Christian Valdez-
I have thirteen (13) years of enterprise software development experience. Apart from my software development knowledge, I bring to the table
knowledge regarding business process design, requirements analysis, system integration and project planning – using agile/lean development
methodologies.
Skills:
Languages: JVM and scripting languages. Object-oriented and functional paradigms. Willing to learn any language.
Databases: Relational, Column, Key-Value, Document, Search Engine
Infrastructure Automation: AWS, Docker; Kubernetes/Openshift, infra/config management with HashiCorp products.
General Proficiencies: OO analysis, design, and programming concepts, RESTful service-oriented architectures, multi- threaded applications.
Distributed systems, Event Sourcing and NoSQL concepts.
Process Control: Managing artifacts for all stages of the SDLC, agile/lean methodologies, test-driven development, and code reviews.
Experience in a matrix environment where the role may change depending on resources, budget, and/or time constraints.
Experience:
ThoughtWorks Inc.
Lead Developer Consultant
Jan. 2016 – Oct. 2018
As a Lead Developer I am often the day-to-day primary point of contact with our clients and am responsible to strategically lead the project
team to a successful delivery. I’m excited to mentor, influence and lead a team of ThoughtWorkers and client developers to achieve the
ambitious goals of our projects.
Technical
• Architecture. I am comfortable working with teams to craft a design: choosing the appropriate technology and designing a solution that both
answers the problem at hand, and stays within constraints.
• Coding. I think that it’s important for technical leadership to continue to code. Our clients don’t all work in one language or platform, and
neither do I. I seek a breadth of experience in a variety of languages. I advocate practices like TDD, continuous integration, pairing, and
infrastructure automation.
• Agile. I believe strongly in agile delivery practices, having implemented them for ourselves and our clients for a long time now. I am very
comfortable working with Agile, Lean and Continuous Delivery practices -- and love it.
• Infrastructure as code using Hashicorp tools for automated provisioning. Pipelines as code using Jenkins 2.
• Building non-functional requirements testing into pipelines stages of performance, load, and security.
Soft Skills
• Mentoring a team and bringing them up to speed on new languages and skills. We all learn from each other, but with the breadth of technical
experience I bring to the table, I am an invaluable teacher to my less-experienced peers.
• Thinking big and acting fast. I use a startup mentality with enterprise awareness. That means I can manage competing priorities, that I’m
ready to pivot or adjust plans quickly, and that I understand the role the team plays in major organizations’ tech strategies.
• Influencing priorities, for both the team and the client. I understand both the business problem and the technical solution, and I’m able to
advocate for excellence and effect change when necessary.
• Finesse. I navigated polictical situations within our client’s organizations in order to influence big decision makers and win their trust. In this
job, I’ve been using my people skills as much as my coding skills.
Projects
• Built distributed services for a variety of different industries insuring appropriate domain isolation, scalability and resiliency.
• Mobile app development for both iOS and android.
• Infrastructure engineer to provide CI/CD automation and optimization using containerization.
• Organization standardization building developer platforms using project archetypes that enable event sourcing and infrastructure automation.
• Leadership growth participating in recruiting, hiring, technical talks, project demos, and presenting technical strategy.
Project Tech Stacks
• Fortune 100 Retailer - Product Search & Promotions Engine
◦ Docker, Cassandra, Solr, Oracle, ActiveMQ, Java, Spring, Angular
• Fortune 100 Retailer - Custom Mobile First E-commerce Web Application (Shop, Pay, Pickup, Delivery)
◦ Docker, Oracle EBS, RabbitMQ, RxJava, Spring, React/Redux
• Forbes Global 500 Financial Firm - iOS App
◦ Docker, MongoDB, Java, Appium, Swift
• Pharma Quality Control Workflow App
◦ Postgres, Groovy, Enterprise Redhat Java (EJB), React/Redux
• Fortune 500 Business Services - Continuous Delivery Automation
◦ Terraform, Vault, Consul, Jenkins 2, Pipeline DSL, Groovy, Bash, Docker, Gradle, AWS, Kubernetes
• Fortune 500 Retailer - Decomposition of Platform to Microservices
◦ Docker, Cassandra, ElasticSearch, Oracle, Kafka, Pact, Java, Spring, React/Redux
• Forbes Global 500 Financial Firm - Project and Infra Automation
◦ Docker, MariaDB, Oracle, MongoDB, Kafka, ActiveMQ, Gradle, Maven, Java, Spring, Python, Bash, Jenkins 2, AWS, Vault, Consul
Accuity Reed Business Information Limited
Development Lead/Principal Developer
Jan. 2014 – Apr. 2015
As part of the leadership team, I was responsible for evolving, communicating, and implementing the agile framework for the teams in our
office. I worked with the leaders of the product, architecture, and quality assurance teams to determine the strategic changes needed to improve
our processes, so we could evolve our continuous delivery teams. We evolved our agile processes to fit within the constraints of the business’s
waterfall model of product delivery and budgeting. I revamped our interview process to more efficiently delegate interview task across our
teams, and to eliminate unqualified candidates as early as possible. I proposed changes both written, and through presentations to senior leaders
and executives throughout the organization. I kept our teams productive by removing blockers, keeping them focused by monitoring work in
progress, raising team morale with team events, celebrating success and early failure, encouraging learning of new technology, and
communication of all ideas.
