Project Results

Semtech required an experienced full stack developer to help develop a new website for the corporate brand.  Needing to find the nuances of the custom code of the previous website was an understatement.  My experience in migrating from custom sites to CMS backed sites came in and helped find where data for parts was stored in the old site and message them into Expression Engine. Made many suggestions in how the data could be presented differently such as a parts catalog instead of a standard page on the site and found alternative solutions with other stakeholders that allowed for flexibility in the new site..  Also led my team in technical discussions with outer departments in how data can be extracted from company owned resources such as SAP, SalesForce, and Oracle Agile systems.

Semtech's leading a strong IoT charge with its LoRa technology. A new initiative was needed to help on-board new developers to the LoRa ecosystem.  My Main contributions was developing for and configuring Expression Engine CMS a workflow that empowers the content owner to make pages quickly without know how to code HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Haas Automation has many servers and a small subset of Linux servers for the sites built on nginx, mysql, and php. The problem was that there were 20+ servers to support the drupal based sites that the company had. Total resource usage didn't match with aggregated metrics on site usage and traffic seen across all the sites build on Linux technologies. We also have developers that were confused in how to use things that were provided by the frameworks which support Apache, yet the servers were built using Nginx for web server.

When I was asked to lead and take over the infrastructure I quickly saw the need for consolidation of the sites onto a single server to share the resources of a single VM rather than to continue with the separate servers per application. I was able to reduce our servers down from 15 servers that were doing hosting to 4 servers for hosting and keeping the ancillary servers for repository and file servers and adding 1 server for Jenkins to provide continuous integration and deployment capabilities.

Instead of using Nginx I decided to migrate the sites back to Apache to reduce confusion with the documentation of the frameworks that were in use and what web server was being used. This also allowed the use of suexec in apache and specific user settings in php5-fpm's pool settings. When a requirement came through for 2 projects to use Node.js I was able to quickly set it up on the same set of servers using Apache as a reverse proxy to the Node.js applications, which prevented the need for more resources.

With my success in migrating sites to a combined/shared server environment I was also asked to take over administrative and integration duties of support apps like Slack, Jira, BitBucket, GitLab, and AWS. Our team continues to monitor the traffic use of our sites on the Linux servers, and they have confidence in me to scale out our servers should we find an application requires dedicated resources due to traffic.

An ongoing project that mimics the Haas Service Guide, the Sales Tool is being developed as the central communication tool between external sales people from multiple distributors and Haas Automation.  My involvement ensures user profile synchronization utilizing SAML based single sign on and SAP web services, certification dashboards with the quiz module, and front end development utilizing jQuery CSS and HTML.

The Haas Service Guide (HSG) was the communication portal for all service technicians around the world. It is the central utility for the distributor network to receive certification on machine knowledge, repairs, and alerts on common issues. Coupled with the domain module and core multi-site configuration, it came with multiple development and organizational challenges that prevented a clean upgrade path going forward. Many modules were customized for use by Haas Automation which required careful upgrading when the modules were updated by the original developers.

HSG was developed prior to my employment by Haas Automation, but I became an asset to the developer team right away with my knowledge of custom modules, form api, and other Drupal knowledge that I possessed coming into the company. With my assistance and many hours of work, the team was able to move many if not all the customizations to custom modules, themes, and libraries in an effort to restore the upgrade path.

Still under development, a new marketing team in conjunction with the service team and development teams are slowing migrating the site to use the investment the company has made with Adobe Experience Manager.

Parts.haascnc.com is a site where my employer allowed customers to view our catalog of offical parts and place them in a cart to them have a specific dealer get notified about the desire of of that customer to have the parts ordered and delivered. The site provided transparency of our MSRP before taxes and shipping to our end customers and ensured communications between our end customers and our dealer network.

When I got onto the project, the update process took more than 4 hours due to the use of a Drupal only method that looped over the items to update each item in serial. With my experience in PHP, Drupal, BASH shell scripting, and MySQL I was able to create a new process that pushed the time to less than 20 minutes by updating the information directly in the database, moved files in batch, and use the Microsoft Translator API for translations from english to 3 other languages. The lower updating times allowed us to perform updates much more frequently which allowed the business to better serve its customers and dealer network.

This project has slowly moved to use the Hybris Platform over the past year

Nucor steel is ranked as one of the top 25 producers of steel in the world. To get there, the IT staff treats each of the employees in the plant as a customer and delivers customized reports and information about the process in near real time to the individuals that need it to ensure efficiency and high productivity.

Nucor required an expert in PHP and other languages. That’s where I and few teammates from Rural Sourcing came in. Working closely with the Nucor Arkansas team, we are meeting the demands and providing solutions to the needs of the daily operations of the Hickman plant.

An Australian HQ’d company that built their own development environment, language, and engine. They build applications for mobile device that allow businesses to provide companies with a paperless dispatch system. Retriever partnered with RSI to help bring their company to the U.S. Market. RSI provided developers, project management, and QA resources to help in Retriever’s development and marketing goals.

As a senior developer I worked on a new application that is targeted towards sales people in the field and helps them with lead and opportunity management.

My first client with Rural Sourcing was working on SAP Development with ABAP SD forms as well as SD and PO SmartForm reports. KennaMetal provides metallurgical services to industries such as Aerospace, EarthWorks, Energy, Transportation, General Engineering, and Machine Tools and provides equipment with innovative wear-resistant solutions

I joined the team near the end of the project and performed duties to its completion as a developer. I was given special recognition for excellent client services on an issue by giving my contact details in the event of any problems and providing proper solutions after hours. This recognition was given to the CEO and VP’s of Rural Sourcing by a team member of the KennaMetal team. This special recognition kick started a new program in the company known as the Raving Fan Award, where recognition is given for highly positive comments made by clients about Rural Sourcing Inc. employees.