Dave Birch
Developer, solver of problems.
About
I love to build fully-functional, well-tested web applications, and developing and designing cohesive user experiences for web and mobile platforms, going from wireframe to working application. Technologies and Frameworks I use regularly - Javascript and Typescript - NodeJs, React, Vue, Well tested with integration and unit testing with experience with most moderng testing tools. - Python - dev experience with Flask, Django, Tornado etc - Deep knowledge of AWS cloud tech - building applications orchestrated with CloudFormation, Lambda and EC2, Cognito, DynamoDB and DocDB, - Familiarity working with MongoDb, Postgres, Redis, among others.
Work Experience
OneDay
Cedar Park, TX, United States
October 2019 – Present
Front End Architect
In my role, I architect and implement the OneDay web application, leveraging the React ecosystem in a role that goes a good bit beyond traditional front-end development. I lead the integration and management of our entire front-end tech stack, leveraging Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, facilitating automated, efficient, and error-free updates for the OneDay web application with AWS CDK. This process not only accelerates the delivery of new features and fixes but also ensures high quality and stability through robust testing. Central to our high-performing application is an advanced AWS infrastructure, where I apply my expertise across services like Amplify, Cognito, CloudFront, and CloudFormation, to automate secure user authentication, content delivery with minimal latency, and the scalable provisioning of resources. Leveraging serverless technologies such as Lambda@Edge, I enhance user experience by customizing content delivery, bolstering performance and security. My comprehensive understanding of the AWS ecosystem allows me to architect, deploy, and maintain scalable, cloud-based solutions that meet our application’s demands for availability and cutting-edge functionality, while continuously integrating the latest AWS features to maintain our technological and security edge.
Software Engineer
At Carbon Black, I was part of a team developing tools for assiting our threat hunting and monitoring capabilities. This application, built on Flask with Vue/Vuex components, served as a central hub for ingesting security alerts from endpoint monitoring tools. Ingesting alerts fed in to MongoDB via Lambda through Kinesis pipelines, we ensured real-time data flow and analysis, enabling swift responses to emerging threats. One aspect of my work involved the creation of custom loggers. These loggers were crucial for monitoring application state, with automated messaging to AWS CloudWatch to provide visibility and insights into operational health and security incidents. This infrastructure supported our proactive stance on security management and facilitated the identification and resolution of issues before they could escalate.
Another significant achievement was as part of a team developing of an intelligent system capable of auto-tagging and categorizing common security warnings, dubbed "Mr Robot". This automation greatly reduced the manual workload for security analysts, allowing them to focus on more complex investigations. By streamlining the process of identifying routine threats, we significantly enhanced operational efficiency and the effectiveness of our security measures.
In addition to these contributions, I also took the initiative to build out capabilities into the realm of team communication and collaboration. I developed custom Slack applications that integrated seamlessly with our infrastructure, utilizing DynamoDB for data storage and Lambda functions for improving cross-team engagement and rapport.
Staff Software Engineer
While working at Bazaarvoice I helped overhaul our legacy Curations platform that leveraged Django and jQuery to a new modern stack using GraphQL and driven by a reusable React component based architecture. Part of a small team working closely with platform team to execute implementation from wireframes and work with clients to seamlessly transition clients to our new system. Also made numerous contributions as part of a cross-functional team helping to build out a set of reusable components leveraged across the Bazaarvoice FrontEnd teams.
Work also included continuing to support and maintain our legacy curations software and work with Implementation Engineers to ensure our clients were leveraging the tool and systems properly.
