Cole Reid

FULL STACK WEB DEVELOPER AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER

Personal Profile

As far as I can remember

"I always wanted to be a fighter jet pilot." That didn't happen. I am 4 centimetres too tall!

I fell into this career by accident about 11 years ago and then I have been fortunate enough to work for some great companies, doing some really neat stuff.

Personal Interests

When I'm not writing code or configuring a server, I am most likely busy doing one of these.

  • I love to get outside; That could be in the form of mountain biking, running, skiing, camping, hiking, or tennis. I am continuing to notice my gear shed stocked with new stuff to keep the adventures going.
  • I am a traveller at heart; I love to get off the beaten track and experience new places.
  • In a former life I was an avid yacht racer; I have recently traded that in to live the mountain life.
  • and love a nice craft beer.

The Internet is my Oyster

Do you think we would be a great fit? I am always looking for new and exciting opportunities and would love to hear from you!

Technical Skills

Web Development

Things I know pretty well:

Front End

  • React.js coupled with Rudux, written in Typescript to build amazing front end user experiences
  • Webpack for builds
  • HTML and CSS both from scratch and using frameworks such as Bootstrap, Foundation, Web Plate and Bourbon frameworks
  • SASS (which is awesome!)
  • JavaScript including vanilla and jQuery flavours

Back End

  • Node.js using Koa, Express, Rill, ES6 (including async/await, promises, arrow functions etc), lodash, Coffeescript (not by choice), Gulp and MongoDb
  • PHP with a lot of WordPress and Drupal custom development using MySQL as the backend
  • C# .Net in conjunction with nHibernate, Spark, Memcached and SQL Server

Things I have used but not mastered (yet):

  • App Dev – Swift, React Native
  • Front End – AngularJS, LESS, HAML
  • Back End – Ruby on Rails
  • Data – FireBase, Reddis

Infrastructure

Things I know pretty well:

  • Serverless functions, written in Javascript and hosted in AWS or Azure
  • PaaS management on services such as Heroku, self managed Dokku (on Digital Ocean)
  • PM2 for hosting Node.js on Digital Ocean/AWS servers
  • DevOps – Ansible, GIT, SVN, WebDeploy, Team Foundation Server, TeamCity, Nagios
  • Linux/Unix Server Administration – Apache, Nginx, MySQL, BIND DNS, GIT Remote Repos
  • Windows Server Administration – IIS, SharePoint, Exchange, DNS, SQL Server
  • Scripting – Bash, PowerShell

Things I have used but not mastered (yet):

  • In no particular order –Docker, Azure

Work Experience

Senior (Full Stack) Software Developer

Frontend Team Leader • Developer • Application Architect
A senior and core member of the development team tasked with developing an AI to make meetings “suck less”. hendrix.ai is a virtual meeting assistant with the goal of taking the pain out of meetings. My role includes wearing many hats including developer, designer, architect and devops all in pursuit of the startup’s success. Whether it’s developing a custom calendar synchronization integration with Google and Office 365 one week, building a live transcription editor the next or performing code review; I am usually found deep in code somewhere.

Responsibilities

  • Team leader of the front end development team
  • Development of new features and bug fixes across the hendrix.ai platform
  • 3rd party integration code for single sign on and calendar synchronization
  • Code review for both backend and frontend code
  • Implementation of UI standards and the development of UX improvements
  • Liaising with sales and product team members to determine order and priority of effort in the development team

Achievements

  • Production launch team member for the Hendrix.ai web application
  • Development of the Google Single sign-on experience
  • Development of multiple backend services including a realtime events API using websockets
  • Development of the 3rd party calendar synchronization functionality with Office 365 and Google Calendar
Company: Testfire Labs
Period: June 2018 - Present

Senior Full Stack Developer

Team Leader • Application Architect • Developer
Leading a team of 6 developers, I was responsible for the design, development, delivery and management of multiple enterprise level applications. On a day-to-day basis I wear many hats that could see me reviewing pulls request in the morning, leading application and systems architecture planning around lunch and developing React components in the afternoon. I have lead our organization in a new, more simplified direction in our development strategy including using Jira for agile development, implementing continuous integration across all applications and greately simplifying our stack in order to provide a more reliable, consistent development and hosting environment. I've also been fortunate enough to develiver multiple mission critical application for clients ranging from MVP start up to fortune 500 enterprise level.

