Daniel Kirkdorffer

Daniel Kirkdorffer

LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER – DevEx EVANGELIST

Extensive experience in all facets of software development. Possessing exceptional interpersonal, analytical, organizational, managerial, written and technical skills. Highly motivated influencer who brings to every job a high level of passion, dedication, excellent communication skills and an assiduous attention to detail.

Core strengths in:

•   Java Ecosystem, Web, and Cloud / AWS
•   Backend Microservices, Serverless, REST
•   Business Analysis, Specifications and Tech Docs

•   DevEx, Tools, Best Practices, SDLC, CI/CD Pipelines
•   Customer and Client Interfacing, Problem Solving
•   Dual Citizen (US / British), Bilingual (English / French)

TECHNICAL SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES

Platforms: x86, ARM, Mac, Linux, Windows, UNIX, SUN Solaris

Languages: Java, Python, Groovy, Scala, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, CSS, Shell Scripts, Ruby, SAS, VBA

DBs & Datastores: AWS Aurora, RDS, DynamoDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB2, HSQLDB, Informix, Sybase, Redis, Couchbase, Cassandra

Frameworks: Spring, Spring Boot, MVC frameworks, NodeJs, React, Ruby on Rails, Netflix OSS, Struts

App Servers/Containers: Docker, Apache Tomcat, Jetty, WebLogic, WebSphere, ATG Dynamo, JBoss

Methodologies: Agile, Scrum (Certified ScrumMaster), Kanban, CI/CD, Iterative, RAD

Technologies: AWS (EC2, ECS, Kinesis, KCL, S3, ECR, Lambda, SQS, SNS, CloudFormation, X-Ray, IAM, Step Functions), TestNG, JUnit, Spock, Guava, Swagger, Selenium, Log4j, JQuery, YUI, Ajax, REST, Servlets, JDBC, MyBatis, JSP, JSTL, JPA, Hibernate, Flyway, Velocity, DHTML, JMS, Java Mail, EJB, RMI, AWT, CGI, SMS, JFreeChart, Pentaho, MS Reporting Services, XML, Laszlo, DTD, XSD, XSL, XSLT, StAX, JAXB, JAX-RS, JSON, Jackson, Web Services, SOA, SOAP, SonicMQ, SwiftMQ, MQ Series, Sonic ESB

Dev/Tools: Jenkins, GitLab CI, IntelliJ / Plugins, Eclipse, Gradle, Maven, Ant, Distelli, Slack, SonarQube, Crucible, Bugzilla, Jira, Confluence, Splunk, Kibana, New Relic, CloudWatch, BlazeMeter, Firebug, Rally, VersionOne, Paw

Version Control: Git, GitHub, GitLab, Stash/BitBucket, Artifactory, Nexus, Mercurial, Subversion, CVS, ClearCase, Visual Source Safe, Perforce

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Disney, Seattle, WA

2020 – Present

Lead DevEx Engineer – Identity Engineering, Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

Present

Lead of an Engineering Enablement / DevEx team tasked with supporting Account, Profile & Privacy stream-aligned feature teams, focusing on cross-cutting initiatives, standardization and best practices, knowledge sharing, CI/CD support, development and monitoring tools, and POCs.

Led a high profile project to cut costs and improve performance by up to 20%, by migrating all OneID backend services to run on arm64 AWS Graviton instances and Java 17 runtimes. The project also required creating new Docker base images, updating build pipeline processes, and implementing various cross-cutting system and library updates.
Tasked with upgrading all backend services to compile and build with Java 17.
Spearheaded multiple initiatives during a major organizational shuffle, which included identifying system impacts, establishing a technical transition plan, defining a definition of completion for knowledge transfers, proposing and organizing new development processes to account for geographically distant teams, and implementing solutions.
Restructured permissions to code repositories and build pipelines for multiple development teams.
Established an internal wiki site for technical knowledge sharing and regular blogging. Wrote multiple technical blog postings. Presented at platform knowledge sharing meetings.
Facilitated a recurring Scala Study Group for developer training.
Updated an open source IntelliJ plugin, called Trace Metrics, which uses New Relic trace annotations to make navigable connections between API source code and live production metrics via NerdGraph API calls, displaying the results in an IDE tool window.

