Craig Buchek ============ craig.buchek@gmail.com 314-374-5780 https://craigbuchek.com https://github.com/booch *************************************************************************** ## Summary * Software engineer with 15+ years of experience, plus 10+ years IT experience. * Agile player-coach with a proven track record of mentoring and cultivating talent, transforming teams and team members into the best versions of themselves. * Experienced Ruby on Rails web developer with strong devops and automation skills. ## Highlights * Continuously improving how teams work — including processes, technical practices, and automation. * Mentored developers in Agile methodologies and Java programming. * Active member of developer community, frequently speaking at conferences and local user groups. ## Professional Experience ### Director of Engineering Excellence at BookTek (2007 - present) * Managed various projects as an independent consultant/contractor. * Designed, implemented, and deployed large-scale web applications. * Developed, maintained, and documented APIs for several mobile client applications. * Contributed to rewrite of a hospital system's patient portal. * Wrote application for patients to find doctors by specialty. * Developed in 5 weeks, on time and on budget. * Upgraded and maintained older Rails applications. Tech Stacks: Ruby, Rails, RSpec, Python, Bash shell, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, HAML, CSS, GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat) ### Staff Software Engineer at DebtBook (2022 - 2024) * Built web app to manage financial accounting for local governments. * Maintained and built functionality for management of public debt, leases, and software subscriptions. * Ensured compliance with government accounting standards (GASB, FASB). * Transformed engineering practices to meet the needs of a quickly growing startup. * Focused on building maintainable, reliable, scalable, and performant code. * Improved processes, workflow, and automation. * Promoted advanced technical practices among the engineering team. * Provided code reviews, ensuring quality and providing learning opportunities. * Mentored junior developers. * Led several large projects, making design and architectural decisions. * Grew team from 4 to 25 developers in 18 months. * Interviewed and assessed candidates. * Streamlined, documented, and automated onboarding process. Tech Stack: Ruby, Rails, Sidekiq, JavaScript, React, Docker Compose, Bash shell, PostgreSQL, GitLab ### Staff Software Engineer at True Link Financial (2022) * Built web app to manage financial services. * Management of restrictions on pre-paid debit cards. * Investment tracking for pooled special-needs trusts. * Promoted advanced technical practices among the development team. * Presentation on how to improve testing. * Resolved issues with receiving duplicate transaction notifications. Tech Stack: Ruby, Rails, RSpec, AWS, React ### Principal Software Engineer at Binary Noggin (2019 - 2021) * Built web back-end to manage electronic poll books and aggregate data. * Guided development team to make improvements to processes and technical practices. * Agile practices: retrospectives, TDD, pair programming, Kanban. * Improved application performance, in preparation for traffic spike due to presidential election. * Added telemetry/metrics to track performance. * Optimized MySQL queries and indexes. * Employed background jobs and batching. * Tuned Kubernetes settings for scaling pods to meet load demands. * Implemented load shedding. * Upgraded application from Rails 4.2 to 6.0. * Automated infrastructure build-out. Tech Stack: Ruby, Rails, Sidekiq, RSpec, jQuery, Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform ### Sr. Software Developer at Weedmaps (2019) * Built web app for a retail marketplace in a fast-growing industry. * Management of retailers and products. * Categorization and tagging of products. * Implemented and consumed APIs within a complex service-oriented architecture. * Promoted Agile practices within team. Tech Stack: Ruby, Rails, Grape, RSpec, Sidekiq, CoffeeScript, jQuery ### Sr. Software Developer at F5 Networks (2017 - 2019) * Developed web app for network services (load balancers, proxies, DDoS prevention). * Upgraded web app to Rails 5.0. * Promoted Agile practices within team. Tech Stack: Ruby, Rails, Ansible, Nginx, Sidekiq, CoffeeScript, Vue.js ### Engineering Manager, Software Engineer at CenturyLink Cloud (2015 - 2017) * Managed a team of 6, implementing WordPress as a cloud service. * Boosted team productivity from 17 to 60 "points". * Managed a team of 14, deploying Cloud Foundry clusters. * Built a monitoring system for cloud servers. * Promoted Agile practices within teams. Tech Stack: Ruby, Sensu, Grape microservices, Docker, Ansible, Nginx, Bash, Kubernetes, RabbitMQ ### Previous * Designed, implemented, and deployed large-scale web applications. * Social networking and data-gathering site for patients with type 1 diabetes. * Provisioned load-balanced servers for 200,000 concurrent users. * Asset management system for a large company (12 million digital assets). * Consulted at a large corporation (7000 employees) to teach developers how to implement Agile practices. * Implemented pair programming, Kanban, TDD, refactoring, continuous integration. * Mentored developers to improve their Java skills. * Guided companies in establishing technical and process improvements. * Embedded within development teams as Agile player-coach. * Promoted Agile/Lean methodologies to increase team performance. * Instituted retrospectives, pair programming, Kanban, TDD, BDD, refactoring, CI. * Built an internal cloud infrastructure, automating deployment of Java applications. * Implemented web control panel in Python. * Designed and implemented web applications for small businesses and non-profits. Tech Stacks: Ruby, Rails, RSpec, Python, Bash shell, JavaScript, jQuery, Java, HTML, HAML, CSS, SASS, F5 load balancers, Capybara, Cucumber, Jasmine, Cucumber-JVM, Selenium, Jenkins, JUnit, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Devise, CoffeeScript ## Education * Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN) - Computer Science major ## Community Involvement * STL Tech Slack - Co-admin * STL Ruby - Co-organizer * STL Polyglots - Co-founder * This Agile Life podcast - Co-host (2013-2019) * Roy Clay Sr. Tech Impact program - Instructor, Mentor ## Conference Talks * RubyConf - 2014, 2015, 2016, 2024 * RailsConf - 2015, 2018, 2019 * Madison+ Ruby - 2015, 2024 * Blue Ridge Ruby - 2024 * Rocky Mountain Ruby - 2024 * Agile Alliance Technical Conference - 2017