Brad Arnett
About Me
I am an IT professional who got his start in financial market data. I provided infrastructure support for large clients at Reuters. During this span of time, I also managed the internal testing and infrastructure lab. As the role of my team began to evolve, I took on the position of training new hires and select clients in addition to holding my previous responsibilities. During this span of time, I also utilized virtualization to eliminate 30% of our hardware assets and developed an outage tracking system that reduced the workload of support and operations shift management.
In 2014, I moved into a hybrid software development / SDET role working on the burgeoning Thomson Reuters news delivery platform. My focus was in data validation and error detection across approximately 50 GB of data daily. I developed a real time testing suite that monitored traffic continuously and provided daily reports of invalid metadata, missing stories, and other erroneous behaviors. I also worked very closely with the QA team and provided mentoring and guidance as needed.
In 2019, I left Thomson Reuters (now Refinitiv) to take a contract working for Centene Corporation. I enhanced and updated the legacy code for their ACA cost-share software. I also simplified their SQL queries by a significant margin. Additionally, I consolidated part of their split tech stack into a performant, robust set of microservices to better align with the majority of their technologies. This enabled their business unit to extract data in minutes, not hours.
I am enthusiastic about cryptography and the ethics of its use. In 2018, I forked Laverna, the recently-defunct open source encrypted note-taking software, into Encryptic. I have released a web version of Encryptic, as well as a standalone version which has been downloaded over a thousand times. I'm currently working on a full ground-up rewrite, dropping Marionette for Angular, with the goal of minimizing reliance on external modules and generally improving usability.
Another major point of personal interest of mine is in peripheral and firmware development. In 2020, I started bradmakeskeyboards.com to better leverage this enthusiasm into a business, providing custom peripherals tailored to customer needs.
Skills
languages
- Python
- JavaScript
- C++
- SQL
- HTML
- JSON
technologies
- Linux
- Git
- Django
- Marionette.js
- RMDS/TREP
skills
- Mentoring
- Technical writing
- Refactoring
- Testing
- Troubleshooting
- Mad science
Work Experience
- Designed and built custom peripherals tailored to client specifications
- Developed C++ code for custom lighting animations
- Tested hardware and made repairs for clients as needed
- Managed customer orders and supply logistics
- Code improvements that resulted in reduced run time of ACA-related code from hours to minutes
- Developed Django-based front end and automation for manually-ran python scripts
- Optimized SQL queries to ¼ their original size
- Established git best practices and release documentation standards
- Provided after-hours support and validation during and after software deployments
- Developed Python and Java bug detection software
- Facilitated migration of 200 third-party feeds for low latency news delivery service
- Designed and developed custom framework for real-time content validation
- Provided mentoring on programming and testing methodology to QA team
- Established test technology resulting in zero Severity 1 and 2 outages from 2017-2019
- Developed outage tracking system that eliminated 90 minutes of handover calls a day
- Administrated server lab of approximately 50 servers
- Provided Linux and product specific training to new hires and high-value clients as needed
- Implemented virtualized test systems resulting in eliminating 30% of physical servers
- Offered specific hardware recommendations to clients tailored to individual needs
- Provided client facing support of market data software via phone and Webex
- Developed scripts to automate backup processes and new server configurations
- Provided senior level tech support and resolved proprietary software and network issues
- Inventoried, documented, and maintained previously undocumented server lab
- Replicated client issues on test servers as needed prior to handover to development
Projects
Uses JavaScript, marionette.js, Angular, and electron.
Written in C.
Written in Python.
Written in C.