Raymond Parker
Sylvania,OH
Summary
I am a senior software developer and currently located in Toledo, Ohio to be near family. I have lived in many places, but most notably in New York City for 20 years. While there I did mainly contract development in the startup crucible. The companies were everything from green field projects to 2nd and 3rd round companies. I was generally parachuted in by headhunters to help companies that were having issues with poorly designed software and dysfunctional development teams and were having trouble delivering new features to clients. I've served in many roles, from line programmer to team lead and lead developer. My main languages are Ruby on Rails and C++ and related languages and tools (Linux servers, database servers, etc.). I also have a long history of teaching and mentorship and love bringing up junior developers. I'm looking for any situation where I can be a valuable asset
Overview
31
31
years of professional experience
Work History
Lead Application Developer
Game View, LLC
01.2025 - Current
- Currently developing a QT/C++ desktop application to enable the use of proprietary technology that allows creation of full motion of a 3D scene. In other words, 3D video that allows a user to travel around within the video us VR glasses or a gaming console.
Full-stack Development
Mediatek
01.2006 - Current
- Web/database/HTML/CSS development, specializing mainly in database design and writing interface functionality to those databases using MS SQL Server and .NET/C# and Ruby on Rails.
- Straight HTML site implementation in conjunction with various graphic designers.
Lead Full-Stack Developer & PM
Empowered for Excellence
06.2024 - 12.2024
- Launched a pilot initiative to mentor junior developers in full-stack engineering and AI fundamentals while delivering production-grade software to an underserved nonprofit.
- Led the design and development of a Rails API with a GraphQL interface and a Qt/C++ desktop application that integrated basic machine learning capabilities for data processing and prediction.
- Emphasized hands-on training in real-world AI applications, including model integration, project scoping, and best practices in ML-powered system design.
Senior Backend Engineer
Cilutions / Hughes Media
01.2020 - 01.2023
- Sole backend developer supporting a small team of frontend developers.
- Moved back end toward a GraphQL API server and designed and wrote a generic data ingestion server to service other servers with a GraphQL interface, providing the front end on servers all information to display dynamically built pages to create and manipulate data integrations (a once-written front end with a back end driven interface).
Senior Rails Developer
Indywork / Pole Position
01.2019 - 01.2020
- Main Rails developer for a scheduling application.
- Instituted GraphQL interface to feed a mobile application as well as a web application for all CRUD operations and business-related data changes.
- Also did a lot of digging into Chef and preparation for a move from Heroku to a more appropriate AWS installation of the environment, slated for later in 2020.
Senior Rails Developer
Medidata
01.2018 - 12.2018
- Worked on cleaning up the test suite on a large, complex Rails app.
- Was part of the development team maintain and adding features to application.
- Wrote and designed parts including upgrading their custom data-accessing classes to make use of Rails strong parameters, custom messaging per endpoint, etc.
Full-Stack Developer
Nibble and Byte Software
01.2016 - 01.2017
- Wrote an application that synchronizes with calendaring services (i.e. Google Calendar) and allows storing of meta data and categorization of events and uses the same to allow for templatized social media promotion and promotion campaigns, API outlets for web site calendar syncing, auto emailing via email services (i.e. MailChimp), bulk dissemination of events via category to event aggregators and the like.
Senior Rails Developer
GoWatchIt
01.2015 - 12.2015
- Wrote some pf the larger architectural pieces for new features including a custom caching strategy and a generic List piece that allowed simple implementation of being able to add an ActiveRecord class easily to company and user lists for display and search as well as the API interface to support mainly Angular applications.
- Was also instrumental in forging the relationship with GoWatchIt and OpsLine, a company specializing is SysOps/AWS strategies for companies taking the next step to enterprise from startup.
- Spent quite a bit of time mentoring junior developers and bringing simplicity of code and design to mid-level developers.
