Hello! My name is Colman and I am currently a Software Development Engineer II for AWS at the HQ2 location in Northern Virginia. Before moving to the East Coast I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and attended college at Washington University, where I double majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and obtained my Master's degree in Control Engineering.
I would consider myself a highly motivated Python engineer and a strong team player. While my most recent experience involves building data pipelines using primarily Python and AWS, I have built a diverse skill set through my work at a few companies building visualization tools, VR applications, architecting cloud service solutions, designing process control systems, and more. Lately I have been learning about the principles of software system design. I find great satisfaction in understanding how things are built and am always willing to challenge myself to learn something new.
Skills: Python, Scala Spark, Jenkins, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes
AWS: Lambda, EC2, DynamoDB, ECS, Step Functions, EMR, CloudWatch Events & Logs, S3
Before my role at AWS, my last position was as a senior associate software engineer at Capital One. The responsibilites of my role were a blend of software and data engineering. My team owned the software and AWS infrastructure of a data pipeline comprising of an ETL process, data quality checks, KPI quantile calculations, and data visualizations around a multi-armed bandit model.
I worked on this team for a bit over 2 years and improved our application's:
Personal Project: histoleague.com
Skills: Python, React, Plotly Dash
AWS: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3 Static Site
I love playing fantasy football, and in the summer of 2019 I decided to create a data visualization site for fantasy football players to observe scoring trends and unique standings for their league. As the commissioner for my fantasy football league, I used to create these plots in an Excel spreadsheet to distribute to my leaguemates - but this year I thought it would be a fun challenge to build out a web application that would accomplish the same task.
The front end is built using React and hosted as an AWS S3 static site. The backend is a powered by a Python API, comprised of a series of Lambdas functions orchestrated by API Gateway, utilizing DynamoDB and S3 as the datastores. Feel free to take a look at histoleague.com/about!
The next step in development is building a client for direct integration with ESPN's fantasy API - to remove the necessity of manual intervention and reduce friction in the user experience.
Skills: Angular, NodeJS, Gulp, Protractor, Jenkins, Contentful
AWS: S3, EC2, Lambda, API Gateway
My first year at Capital One was spent with the credit card site team. Our site was a serverless single page application built with Angular and hosted on Amazon web services, and my main responsibilities were to build out new site capabilities (such as new cookie management strategies), new web pages, and to pursue automation and optimization opportunities.
Our team's primary focus was to help the business determine what would provide the best user experience to our site's visitors. I was responsible for communications with other internal dev teams, the design team, as well as the business to align on development priorities.
Skills: Unity Game Engine, C#
I have developed VR applications for a little over a year (Aug. 2016 - Sep. 2017) for the Defense division at Boeing. During that time, I primarily built applications using the Unity Game Engine to run on the HTC VIVE and Android phones paired with the Samsung Gear VR.
I was focused on rapid prototyping various VR solutions, from a few training simulations (convoy-escort or helicopter insertion scenarios) designed for education or mission rehearsal, to creating a virtual “holodeck” allowing analysts to virtually collaborate while manipulating their data and virtual surroundings. However, one of the most well-received projects I worked on was one that showcased full-scale models of Boeing’s vehicles (jets, armored vehicles, satellites, etc.) in a virtual museum as well as their operational environments.
Throughout my time at Boeing, I organized and presented prototypes for senior management, potential customers, and GEOINT conference attendees.
Certifications:
Knowledge of cloud services such as Amazon Web Services have become essential in the modern software engineer's skill set. As industries and corporations move away from the data centers of old - it will become crucial to rely on cloud services for their versatility, resiliency, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility.
My exposure to AWS began in college, when taking a rapid prototyping course. We worked with hosting various webpages on t2.micro EC2 instances and dabbled with user data shell scripts. However, working in industry (and especially while working at AWS itself) really opened my eyes to the vast capabilities of AWS and exposed me to a great number of AWS services and capabilities. AWS has become a vital aspect of all of my development work, both personal and professional.
Machine learning has become an ever-prevalent buzzword. I have been keenly learning about Bayesian Data Analysis and Statistical Learning.
I grew to love music of many genres from a young age. There's nothing quite as fun or exhiliarating as writing, playing, or even dancing to music.
I love to compete and stay active - whether that be through playing tennis, following my favorite NFL and NBA players, or my fantasy football team.
Experiencing new cultures, trying new foods, and traversing the unknown is one of life's most fulfilling adventures. (And snapping some pictures too!)