jon_north

SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, based in NYC area, backend engineer

I am a backend expert, having built and maintained highly available systems for several companies over the last 5 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience.

The primary service I offer is managed Site Reliability Engineering in high to medium ambiguity environments where the client would prefer not to micromanage day to day development. If you have systems (or need systems built) that must firmly meet, and prove they meet, their Service Level Agreements: I can help.

If the work requires a team, I will bring a team. If it is a one-person job, that is also fine. Your goals are my priorities. My rates are reasonable in exchange for the value I deliver.

Concrete examples (scratch built systems/teams, where I was sole or lead engineer):

* built and deployed an AWS Lambda architecture replatforming portfolio management for a ~3 yo startup hedge fund

* built a ~50 node, Dockerized, Terraform-deployed distributed system to provide realtime, transformed trade data from crypto exchanges to a Kafka pipeline and data lake (fodder for an analytics platform). Met 5000msec SLA across arbitrarily many exchanges and ticker symbols. Blue-green deployment for complete CICD safety. Cloudwatch metrics proved SLA was met and provided general system oversight.

* built a framework to collapse dozens of singleton ETL programs into one config-driven, simple C# application performing the same functionality at ~80% reduction in maintenance cost year over year.

* built and managed a team of 8 engineers operating against multiple streams of work to meet business needs, with ~12 active projects at a time.

Contact: jon.north@adiuvat-consulting.com More: www.adiuvat-consulting.com

Keywords: Python, C++, SQL, NoSQL, Go, Golang, Git, SVN, Subversion, Linux, Bash, Windows, Kafka, Terraform, AWS, Docker, Redis, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, LDAP, Active Directory, OAuth2

If I'm writing C++, I am doing it because I need nanosecond latency (and the delicious language libraries). If I only need microsecond latency, I would use Golang. If millisecond is fine, it'd be Python in a hot minute.

If I only need (as is 99% of the time the case) a smidge of code to run nanosecond-fast, I'd write a C extension and call it from a higher-level language that does the orchestration code. The C extension would by definition be simple code, so there is no real problem with C as such - it's ideally suited for that role.

Only in the rare case that a large program needs to be nanosecond-fast would I even consider C++ (and I'd push really hard to learn if that really needed to be true!), and then I'd write code like it was 2003 - smart pointers and POD classes, but that's it. The new libraries are wonderful for saving code and getting good fast implementation of algos!

SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, based in NYC area, backend engineer

I am a backend expert, having built and maintained highly available systems for several companies over the last 5 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience.

Availability: About 20 concentrated hours per week The ideal engagement at this point would be with a firm that expects to need team-level help and wants to try me out as the lead for that on a smaller initial project.

You will like working with me because I:

  * hold your goals as my priorities
  * communicate verbosely yet synthesize well
  * my rates are reasonable in exchange for the value I deliver
  * I guarantee I will get the job done

Concrete examples: * built a ~50 node, Dockerized, Terraform-deployed distributed system to provide realtime, transformed trade data from crypto exchanges to a Kafka pipeline and data lake (fodder for an analytics platform). Met 5000msec SLA across arbitrarily many exchanges and ticker symbols. Blue-green deployment for complete CICD safety. Cloudwatch metrics proved SLA was met and provided general system oversight. * built a framework to collapse dozens of singleton ETL programs into one config-driven, simple C# application performing the same functionality at ~80% reduction in maintenance cost year over year. * built and managed a team of 8 engineers operating against multiple streams of work to meet business needs, with ~12 active projects at a time.

Contact: jon.north@adiuvat-consulting.com More: www.adiuvat-consulting.com

Keywords: Python, C++, SQL, NoSQL, Go, Golang, Git, SVN, Subversion, Linux, Bash, Windows, Kafka, Terraform, AWS, Docker, Redis, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, LDAP, Active Directory, OAuth2

When developers see ops as IT for them, it's because ops (and overall management) is doing a poor job laying out the actual responsibilities of each role in the org.

You should first ask yourself what you really enjoy. I happen to enjoy reliability, scaling up systems, etc. So I go after those kinds of projects. The things you really enjoy, you'll bring infectious enthusiasm to, and that's the best kung fu you can possess (well, that and learning your craft very well).

I would as a general rule avoid anything involving being perceived as QA (stigma), or extremely speculative projects (Google+) -- because you only get one life, and keeping risk of ruin down is good. But, you may disagree and decide to go for risky things. The ROI on those is hard to calculate anything like precisely so it's more a matter of taste than math.

SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, based in NYC area, backend engineer

I am a backend expert, having built and maintained highly available systems for several companies over the last 5 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience.

You will like working with me because I:

  * hold your goals as my priorities
  * communicate verbosely yet synthesize well
  * my rates are reasonable in exchange for the value I deliver
  * I guarantee I will get the job done

Concrete examples:

  * built a ~50 node, Dockerized, Terraform-deployed distributed system to provide realtime, transformed trade data from crypto exchanges to a Kafka pipeline and data lake (fodder for an analytics platform). Met 5000msec SLA across arbitrarily many exchanges and ticker symbols.  Blue-green deployment for complete CICD safety.  Cloudwatch metrics proved SLA was met and provided general system oversight.
  * built a framework to collapse dozens of singleton ETL programs into one config-driven, simple C# application performing the same functionality at ~80% reduction in maintenance cost year over year.
  * built and managed a team of 8 engineers operating against multiple streams of work to meet business needs, with ~12 active projects at a time.

Contact: jon.north@adiuvat-consulting.com

More: www.adiuvat-consulting.com

Keywords: Python, C++, SQL, NoSQL, Go, Golang, Git, SVN, Subversion, Linux, Bash, Windows, Kafka, Terraform, AWS, Docker, Redis, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, LDAP, Active Directory, OAuth2