To be a part of a team working to improve people's lives by solving complex and challenging problems.
The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC)
Prior Lake, MN | July 2023 - May 2024
In an agency-like setting as one of two web developers in charge of roughly 25 websites and a stack consisting of mostly Wordpress with a little custom PHP and Strapi/Flutter, we were responsible for the entire software development lifecycle, from minor copy changes to full site rebuilds. Major projects included: the first site rebuild in about 5 years; creating and implementing the process for new website builds in the future; ensuring that all of the websites are version controlled (with Git), have automated quality assurance checks, and continuous deployment. Some of the most enjoyable projects were those requiring functionality extension to an existing Wordpress plugin like custom logic for WooCommerce coupon codes or hacking Ninja Forms multi-part conditional logic, creating new plugins like GraphQL API ingestion for fuel prices and reviews, or collaborate with designers and writers to come up with unique interactive frontend content.
Justin T Jones (Consultancy) | Saint Paul, MN | April 2016 - August 2023
As the sole proprietor of a web development and IT conultancy every aspect of running the business was my responsibility. Notable projects include: a multi-site VoIP installation with a cloud-hosted PBX; enterprise network management and expansion; and various website management projects using software like PHP, Wordpress, and Laravel. This role really flexes the "self-starter" skills, requiring a certain level of dedication and ambition.
SAV Transportation Group | Coon Rapids, MN | January 2021 - June 2022
Part of a team of two maintaining a Symfony PHP application that consumes at least a dozen third-party APIs and provides several customer facing APIs itself. Daily tasks included adding new features and API integrations, ensuring proper functionality of existing features and API integrations, writing unit tests and functional tests, ensuring new features have tests and pass existing tests, and migrating features from a legacy Symfony 1 app into modern Symfony PHP code.
Express Image, Digital | Little Canada, MN | August 2017 - December 2019
Starting as a developer working on JavaScript based kiosk applications (using the Mythril frontend framework) quickly led to being the "company expert" on Drupal with a multi-site Drupal 8 installation consisting of a 750,000 user per month front-end website and a separate API feeding that site and hundreds of kiosks. Since Drupal 8 was in its infancy at this time a number of custom modules had to be written, including storing and serving all assets via CDN, custom API ingestion, and search analysis export. Some major hurdles in this project were overcome including migrating from Acquia to Pantheon for Drupal specific hosting, building and hosting a Docker container for outdated Solr search requirements, and a single sign-on feature implementing AWS Cognito. After a promotion to Dev-Ops Engineer my main focus shifted to the AWS backend supporting the kiosk applications via the following services: Cognito, RDS, API Gateway, Lambda, EC2, and S3. Other notable Dev-Ops tasks included maintaining, improving, and implementing continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) strategies, at times reducing Docker based deployment times by up to 80%. Other highlights from this role include a "company expert" status at API integration and leading multiple efforts to led for refactor code that frequently generated support tickets.
Schweiss Doors | Fairfax, MN | July 2014 - August 2017
This was a multi-faceted role; at one level it was agency-like: managing client requests, updating websites, invoicing; at another level content was coming via discussions and as PSDs to be implemented on the Schweiss websites; at yet another level was IT administration: handling things as small as "this won't print" requests all the way up to installing and upgrading infrastructure, including web, email, file, and database server management, physical hardware management, and security. There was even some time spent installing, upgrading, and painstakingly documenting a professional audio installation for horse shows. On the web side the tech stack was custom PHP with a bit of Wordpress here and there. The IT stack was Windows and Linux running on VMWare on HP hardware, HP/Aruba switches and access points, and even a Mac server. Notable projects include: increasing the load times of a legacy analytics application by orders of magnitude by adjusting the database structure and calls; custom-built shopping cart experience for the horse shows in JavaScript; implement Git as a version control system for web projects.
Ridgewater College | Hutchinson, MN
Studied computer programming with C, C#, Python, Java (Android 2.X), Data Driven Web with PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, and generals courses. Hired as Teacher's Assistant for an HTML class. Tutored students in various programming courses including those covering the languages C#, Java, and JavaScript, most of the time while currently enrolled in the classes being tutored. Student of the Month for April 2013.