markbrown.space

Mark Brown

Full Stack Developer with a penchant for building applications, creating scalable systems and leading teams. Experienced in architecting solutions to complex problems and helping others to grow their skills.

javascript | python | bash | sql | nosql | distributed systems | git | aws

https://markbrown.space +1 (707)-681-5658 mark@markbrown.space

Work Experience

  • Summit Technology Consulting Group / Lenders Cooperative, Senior Application Developer

    Mechanicsburg, PA March 2022 - May 2024

    • Built flagship loan origination software using hybrid Vue/Django,Postgres/k8s. Currently in use by 17 banks.
    • Built the SBA's disaster lending platform. Responsible for developing the payment processing application, Pay.gov integration, Disaster declarations and amendment processes, and DocuSign integration
    • Built the SBA's Oauth provider used across the disaster lending platform and VetCert
    • Engaged in discussions about UX/system design/architecture to enhance user satisfaction and understand user needs underlying proposed projects.
    • Quickly prototyped new ideas for disaster lending platform, contributing to enhanced functionality and user experience.
    • Built backup orchestration application for a bank's disaster recovery plan using Terraform/Node.js

  • Bright Productions, Chief Technology Officer

    Petaluma, CA 2020-March 2022

    • Architected high-availability and mission-critical systems with DNS failover, multi-region deployments configured with connection peering, static assets served via CDN, observability dashboards, and A/B testing with over 15k monthly users.
    • Designed and built web applications using Vue & React, Node.js(Express/Koa2/Hapi), MariaDB/Postgres/MongoDB and ElasticSearch with fault-tolerant & distributed features on AWS, Linode, and Digital Ocean.
    • Established engineering practices around instrumentation and telemetry, CI/CD, headless puppeteer tests, and coding/commit standards which improved code quality, reduced costs and promoted consistency between projects.
    • Advanced forward-thinking culture of organization by creating one of the first sites on the internet to use an OpenType SVG multicolor font as a H1 tag logo which moved the site from #4 to #1 on google.
    • Identified sources of latency with tooling using numpy/pandas and developed solutions which improved Lighthouse scores/page speed rank by an average of over 25 points.
    • Refactored codebases in javascript, python, and php which modernized application code, improved security, increased execution speed, and reduced dependencies.

  • Bright Productions, Team Lead & Senior Engineer

    Petaluma, CA2018-2020

    • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines which tested code & triggered build processes segmented to dev/staging/production environments which eliminated deployment errors.
    • Led a team of 4 developers in creating APIs in Node.js (express, hapi, and koa2) and PHP(laravel, cake), building schemas for SQL and NoSQL databases in MySQL/MariaDB, Postgres, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and creating front-end experiences using Angular, Vue, React, JQuery, vanilla JavaScript, HTML/SCSS and Python.
    • Managed a fleet of 36 separate virtual machines with uptime > 99.9% in various flavors of linux on AWS, Linode, and Digital Ocean.
    • Managed company intranet and on-premise servers. Installed, configured, and maintained routers, switches, cabling, phone systems, local NPM server, VPN server and local test web servers.
    • Migrated user accounts, software packages, databases, configurations, and services from OSes approaching EOL to current LTS versions with zero downtime.
    • Continuously improved existing systems to increase service levels by expanding DevOps Program to include daily ClamAV scans with notifications and creating middleware to update password hashes in database from bcrypt v3 to v5 on successful login so that a legacy application could be updated to current node LTS version and utilize Error Codes.
    • Created troubleshooting tools in python, bash, and observability dashboards that increased efficiency and gave insight into server load and latencies. Discovered opportunities where adjustment of configuration improved IOPS.

  • Bright Productions, Junior Developer

    Petaluma, CA2017-2018

    • Created and maintained websites in PHP, HTML, Javascript, CSS/SASS.
    • Started DevOps program which included system and application observability platform based upon collectd, redis, grafana and prometheus. fail2ban, and daily backups to s3.
    • Created tools in bash and python to aid client onboarding, billing and payroll, manage filesystems, apply updates/upgrades and aggregate/parse log files.
    • Found critical vulnerabilities in legacy PHP framework and patched code to remove vulnerabilities.

  • Regusci Vineyard Management & Viti Analytics, Vineyard Analyst

    Napa, CA2015-2016

    • Built unmanned aerial vehicles with APM and Pixhawk and strapped imaging sensors to them, flying all over Napa Valley and assessing vine health.
    • Created orthomosiacs via photogrammetry in Agisoft Photoscan OpenDroneMap, contributing to OpenDroneMap's development
    • Wrote python scripts to calibrate, align and process images from offset multispectral cameras and created custom multi-band images for creating NDVI maps
    • Built Angular2 web application with PHP and Python backends which charted individual vines for in situ phenology tracking using d3.js, leaflet map and 3rd party APIs.
    • Wrote methods utilizing OpenCV, numpy/pandas, and scikitlearn to create phenology predictions.

  • Atelier Melka, Assistant Winemaker

    St. Helena, CA2014-2015

    • Built automated collection system for PDF fillable forms using python to check gmail api and parse xml from PDF attached to email, aggregating and inserting fields to database records in FileMaker database on NAS and mariaDB on a Raspberry Pi.
    • Managed vineyard picks across 21 vineyards directing 10-30 people at at time and cellar crews across 8 wineries and custom crush facilities directing 3-10 people at a time.

  • Fruition Sciences, Vineyard Analyst

    St. Helena, CA2013

    • Designed and configured solar powered wireless mesh networks (zigbee) with sensor/data-loggers to push sensor values collected within vineyards up to local sqlite database with backups synced to s3 on cron
    • Designed and built automatic cable tester for 9 pin data cables using an AtMel 328p on a breadboard with Arduino sketch to control eight 4051 shift registers and to detect continuity/shorts/wire resistance via ohm's law within spec for pass/fail
    • Consumed APIs and charted time series data with d3.js.

Education

  • BA Political Science

    University of Iowa2009