Responsibilities

  • Day to day responsibility for 6 developers across 4 different timezones
  • Management of development task assignment, primarily using Jira
  • Application architect responsible for the design of new applications features
  • Development of new features and bugfix across all applications.
  • Dev-ops lead for all servers and hosting environments of Tiller Digital's managed applications running on Digital Ocean, AWS and Heroku.
  • Responsible for maintenance of legacy applications and websites.

Achievements

  • Development team lead for the design, development and launch of multiple applications in production including MyStrengthBook, The Velcro Brand Ambassador Network.
  • Implementation of continuous integration using bitbucket pipelines, git and heroku for all newly built apps.
  • Development and implementation of a new team wide branching strategy and code review process.
Company: Tiller Digital
Period: June 2016 - Present

Senior Web Developer

Team Leader • Web Developer • Project Manager
Although I was officially promoted to Senior Web Developer in September 2015, I started working as the lead developer at the Banff Center in February 2014. During this time I was the development lead of a project to completely rebuild The Banff Centre's web properties from the ground up. I was personally responsible for the the redevelopment of the student application system and donations form which included online payment for the first time in the Centre's history. The new site was launched in September 2015. Currently I oversee a team of one other developer plus two contracted developers from our partner agency. We are currently working to finish all the additional features that were not included in phase one of the website build.

Responsibilities

  • Day to day responsibility for 3 development resources
  • New feature development for The Banff Centre's corporate website.
  • Scheduling of support activities and team work loads.
  • Continued delivery of team training in GIT, Drupal, PHP, SASS and MySQL.
  • Scheduling of support activities and team work loads.
  • Bug fixes for the existing Content Management System (written in C#).
  • IIS and Ubuntu web server maintenance.

Achievements

  • Technical lead for the successful development and launch of a completely rebuild Banff Centre website.
  • Redeveloped the workload management process in the team to provide enhanced visibility of work that has resulted in work consistently delivered inside SLAs
  • As I'm newly in this title, some more of my achievements can be seen here in my Web Applications developer role
Company: The Banff Centre
Period: September 2015 - June 2016

Web Applications Developer

Team Leader • Web Developer • Project Manager
As the most senior member of The Banff Centre's web development team, I am tasked with leading the development and maintenance activities performed by the team. This varies greatly day-to-day which could have me developing new features one day and defining service delivery strategy the next. We are currently have a new website being developed by an external vendor in PHP (Drupal) and I am spending most of my efforts getting our internal systems, processes and team ready which was (finally) launched in September 2015

Responsibilities

  • Development of a new student application system using Drupal, SOAP and MySQL
  • Development of custom Drupal forms including online payment using Moneris for donations and Leadership Program registrations
  • New feature development for The Banff Centre's corporate website.
  • Development and delivery of team training in GIT, Drupal, PHP, SASS and MySQL.
  • Scheduling of support activities and team work loads.
  • Bug fixes for the existing Content Management System (written in C#).
  • IIS web server maintenance.

Achievements

  • Developed the WordPress site for the new Digital Storytelling Platform, Screens with Spines.
  • Provided training to the Web Development Team on the new tools and languages for our incoming website.
  • Managed the implementation of the new online portion for the events ticketing system including skinning the front-end user interface in-line with our style guide
Company: The Banff Centre
Period: February 2014 - September 2015

c# Developer

Feature Development • UI Design • Bug Fix Guru
Visionstream was a great opportunity to work on an application with a bigger user base. After winning the bid to implement several large portions of the National Broadband Network in Australia, they needed extensive development and customization to their Project Management and Works system. This was a hugely complex system and afforded me the opportunity to develop many features and enhancements for their system.

Responsibilities

  • Designed and developed features as well as bug fixes for a nationally used project management and budgeting application written in C# with a SQL Server backend (stored procedure based)
  • Wrote multiple complex SQL Server Reporting Services queries and reports
  • Managed source code, tasks and Agile sprints in Team Foundation Server
  • Performed the role of primary contact in the development team for the application

Achievements

  • Took initiative to create a responsive design and layout for the administration interface of the application using Twitter Bootstrap
  • Developed data import functionality within the application that saved the project team more than 20 hours per week
  • Fixed more than 50 bugs in the user interface
  • Rewrote SQL queries to speed up page load of several areas of the site by more than 25%
Company: Visionstream Pty. Ltd
Period: May 2013 - February 2014

Web Applications Developer

Web Developer • Infrastructure Engineer • WordPress Guy
This role was my first full-time Web Developer role. Surrounded by an experienced team, I was able to really build on my development skills and produce several new features and enhancements across different platforms. I was also able to use my Web Infrastructure Engineer background to consolidate the internal applications infrastructure as well as develop a disaster recovery plan.