I am responsible for leading an eight person development team. The team was responsible for a suite of products which powered our single
page web application “SmartWorks”. The primary client facing application was built on a XQuery/Spring/Marionette stack that used REST
endpoints to asynchronously provide the user a rich client interface in the browser. The team used GitFlow branching strategy, pull requests for
code reviews, and emphasizing pair programming and TDD when applicable.
Independent Purchase Cooperative
Senior Software Engineer
Mar. 2011 – Jan. 2014
I was responsible for the design and development of a multi-tiered, distributed Java/Groovy using ecosystem of products using Hibernate in a
Linux Red Hat environment to support Subway's Integrated Credit/Debit/Gift card processing. Using a test-driven development philosophy we
architected, implemented, and optimized a transaction processing system with a custom built peer-to-peer replicating distributed NoSQL
database. This is a business critical system that settles $20M daily and must be available 24/7 with 99.999% uptime. It is a low latency, high
throughput, high availability system which processes 100 transaction per second (tps) and has been benchmark to handle as much as 1700 tps.
The system processess ~2.5 million Point-of-Sale and web transactions with sub 750ms response time. Other products of the ecosystem
include: a Grails application for call-center and accounting support, an ETL application to migrate data to a data warehouse, an application to
run a growing suite of integration tests, promotions rules engine, and orchestration scripts to automate deployment.
Development InfoStructure, Inc.
Software Engineer
Oct. 2008 – Nov.2010
Designed, implemented, tested, and deployed the Credit Management System (CMS) for USAID using Groovy & Grails in 6 months. This
application was slowly transitioned from core Java using creational and structural design patterns. Worked on a team that designed,
implemented, tested, and deployed a Business Intelligence Tool known as "The Partner Reporting System" for USAID. This system allows
users to perform an abundance of BI tasks such as, creating performance indicators, customizing dashboards, generating heat maps, and other
data visualization formats. Worked on a team that maintained and enhanced the Acquisition Procurement Wizard for the U.S. General Services
Administration. This system ensures that federal employees follow all applicable laws and regulations when creating RFPs and/or Contracts.
This application was written using a Java stack that consisted of Spring/Hibernate/Struts/Velocity. Was the tech lead for a team that maintained
and enhanced the Workforce Recruitment application for the U.S. Department of Labor. This is a core Java application with a PostgreSQL
backend and a Hibernate/Struts/JSF stack. As the tech lead, I facilitated release planning, sprint planning and daily standup meetings. Worked
closely with the stakeholders, project managers, and business analysts to write and prioritize user stories.
Insight Software LLC
Business Analyst/Operations Manager/ETL Engineer
Mar. 2006 – Oct. 2008
Lead a team that designed and implemented an EMR system using Java with MS SQL Server back-end. Managed and implemented ETL
projects to migrate client data from various sources to MS SQL Server. Authored the user manual for the Practice Management and Electronic
Medical Records System. Researched and documented third party solutions, frameworks, and platforms to aid management decision making.
Developed policies and procedures for support, development, and sales departments. These policies and procedures dealt with daily operations,
strategic design of sales quotas, customer service, and project management. Designed curriculums, created training materials, instructed
training sessions.
Security Clearances: US Secret Clearance
References: Available upon request.
