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Alexander Bird // Software Developer
A passion for building useful, valuable software in a team
Alexander Bird
Calgary, AB, Canada
alex@alexanderbird.software
https://alexanderbird.software
Bio
— Strengths, values, and motivators
Helping Others
I'm motivated by making other people's lives better with software.
Values
- deploy early and often
- ask users for feedback
- build the features that provide business value
- make room on the development team for everyone to contribute
Strengths
-
communication
- listening
- discussion facilitation
- documentation writing
- teaching
- pair programming / mobbing / collaborative code reviews
- leadership
Innovation
I'm motivated when there is room for innovation: when our team is expected to deliver excellent results quickly by whatever processes and tools we find work best in the current context.
Values
- measure outcomes instead of developer activities
- specify the problem (not the tasks to complete)
- work in small batches; reevaluate process/tools regularly based on results
- devote time to improvement (instead of always rushing and never going faster)
Strengths
- requirements gathering, design, modelling
- slicing large requirements into small experiments
- working to understand the human/business context
- communicating the problem to everyone on the team
Technical Excellence
I'm motivated when we spend an appropriate amount of time to test, architect, and document what we build. I have found this pays for itself now, and helps us in the future, because well-written software is:
Values
- faster to write
- cheaper to maintain
- less stressful to work with
- easier to re-purpose when plans change
Strengths
-
building with quality
- TDD / TCR
- Approval Testing
- safe refactoring
-
learning quickly
- requirements gathering
- reading documentation
- reading code
- learning new languages
- see Experience section
Experience
2018-2019
Technical Lead
Arcurve Inc
(various projects)
2016-2018
Software Developer
Arcurve Inc
(various projects)
2014-2015
Software Developer Intern
Arcurve Inc
(various projects)
2013 (4 months)
Software Developer / Research Assistant
Software Engineering Decision Support Lab
University of Calgary
⇅HTTP
⇅HTTP
⇅various protocols
Real-Time Well Monitoring Dashboard
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Oilfield services
(publicly traded)
2 people
2 months
(ongoing)
Tech Lead
- Led Domain Driven Design style modelling session with team (incl. user researcher, UX, and PM) to clarify the problem statement and approach
- Prototyped experimental data visualizations with Highcharts from provided mockups
- Setup project build & test infrastructure (using Lerna to manage the monorepo; auto-generating the Angular SDK from the API Swagger doc)
- Built inexpensive demo infrastructure so we can deploy before the upstream integration points (external team) are available
- Conducted job interviews
⇅HTTP
⇅HTTP
Reverse Engineering
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Corporate minutebook management
(startup)
1 person
5 months
Tech Lead
- Built an import utility for a proprietary data format: inferred the domain model/rules from the data, wrote a custom parser.
- Integrated this component with our client's code
- Provided extensive documentation and training so their development team was comfortable maintaining the import utility
- Conducted job interviews
⇅HTTP
⇅HTTP
AWS EC2
on-premise
Team Lead
Role: Software Developer Team Lead
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Telecommunications provider
(publicly traded)
8 people
6 months
Tech Lead
- Updated team processes to increase knowledge sharing and collaboration between team members
- Identified a way to temporarily reuse legacy components in order to release sooner
- Conducted job interviews
⇅HTTP
Heroku
Architected for Reuse
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Professional certification auditing
(startup)
3 people
3 months
Developer
- Architected and unit tested the application in a way that allowed us to salvage most of the application when the client drastically changed their application after several months (new UI, new data model)
- Maintained respectful, constructive communication with our client in a challenging team environment
⇅WebRTC
⇅WebSocket
⇅various protocols
Browser WebRTC Protocol Deep Dive
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Video conferencing
(private corporation)
2 people
12 months
Developer
-
Integrated the emerging WebRTC protocol with our client's custom video
conferencing infrastructure via a proof-of-concept JavaScript library
- Enabled video calling between a browser and multiple embedded and/or desktop clients
- Collaborated constructively and respectfully with my technical lead in the face of many differences of opinion
⇅HTTP
Following Patterns; Accepting Feedback
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Land acquisition service provider
(private corporation)
2 people
4 months
Developer
- Followed patterns set by previous developers
- Collaborated through code reviews — receiving (accepting, adopting) feedback, discussing my approach
⇅HTTP
Linux (shared cloud hosting)
Navigated Technical Debt
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Surplus oilfield equipment broker
(startup)
1 person
4 months
Intern
- Identified and fixed several illusive bugs in a very indebted and haphazardly constructed application
- Participated in requirements elicitation from domain experts who had little technical understanding
Macro Serializer (3rd party)
Version Control
TDD & Version Control with Excel VBA
Role: Software Developer
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Oilfield services
(publicly traded)
1 person
3 months
Intern
- Proposed new business process to reduce lead time for new clients by 50%
- Modified the existing Excel VBA tool to support the new process
⇅HTTP
Software Engineering Decision Support Lab
Role: Software Developer / Research Assistant
Employer: University of Calgary
2 people
4 months
Research Assistant
- Implemented a synchronization utility between JIRA and a proprietary business intelligence / project planning tool
Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering, 2016
Schulich School of Engineering
University of Calgary