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Alexander Bird // Software Engineer
Learning to build useful, valuable software in a team
Alexander Bird
Vancouver BC, Canada
alex@alexanderbird.software
https://alexanderbird.software
Bio
— Strengths, values, and motivators
Collaborative
Successful software requires intentional collaboration
Values
- mob, pair whenever possible
- make work visible so we share our mental model
- develop a shared language (tech & stakeholder)
- write code for humans to read
- make room on the team for everyone to contribute
Strengths
- facilitating mobbing & design work
- domain driven design
- empathy
- mentoring
- documentation writing
- stakeholder-readable tests
Iterative
As a lean thinker, I can't help but work in small batches
Values
- get useful software quick, then improve
- iterative, just-in-time design
- don't build it if you don't need it
Strengths
-
commits in minutes
- TDD
- TCR (test && commit || revert)
- provable refactoring
-
merges in hours
- slice tech tasks into tiny deliverable chunks
- branch-by-abstraction
- prototype then refactor
-
releases in days
- slice customer needs into tiny deliverable chunks
- user story mapping to drive small slices of customer-centric work
- use experiments to de-risk unknowns
- sustainable, sufficient testing so we can release with confidence
- acceptance test driven development to keep us focussed
Engineer
Striving for methodical, data-driven, high quality work
Values
- success should feel like solving a puzzle not winning the lottery
Strengths
-
work backwards from customer needs
- stories about customers' work drive features
- acceptance tests drive features
- unit tests drive implementation
-
don't guess
- if it's not covered by a test it doesn't exist
- thoughtfully instrument your code for observability
- test-in-production (e.g. scientist pattern) to prove your refactoring is safe
-
learn with experiments
- instead of big up front design, craft experiments and spikes to drive design
Experience
2021
Software Engineer, Acting Manager (SDE 2)
Amazon Web Services
2020-2021
Software Engineer (SDE 2)
Amazon Web Services
2019
Senior Software Developer
Shareworks by Morgan Stanley
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
Leading Our Team Amidst A Transition
Role:
Employer: Amazon Web Services
12 people
since February 2020
Acting Software Development Manager
- active participation in most team code reviews
- promote technical practices like refactoring, domain driven design, and customer-centric design
- managing the team's ramp-up on a neighboring system as our area of ownership doubles
- coaching several engineers who are mentoring interns for the first time
- weekly 1:1s with 10+ engineers
- managing onboarding of 4+ engineers
⇅public AWS API
⇅HTTP via SDKs
Enhancing AWS Service Catalog
Role:
Employer: Amazon Web Services
9 people
15 months
Software Development Engineer II
- redesign core data processing component of our system from procedural and error prone to highly scalable / retryable queue & lambda architecture
- introduce pairing and mobbing to our team to accelerate knowledge/skill transfer and increase code quality
-
established contract testing on the team to
- reduce time to add tests for a big feature from months to days
- increase stability of tests in the build pipeline
- increase the percentage of testing we can do through unit tests (reducing iteration time from minutes to seconds)
- led the investigation and mitigation of several customer-impacting operational incidents while oncall
- established User Story Mapping on the team to make our design activities more customer-centric.
⇅HTTP
Modifying a Legacy Application
Role:
Employer: Shareworks by Morgan Stanley
> 100 people
6 months
Sr. Developer
- Mob and pair programming to add features to a legacy Java application
- Familiarized myself with a new area of code each month (every team can be assigned to work on any area of the code)
- Story-splitting and user story mapping
- Refactored partially tested legacy code (safely) to make it easier to change
- Demoed weekly to clients
-
Took initiative to improve shared automation and tooling
- published a command line interface (with tab completion) to abstract, document, and improve common developer commands (people actually use it and submit PRs)
- wrote a small Ruby on Rails tool to make test failure results easier to triage (still in trial/demo stage)
⇅HTTP
⇅HTTP
⇅various protocols
Real-Time Well Monitoring Dashboard
Role:
Employer: Arcurve Inc
Client:
Oilfield services
(publicly traded)
2 people
4 months
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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