Highlights
- Promoted from Senior Software Engineer November 2017
- Helped organize our Austin area React Meetup, and provided talks on Testing
Leveler
January 2015 – May 2016
Director of Web Technologies
At Leveler, a dynamic and fast-paced startup, I played a crucial role in a lean three-person team dedicated to revolutionizing the job and estimating software domain. Our mission was to deliver a robust, user-friendly solution that catered to the unique needs of our target audience, streamlining their workflow and enhancing productivity. I contributed to the development of both the web and mobile clients for our software. For the web client, I utilized Angular and later React to build a responsive and intuitive user interface that ensured a seamless user experience across various devices and platforms. This approach allowed us to maintain a consistent and engaging user experience, promoting user adoption and satisfaction. As the primary developer of our mobile app we leveraged web technologies with Cordova and Ionic technologies to maximize code reuse and extend the software's reach, enabling users to access our platform on-the-go. This mobile client mirrored the efficiency and user-friendly design of our web application, ensuring that users had access to our powerful job and estimating tools, regardless of their location or device. The backbone of our application was a robust backend powered by a MongoDB database and a Flask API. This architecture ensured scalability, performance, and the flexibility to adapt to our users' evolving needs. My work on the backend involved designing and implementing scalable solutions that supported the application's data processing and storage requirements, ensuring high performance and reliability. In this role I actively contributed to the startup's agile environment, adapting to rapid iterations and contributing to all phases of the development lifecycle. Our small, efficient team successfully developed and launched a comprehensive solution that addressed a significant market need, demonstrating our ability to innovate and execute within a competitive landscape, serving thousands of users over the years.
Volunteer
Food Distribution Volunteer
I help distribute food to our neighbors in need in the Cedar Park area.
Chidrens Ministries
Volunteer in the Children's Ministry at Grace Covenant Church
Contact
United States
Cedar Park 78613 US
979-324-7346
Education
-
1997 2001
Azusa Pacific University
BA
Communications, Media Studies
Skills
Languages
Frameworks
Software and Tools
Other Skills and disciplines
References
Dave is a phenomenal web architect and engineer and just a pleasure to work with. At OneDay, Dave lead our initiative to bring our successful mobile platform to web and it exceeded our expectations. From Architecture, to Engineering, to Quality, Dave is world class and a class act himself.
Dave is one of the most creative and knowledgeable developers that I have ever worked with. He is a complete developer. He can build back end services, front end applications and knows all of the technical details of tools for building web applications. He built and designed the deployment infrastructure for the web app that we worked on together. He built some of the slickest UIs I have ever seen. He was the go to guy if I ever had any questions about using build tools like git. He is fearless and dauntless when given a task. He is never at a loss to find a way to build complex and unusual features. For example, he designed and built the browser video recorder that mixed video and audio streams so that the user is able to simultaneously see their camera and screen rendered on a common html canvas object while they are recording their video. I learned almost everything I know about the Media Capture and Stream Web API by virtue of the research and code that he wrote. He also wrote a Videojs plugin to allow a single common timeline and scrub bar for multiple videos being played sequentially as a Videojs playlist. I honestly wasn't sure if that was possible but Dave figured it out. Additionally, Dave is one of the nicest and most conscientious people I have ever worked with. He is humble and fair. He always gives credit where it is due and takes on more than his fair share of workload. He is one of the most dependable and reliable people I have ever worked with. It was a joy working at OneDay knowing that I could always rely on Dave for anything.
I had the pleasure of working with Dave on the first ever project of my career. He's tech savvy, amazing, has great work ethics and a great human being to work with. He helped scale the Oneday web application to an amazing application that it is now and also helped me elevate my skills to new heights. Being a fresher, during my time at Oneday I have always looked up to Dave as the kind of person I would wanna be in future both professionally and personally.
There is no better colleague than Dave. He is one of the most dedicated professionals I’ve worked with and is willing to put that extra help whenever you need it. His expertise as a developer is considerable, and it helped our team come up with more efficient solutions on different projects. His contribution is valuable to the side, and I am delighted to work and learn with such professionals.
Dave is a talented developer with an amazing work ethic. He's constantly picking up new skills and doing more than what's required. Dave also has a great attitude that lifts the mood of those around him. Simply put, he's the type of person you want on your team.
Dave is a top 1% type of software developer. He picks up new technologies with ease and has an incredible work ethic that allows him to deliver when presented with a challenge. He'd be a great asset to any dev group.
Working with Dave at FeedMagnet and Bazaarvoice has been an absolute pleasure. Dave is diligent worker who is committed to, and skilled at, producing efficient and beautiful software. Moreover, Dave is a team player; he is invested in the well-being and growth of his co-workers, and is a genuinely great person.