Retirement, Jan 2023 - present

Since retiring from full-time employment in Jan. 2023, I have been focusing on personal projects and self-study in web development, mobile app development, and cloud computing. I have created several progressive web apps and mobile apps using Dart/Flutter to enhance my skills and explore new technologies. Some of the projects I have worked on include:

• Akimai Hawaii Simulates the State of Hawaii Agricultural Form as progressive web app. A paper form was used until March 2025. Prior to the electronic form release, I created phone and web apps as a personal learning tool for Dart/Flutter development. The app captures traveler information and generates a PDF of the completed form for submission to the State of Hawaii. I created a progressive web app and phone app version to explore differences in implementation.
• Ask My Geek a progressive web app and phone app I created to assist people in identifying if electronic communications is likely a malicious contact. The app relies on AI acting as a cybersecurity expert when analyzing text copied and pasted from electronic communication. I was inspired to build this app as a safety check for people who may have no one to ask when targeted by malicious contacts.
• TravelEZ daily travel itinerary planner implemented as a progressive web app and phone app. Takes user input of location, activity level, meal preferences, and uses AI to generate suggested activities and restaurants. It assists the user by providing a simple form they can use to create an AI query and generate an itinerary based on their preferences. Consistently building the AI query improves accuracy in results and optimizes the query for speed.
• SkillsEZ a learning plan builder implemented as a responsive web app using AI to help learners create personalized learning plans. The app allows users to input their background, education, and learning goals: SkillsEZ generates a customized learning plan displayed within the web application.

The theme of these apps is to collect input for the user and then formulate an optimized query that runs against an LLM to provide relevant resutsl. This work helps me stay current with AI and web app development trends. It also helps reinforce learning in web and mobile development.

System Developer (SysDev) Engineer II; Amazon Web Services, Dec. 2021 - Dec. 2022

New Product Release Team member that created CI/CD pipelines using AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) for automated code deployment in a production environment. Responsible for the development of 8 individual pipelines supporting deployment in Waves to production. Implemented blue/green deployment strategy to deploy software stacks, accounts, and resources across multiple regions.

Modified existing AWS CDK deployment and data pipelines for distribution to production regions in multiple waves according to Dogma rules.

Identified issues with the current onboarding process and created changes that shortened onboarding by more than a day.

Refactored code to improve code quality and efficiency; deep-dived into logs and code to understand its function and debug problems. Improved performance by 10% by optimizing the order of operations.

Performed code reviews and mentored engineers. Developed document for sharing information across the team.

TMDS/MSAT Lead Test Engineer; American Systems Corporation (ASC), Jan. 2020 - Jan. 2021

Managed a team of Test Engineers and Software Development Engineer in Test (Test Automation Engineers) through test events, development of automated test applications, and defining the testing process.

Led development and deployment of test automation software against TMDS/MSAT Web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, covering 85% of the application with Automated UI testing. This included end-to-end testing by parsing messages received from external sources and verifying business rule execution by verifying data in Web Application UI.

Coordinated and administered internal development testing and external system integration testing events prior to application deployments. Executed manual and automated tests in a JBoss Web-based application platform.

Replaced exsisting test management platform (HP Quality Center) with a newly deployed test management tool (TestRail) saving $36K in licensing costs and improving test management process. Wrote SQL and Python scripts to export data (test cases and attachments) from uality Center and migrating data and attachments into TestRail using the TestRail API (used my coding skills for data migration) with zero data loss.

Introduced automated security testing into the test suite including OWASP ZAP to find common Web application vulnerabilities and testing for targeted attacks such as SQL Injection and Authentication Spoofing.

Designed and coded automed file modification utilites in Python. Designed and Deployed test file repository with version control and annotations for tracking test data. Test data allowed QA to ensure consisteny in testing the systems and to ensure test coverage. Test fiels were previously stored on a file share without provenance or version control. Replaced data files with new data versions; the previous versions were 8 or more years old; providing current files that reflected current versions of the external data sources with known provenance.

Coordinated test events with external organizations to establish testing approach and provide feedback on test integration results. Worked with domain experts to understand functioning of their systems and how data should be represented in TMDS/MSAT.

Mentored team members in better software development practices. Trained QA team in accessing server logs, developing test scrips, and clean coding practices. Documented processes and producedures to standardize QA events from release-to-release.

TMDS/MSAT Senior Principal Software Engineer; Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), Jan. 2018 - Nov. 2019

Collaborating with Health Care Domain Experts and external entities to manage and execute integrated testing efforts. Led development and deployment of test automation software against TMDS/MSAT Web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. Developed automation software and synthetic data generators. Executed manual and automated tests in a JBoss Web-based application platform.

Developed synthetic DoD Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data generation tools to create HL7 and XML message files to support TMDS/MSAT training, QA, and development platforms. Deployed test automation to support regular extract, transform, and load (ETL) process testing. Mentored intern in exploring Tensorflow implementation for creating synthetic EMR and data anomaly detection. Agile SCRUM Master for Data Integration Team. The tools are developed in Python and Java for an Oracle environment.

System Data Engineer; 1010 Data, Inc, Jan. 2017 - Jan. 2018

Implemented and maintained ETL data streams for multiple clients into a proprietary NoSQL database supporting the needs of many customers. Perform system administration functions for materializing data structures, adding users, and controlling permission in the platform. Managed ETL processes for multiple clients from various data sources. Developed ETL code in the K and Python languages. Deployed ETL pipeline using ApacheScrum process using Jira.

TMDS/MSAT Database Developer; Akimeka, LLC, Nov. 2013 – Dec. 2016

Developed database functions and SAP Business Objects reports serving global deployment of TMDS/MSAT theater EMR system in a web-based platform. Implemented customer requirements in Oracle database functions and Web-derived reports. Experience developing C# GUI to support DB documentation tool.

Profiled and optimized database queries to deliver report results with less latency. Reduced the query time of one report from >24 hours to less than 12 seconds.

Scientist and Engineer IV; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Sep. 1998 – Nov. 2013

Developed (ETL) processes for consuming data from 9 different sensor types located at more than 100 different sites across the US. Provided file-based ingest of sensor contents, data transformations, and loading into a multi-instance database platform. Architected system and database design. Project supported a Cyber Intelligence Analysis mission. Developed ETL code in Python and Perl.

Developed and deployed GUI analytical tools and processes for data analysis in support of an operational CND mission in an intelligence environment; Modeled network behaviors, analyzed large data sets, implemented tools for data access, and codified automated analytical methods. The bulk of this work was done in wxPython/Python accessing Oracle and Postgres database platforms. Built a team of scientists and engineers to deploy a nation-wide analytical platform. Developed ordered and reliable UDP transport code in C/C++.

This position required the development of domain expertise and interaction with experts to establish analytical methods using available data sources and the deployment of database structures to support analytical methods. It also required I research and procure a database architecture and platform to support 100TB data sets for analytics. The resulting savings amounted to query times reduced from hours to minutes, and maintenance costs that were 90% less than a similar Oracle implementation.