Applications Programmer
OmniSource
01.2015 - 12.2015
- Wrote Applications for various departments in Borland C++ Builder / Delphi / Oracle / NT.
- Extensive report writing in Crystal Reports, connecting Crystal Reporting to above applications using Crystal Report's ActiveX control.
Team Lead / Senior Rails Engineer
LendKey
01.2014 - 01.2015
- Lead a team of programmers to continue existing product and develop new product.
- Worked closely with the product owner and business analyst to define new product.
- Mainly API development with some light interface work on older HTML based applications.
- Also did a lot of work on the existing testing-sphere and promotion of TDD/BDD.
Senior Rails Engineer/ Team Lead / Architect
Magnetic
01.2014 - 01.2015
- Lead the Rails Guild, involving two teams spanning the US and Europe and a number of projects, responsible for settings standard and best practices as well as training new recruits.
- Took large application with zero testing coverage up to 80%+ coverage.
- Was responsible for designing and implementing a Rails API application to serve new business needs as well as eventually replacing the core of the above- mentioned application.
- Was tasked with upgrading and making more successful project management scheme.
Lead Developer / Architect
CAN Capital
01.2014 - 12.2014
- Lead a small team developing a RESTful JSON brokering API that gave a uniform interface to disparate backend systems.
- Assembled the project management and instituted Agile development practices with a strong emphasis on BDD and granular feature definitions.
- Brought in Pivotal tracker and deployments/hosting were done on Heroku as per company policy.
- Designed a JSON transformation library that not only transformed one JSON schema to another, but allowed for type checking and validation of input JSON.
Lead Developer / Architect
ICapital Network
01.2013 - 12.2013
- Hired as a senior Rails developer to develop a customer matching service in the private equities sector.
- Developed the back end in Rails 4 serving initially a traditional web application and then progressing to a restful API back end to service an Angular.js and other front ends.
- Hired two developers as well as bringing on board European contractors and set up workflow using Pivotal Tracker / Semi-Agile disciplines, integrated testing, Capistrano deployments.
Lead Developer / Technical Liaison
Sherman's Travel Media
01.2012 - 01.2013
- Worked in tandem with a very hands-on project manager and QA person to identify and develop new products for the Shermans brand with a team of European developers.
- Added and fleshed out numerous features of the large ecosystem of applications centered on the travel advertising business.
- Was responsible also for establishing better relations between the business and the development department, reporting directly to the CEO.
- Established a quasi-Agile system and discipline centered on requirement gathering / feature description and LOE estimation using Pivotal Tracker.
Senior Rails Engineer
Sony Music Entertainment
01.2010 - 01.2012
- One of a team of four programmers maintaining and enhancing two main applications: A generic, skin-able store to sell products and MP3s for 800+ artists web sites for mainly artists of Sonyowned labels and the CMS application used worldwide in a back-office context to manage the stores and content.
- Spear-headed the upgrade of the store application from Rails 2.2 to Rails 2.3 and then up to Rails 3.0.
- .
- Did the same for the CMS application.
- Also brought TDD to the team and set up and maintained a TeamCity CI server.
- Many technologies used including integration with many different system, Amazon cloud services, load balancing/ large architecture experience - handling ~3,000 hits a second on average with spikes up to ~30K/sec spikes for news and appearances of popular group like One Direction.
Contract Programmer
Curious Brain
01.2009 - 01.2010
- Develop and maintain Ruby on Rails backend (content server) that feeds information to an iPhone applications (TouchChords) as well as general data services for other Curious Brain projects.
- Wrote a custom-written generic Finite State Machine (FSM) in C++ that is used to solve guitar fingering, graphical finger overlays and will soon be implemented to figure out guitar voicing based on standard lead sheet notation (i.e, Gmaj9).
- The FSM is built per application from a text file generated from a flowchart application.
Application Programmer(C++)
Bernard L. Madoff, Inc.
