Michael R. Fleet

Summary

I am a software & systems engineer, polyglot, polymath, lifelong learner, published musician, and patented inventor. I have extensive professional experience developing products & services for startups, agencies, and F500 companies.

My specialties include:

  • Rapid mastery of new computer languages, tools, processes, and stacks.
  • Improving application security without destroying usability.
  • Engineering high-performance, high-availability systems architectures for scaling web applications.
  • Designing cross platform web application architectures for desktop, browsers, and native mobile.
  • Encouraging use of agile/XP practices, esp. BDD/TDD, code reviews, and pair/mob-programming.
  • Building and nurturing environments which encourage innovation.

Expertise

Ruby, Rails, React, Node.js, HTTP APIs, web application security, TDD/BDD, test automation, Docker, Kubernetes, Objective-C, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL

Experience

Mode

Senior Developer Experience Engineer

March 2021 - present

Oddball

Engineering Lead, Veterans Services Platform, va.gov

June 2020 - February 2021

I was the engineering lead for over 100 software engineers, designers, analysts, & researchers working on the Veteran Services Platform. Together we built and maintained tools and infrastructure to support the hundreds of folks building apps for va.gov, and the over 9 million U.S. veterans they're built for.

  • Drove reduction of continuous-integration times from 90+ minutes to under 20 minutes, for the first time in over 3 years.
  • Led effort to ensure 100% of veteran-facing applications are reviewed for privacy, security, and infrastructure readiness, before public launch.
  • Introduced mob/ensemble coding for unblocking & collaborating.
  • Worked closely with the infrastructure team to move VA.gov onto Kubernetes.
  • Building high-performance teams requires maintaining an environment where trust is high, fear is low, and there is safety to make mistakes. It's not easy, but we are succeeding!

LendingHome

Staff Software Engineer

October 2018 - May 2020

  • Led the architecture, implementation, and delivery of LendingHome's first automated-underwriting solution.
  • Introduced structured logging, across multiple stacks.
  • Championed changes to the production-support rotation which improved our feedback loop with customers.
  • Created rapid-development & testing tools, including code generators, automated and manual testing helpers, and event-sourcing data migrations.
  • Led Rails upgrades from 4.x to 5.x, across multiple stacks.
  • Contributed to Ruby 2.5 upgrades, across multiple stacks.
  • Fixed application security issues raised by pen testers.

Panda Strike

Senior Architect

May 2016 - October 2018

  • Ruby on Rails application development: security & performance improvements, feature development, and bug squashing. Rails 3/4/5, MongoDB, PostgresSQL.
  • Serverless application development with AWS Lambda & Cloud Formation, and Web Components.
  • Performance testing and visualizations using Node.js, Elasticsearch, fluentd, and Kibana.
  • Docker-ized all the development environments: Rails, Node.js, PostgresSQL, MongoDB, Nginx, etc.
  • Various features and bug-fixes for Panda Strike's open source projects, including Fairmont, Haiku9, Panda-9000, Panda-Sky and more. CoffeeScript, Node.js, npm.

Amplifi Commerce

Software Architect

October 2014 - March 2016

  • Principal architect for an in-house, rapid-development platform for Oracle Commerce, which reduced the developer hours required for implementations by 50%.
  • Used linux containers (Docker) to isolate and scale each service in the Oracle Commerce application stack, both on bare metal and cloud servers.
  • Automated development-environment management using Vagrant, Chef, Puppet and Docker; resulting in a reduction in initial developer ramp-up time per-project by 90%.
  • Developed elastic-scaling solutions for Oracle Commerce using docker-swarm.
  • Created tools to automate repetitive development and deployment tasks.
  • Automated UI integration with server-side JSP code using grunt, assemble.io and Handlebars.
  • Introduced agile project management, pair-programming, code-review, test-driven-development, continuous-integration and continuous-delivery processes using JIRA, Screenhero, Bitbucket pull-requests, RSpec/Groovy/Jasmine and Jenkins.

BOLT

NCC Group Domain Services (née Artemis Internet)

Senior Software Engineer

January 2014 - September 2014

  • Developed service-oriented APIs using Ruby on Rails (SOA architecture).
  • Implemented response pagination and API versioning using HTTP request headers.
  • Encouraged adoption of regular, frequent releases.

Lookout

Senior Software Engineer

August 2013 - January 2014

  • Invented an automated, external, hardware testing framework for detecting whether a device in a test lab made an audible sound.
  • Led iOS application-security efforts.
  • Implemented SSL-certificate pinning for iPhone and iPad apps.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Architect Lead, Mobile Emerging Technologies

April 2011 - June 2013

  • Developed a cross-platform data visualization library using C/C++, with native interfaces for iOS (Objective-C) and Android (NDK, Java/JNI).
  • Designed a declarative user-interface architecture for producing native user experiences with the flexibility of web applications to deliver immediate updates and dynamic experiences.
  • Co-authored and co-researched an internal white-paper evaluating native, web, "hybrid," and cross-platform mobile application development strategies.
  • Key contributor to the Chase and J.P. Morgan iOS, Android and mobile web banking applications.
  • Certified Mobile Application Security Champion.

Resource Interactive (now IBM iX)

Application Architect

March 2010 - April 2011

  • Led development of Resource's Distributed Commerce Platform (formerly known as "Off the Wall") from prototype to patented product platform.
  • Created DCP's high-performance, PCI/DSS-Level-1-compliant session proxying API and architecture built on CentOS, Apache, Zend Framework and MySQL.
  • Responsible for the ongoing mentorship of the company's bright young stars in ResourceLAB.
  • Led company-wide adoption of Scrum, ResourceLAB adoption of XP and BDD/TDD. Developed courses and training materials, and spearheaded mentorship and promotion.
  • Played a vital role in the launch and success of RI:U, an internal continuing-education initiative. Led brown-bag introductions to Scrum, JIRA, BDD/TDD, Flash vs. HTML5/CSS3.
  • Received the first "XLNT: Never Been Done Before" award ever, for inventing the Distributed Commerce Platform.

Distributed Commerce Platform (formerly Off The Wall)

Patents

PCI DSS Compliant Proxy Service United States 8,886,937. Issued November 11, 2014.

System and Method of Enterprise and On-Line Franchise Models for E-Commerce Website United States 11/940,974. Filed November 15, 2007.

System and Method of Bridging a Product Catalog from a Central E-Commerce Website to Remote Access United States 11/940,947. Filed November 15, 2007.

Education

Mathematics, CIS at The Ohio State University