Lead Software Engineer – Identity Engineering, Disney Streaming, DMED

2020 – 2021

Lead of a development team responsible for platform level Consumer Identity services. These included login and registration orchestration APIs used by all Disney BUs.

Led a large project to migrate dozens of OneID Jenkins build pipelines as part of an organizational restructuring, and to provide ongoing support for the new systems. The effort required maintaining two, always active, build pipelines during the transition phase, while also supporting a regional expansion effort to European data centers.
Developed and enhanced backend services and systems using EC2, Lambda, Step Functions, CloudWatch, CloudFormation, ECR, Kinesis, SQS, SNS, IAM, and other AWS Cloud managed services.
Suggested and promoted various software development tools, initiatives and practices to encourage an "always growing, always improving" mentality and knowledge sharing ethos.
Mentored various Disney employees in different parts of DMED, and within Identity Engineering.

Staff Software Engineer (Contract) – Consumer Identity Services, Disney Streaming, DMED

2021 – 2022

Worked in the OneID Backend Services Team, developing and supporting high volume consumer registration, profile and login AWS hosted Web and microservices used by all Disney properties.

Led the effort to upgrade all Java services to Java 11. Established new base Docker images for the containerized services to use.
Rewrote and completely overhauled the SMS notification service integration with OpenMarket.
Created and supported multiple IntelliJ IDE plugins to augment and enhance integrations with custom tools, as well as Jira and New Relic.
Further enhanced an internal tool for capturing build test failure metrics, and to provide useful reporting of build failures with historical context, to better identify flaky tests or failure patterns.
Significant contributor and knowledge expert regarding the Jenkins build pipelines.
Engaged in leading knowledge sharing groups regarding topics covering Serverless systems and observability concerns. Regular contributor to platform-wide development discussions, instigator of many development process initiatives, and mentor to fellow developers

Nortal, (acquired Dev9), Kirkland, WA, consulting at Disney

2017 – 2020

Senior Software Engineer – Consumer Identity, DTCI

2018 – 2020

Worked in the OneID Backend Services Team, developing and supporting high volume consumer registration, profile and login Web and microservices services used by all Disney properties.

Enhanced the asynchronous Change Notification messaging system (AWS Kinesis, SQS, Lambda, and Google Pub/Sub) used to communicate profile updates to Disney+, Parks and Marvel BUs. Supported Disney+ rollouts.
Migrated services to the Cloud (AWS), SQLServer to DynamoDB, and helped move the team’s Jenkins builds to a new deployment pipeline platform. Optimized Docker images, decreasing their size five-fold.
Mentored and guided an intern developing a Maven plugin and service for capturing build test failure metrics in a MySQL database. Led ongoing efforts to further leverage and enhance the tool, and to analyze the captured data.
Developed an IntelliJ plugin to list and access relevant Jira ticket details for various projects.
Initiated and participated in various development practices, including Log Bash sessions, Brown Bags and other developer knowledge sharing sessions. Created a Tech Tips wiki page. Helped define “quick win” and cross service stories, and championed efforts to more efficiently and productively work these into our sprints.

Senior Software Engineer – Consumer Data, DTCI

2017 – 2018

Worked on the Enterprise Permissions Center team, a “first to the Cloud” AWS hosted project at Disney to create Web services to support the management of consumer subscriptions for all business units and segments.

Leveraged AWS Aurora (MySQL), S3 and SQS, as well as Google Pub/Sub.
Provided development expertise and support for the applications and environments, including builds (Maven, Jenkins), end to end testing, code coverage (JaCoCo), ETLs, database design and data loads, and live documentation via Swagger
Worked closely with ancillary teams to improve shared libraries, and recommend development approaches.

Nike, Beaverton, OR

2015 - 2016

Senior Application Engineer (Contract)
Worked on Nike's Consumer Profile Capability team building out a new Identity microservice layer.