Responsibilities

  • Developed enhancements and supported the ASP.NET C# Content Management System (CMS) written in-house using the MVC2 framework, nHibernate and the Spark view engine.
  • Maintained the company’s main website content developing in HTML,CSS and JavaScript (jQuery)
  • Developed and maintained ASP.Net Webforms for ticketing and program sales systems.
  • Supported third party applications including MailChip, SurveyMoney and Google Analytics including new campaign development.
  • Wordpress development and maintenance of a multi-site setup
  • Performed server performance testing and optimization for all web front end servers as well the Linux backend nodes.

Achievements

  • Created and supported an extended user functionality plugin for WordPress.
  • Centralized internal applications infrastructure and developed backup and disaster recovery strategies for each business critical application supported by the web development team.
Company: The Banff Centre
Period: July 2012 - February 2013

Web Systems Engineer

Web Subject Matter Expert • Infrastructure Engineer • Scripting Guru
The role was both an exciting as well as challenging one for me. When you work in a team of 16 people and are supporting more than 350 servers there is never a dull moment. This role really helped to solidify myself as a Web Infrastructure Engineer. I was tasked with supporting systems and leading projects that required the full breadth of my skill set as well as learning and adapting on the fly.

Responsibilities

  • Provided business as usual (BAU) support for distributed and load balanced IIS (6.0, 7.5), SharePoint (2010) and sFTP/SSH secure middleware file transfer services. This totalled more than 300 Servers
  • Responsible for internal website analytics application (WebTrends 9.2b) and also worked as web hosting subject matter expert.
  • Lead technical projects for new servers, applications and service implementations and existing infrastructure upgrades working with stakeholders, assets and technical personal in multiple locations around the world.
  • Developed internal automation tools and websites in PowerShell and C#
  • Disaster Recovery planning and testing across our environments
  • Wrote and tested technical user documentation as well as disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

Achievements

  • Lost 42kg (92lb) and regained my life (there were onsite gym and fitness facilities available).
  • Wrote a set of monitoring scripts (in PowerShell) for the middleware system that provided more targeted monitoring of tasks and reduced the total number of alerts by 94%. This also improved our typical response time by more than 50%
  • Developed a web application (in .Net C#) to 'on the fly' conduct and report back on Vigilant based security requirements. This system obtained a list of our IIS servers from the configuration management database and connect to each server to complete more than 50 checks and provide a checklist of required actions to make each server compliant.
Company: Philip Morris International
Period: June 2009 - March 2012

Infrastructure Support Technician

DNS Guy • SQL Server Admin • Active Directory Support
I look at my time at Toyota as an invaluable step in my career. Fresh out of school I was fortunate enough to work with some exceptional engineers and really build a strong technical foundation. Toyota also taught me several philosophies including Kaizen which I use to guide me both personally and professionally today.

Responsibilities

  • Administration of 15-20 Microsoft Windows (Windows 2000-2003) and 8-10 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers
  • Active Directory — user, group and object management, group policy development and support of the Novell LDAP integration system
  • DNS — management of internal, dealer facing and internet facing name resolution infrastructure.
  • SQL Server 2003 and 2008 — support for servers including database/user creation, backups and security patching.
  • Vendor Relationship Management — between Toyota and their external secondary DNS and SSL Certificate provider.
  • Disaster Recovery planning and testing across the DNS environment

Achievements

  • I redesigned the DNS infrastructure and configuration for the Toyota wide network which removed single points of failure in the system, increased security, and provided faster DNS resolution for the dealer network.
  • Developed a new Active Directory design which allowed for more accurate group policy updates to be developed and assigned.
Company: Toyota Australia
Period: December 2005 - April 2009

Education & Diplomas

Proactive

ITIL V3 Course• Foundation

Graduated: 2010

Northern Melbourne Institute of Technology

Certificate IV Information Technology • Internetworking

Graduated: 2005

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