related build failure, fix keyboard input for ThinkPad Twist S230u, log warnings from overlayfs, and update overlayfs documentation twice. Also submitted a patch to significantly increase performance for some Intel Wi-Fi chips, which was declined.
• Test Linux kernel release candidates. Bisected and reported multiple issues.
• Develop and maintain ~20 packages on npm.
• Added support for Content-Encoding: gzip to the popular request npm package.
• Develop WeeWX plugin for interactive weather graphs using Plotly.js. Set up and publicly host a weather station on a Raspberry Pi.
• Test nightly builds of Firefox and Thunderbird. Over 50 bugs investigated.
• Test and contribute to Debian GNU/Linux, with over 100 bugs investigated.
• Contributed over 30 package versions to Microsoft winget.
• Maintain and self-host personal website and email for over a decade with Apache, Postfix, and various additional services.
• Use IPv6 on managed networks and servers since 2009.

Technologies

• Most proficient in C#, Java, Python, C, JavaScript, SQL, and shell scripting on Linux and Windows systems. Some experience with a multitude of other languages, platforms, and libraries.
• Proficiency with a variety of development tools include Visual Studio, git, Make, Vim, and Eclipse. Some experience with many others.
• Extensive experience with Debian GNU/Linux on mobile, desktop, and server platforms.
• Enjoy learning new languages, tools, techniques, and platforms suitable for a given problem.