Lead developer on the Phone Verification microservice, a key component in Nike’s anti-bot strategy used to validate registered user accounts, using Twilio for SMS delivery.
Developed new features and provided support for all Identity microservices. Broadcast select account updates to other Nike systems via AWS SNS. Defined and deployed AMI using Netflix Asgard.
Developer on a team creating a next-gen managed data sync system (Oracle <=> DynamoDB), using AWS EC2 Kinesis/KCL and various Lambdas. Contributed to the establishment of best practices and guidelines.
Defined AWS stacks with CloudFormation. Used Jenkins to support CI code analysis with Sonar and Fortify, and CD with Packer to produce AMIs.

Dev9, Kirkland, WA, consulting at Disney

2014

Senior Software Developer – Consumer Identity, DCAT
Senior Developer on a project to port Disney's Guest ID web service interface implementation from PHP to Java.

Designed and developed the error handling framework, including translators for each underlying core service error protocol, and their mappings to the exposed API error definitions.
Established new web service endpoints, writing controllers, managers and services to internal web services.

Boeing, Renton, WA

2013 - 2014

Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
Senior Developer for a new training and course document authoring and assembly system with the Flight Technical Data Applications group within Boeing Training & Flight Services. Responsible for the development of RESTful web services, establishing development practices, and supporting CI build and deployment processes.

iSoftStone, Kirkland, WA, consulting at AT&T

2010 - 2013

Senior Software Engineer
Contributed to a multi-year Agile Scrum development effort to enhance and grow AT&T's Developer Program site and services. Helped evolve what was an ex-Waterfall team into one that deploys to production every two weeks.

Key contributor in earning AT&T IT “Gold Standard” Agile certification by establishing a robust CI infrastructure.
Developed RESTful resources using RESTEasy for user account management. Consumed REST and SOAP messages from various vendors. Created mock services for testing. MVC with JSP/JQuery and ATG handlers.
Created a Jenkins build and deployment pipeline, system monitoring jobs, automated unit, integration, GUI (Selenium) and Web service test frameworks, with code quality analyzers (Cobertura, JavaNCSS, PMD, CPD, Findbugs, JDepend) from the ground up. Migrated systems to use Git (from SVN) and Crucible/Fisheye.

ADDITIONAL PRIOR EMPLOYMENT
-- from most to least recent --

Senior Software Engineer, L4 Digital, Seattle, WA
Senior Consultant, CGI, Bellevue, WA, consulting at Marchex
Principal Consultant, Codesic Consulting, Kirkland, WA, consulting at Northwest Administrators Inc. and Qpass (now Amdocs)
Software Engineer, Codesic Consulting, Kirkland, WA, consulting at Cingular Wireless (now AT&T), Dwango Wireless, and the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts
Senior Software Engineer, Versatile (formerly Versatile Mobile Systems), Lynnwood, WA
Senior Consultant, WebVision, Inc. (formerly Syllogistics LLC), Redmond, WA, consulting at AT&T Wireless
Java Developer, contracting at eNom Inc., Redmond, WA
Webmaster, Discipline Global Mobile, Salisbury, England
Sr. Technical Consultant, Zeal Inc., Northbrook, IL, consulting at SRDS, Rosemont, IL
Senior Analyst, ComEd (an Exelon Corporation Company), Chicago, IL

EDUCATION: BSc, Computer Science / Math, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

SIDE PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES

Designed, organized, created and maintained various web sites, including The Official King Crimson Web Site, Elephant Talk, and The Pacific NW Topic Hotlist.
Reviewed a couple of the first JSP books: Web Development with Java Server Pages, by Duane K. Fields and Mark A. Kolb, and JavaServer Pages, by Larne Pekowsky.
Created a well regarded, early Java years, Visual Café Tips site, own the SeaJUG LinkedIn Group, and frequently attend software conferences and symposiums, local user groups and Meetups, and programming study groups.

An always up-to-date version of this resume can be found at http://www.kirkdorffer.com/resume.html

05.23