01.1999 - 01.2001
- Wrote applications to support departments enterprise-wide, including portions of market-trading simulation software.
- Wrote an enterprise-wide cross-platform text messaging system. This encompassed a 24/7 server application (Windows NT) that accepts messages from various platforms, ranging from a Stratus mainframe (via sockets) to PC platforms such as Visual Basic, Lotus Notes, C++ and applications (via COM or sockets) and databases these messages as well as display the messages to systems operators via a Windows application.
- Wrote server that took buy/sell messages from the Stratus (via sockets) and distributed the messages to traders, again via sockets.
- Wrote critical pieces of trading software systems, mainly code to handle 5,000/sec rows of information coming in-house that needed to be databased (indexed) and distributed to 250 traders with less that a two second lag and at the same time not fill hard drives too quickly.
- Wrote scriptable data conversion application to transfer data back and forth between PC and Stratus text and binary file formats.
General Consulting, Programming, Network Tech
RHI Consulting, Xerox Connect, Intellimark
01.1998 - 01.1999
- Did quite a bit of short-term contract work ranging from light programming to team leading in OS rollout work to Y2K consultant.
- For this period of time, I was taking specifically short-term work as I prepared to relocate to the NYC area.
Systems Administrator, Application Programmer, Help Desk
OCS Management
01.1995 - 01.1997
- Wrote and maintained applications for four departments.
- Programming mainly database / actuarial applications for this insurance-industry company, I used MS-SQL server as a back end, MS Access/MSVC++ front ends, Crystal Reports and Access report writing.
Education
Bachelor's degree - Computer science
Luther College
Skills
- Ruby on Rails
- C
- C/Linux/Mac/Windows
- TCP/IP/Sockets
- SQL (MSSQL and MySQL)
- Team leadership
- Mentoring junior developers
- Web application development
- Backend development
- Software design patterns
- Application architecture
- Software development
- Full-stack development
- Frontend development
- API development
- Database configuration
- Applications development
- RESTful services
- Data modeling
- Responsive web design
- Git version control
- SQL expertise
- GraphQL
- HTML5 expertise
- CSS proficiency
- NoSQL databases
- JavaScript experience
- HTML expertise
- Python and C
- API integration
- Verbal and written communication
Languages
English
Native or Bilingual
Timeline
Lead Application Developer
Game View, LLC
01.2025 - Current
Lead Full-Stack Developer & PM
Empowered for Excellence
06.2024 - 12.2024
Senior Backend Engineer
Cilutions / Hughes Media
01.2020 - 01.2023
Senior Rails Developer
Indywork / Pole Position
01.2019 - 01.2020
Senior Rails Developer
Medidata
01.2018 - 12.2018
Full-Stack Developer
Nibble and Byte Software
01.2016 - 01.2017
Senior Rails Developer
GoWatchIt
01.2015 - 12.2015
Applications Programmer
OmniSource
01.2015 - 12.2015
Team Lead / Senior Rails Engineer
LendKey
01.2014 - 01.2015
Senior Rails Engineer/ Team Lead / Architect
Magnetic
01.2014 - 01.2015
Lead Developer / Architect
CAN Capital
01.2014 - 12.2014
Lead Developer / Architect
ICapital Network
01.2013 - 12.2013
Lead Developer / Technical Liaison
Sherman's Travel Media
01.2012 - 01.2013
Senior Rails Engineer
Sony Music Entertainment
01.2010 - 01.2012
Contract Programmer
Curious Brain
01.2009 - 01.2010
Full-stack Development
Mediatek
01.2006 - Current
Application Programmer(C++)
Bernard L. Madoff, Inc.
01.1999 - 01.2001
General Consulting, Programming, Network Tech
RHI Consulting, Xerox Connect, Intellimark
01.1998 - 01.1999
Systems Administrator, Application Programmer, Help Desk
OCS Management
01.1995 - 01.1997
Bachelor's degree - Computer science
Luther College