RICHARD RISSANEN

Compulsive researcher of the mildly interesting. Music enthusiast. Extroverted introvert, petrolhead, and recovering programmer.

Formerly a Senior Developer with Nashville Electric Service, now I am Lead Developer of Mobile Payment Solutions with Syrinx Consulting, I build my own products, consult on client projects, and I coach small businesses on their web strategies. Previously, head of development for Cumberland Farm’s SmartPay App. I have worked with clients such as Zipcar, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Localyitcs, and Amtrak.

In recent years I have assisted clients with several impactful initiatives; here are just a few:

Effective solutions and positive results

Keep Watch iOS App Owner / Developer, November 2020 - Present

Keep Watch is a weekly feed of jobs distilled for its users. I built out an Elixir backend that fetches data from several APIs, RSS feeds, and websites in order to have a large data set. I have the backend leveraging Heroku and a simple GenServer in order to fetch, normalize, store, and purge data. The iOS client allows users to create filters and add keywords to customize their feed showing relevant job listings. I designed Keep Watch with user privacy in mind as a result all users data remains on device. I was able to launch the app only a few weeks after having a script as a proof of concept.

Skills: Elixir, Swift, DETS, GenServer, Plug, Cowboy, HTTPoison, Aggregation, UI / UX, Heroku

Syrinx Consulting Corporation Lead Developer of Mobile Payment Solutions, March 2013 - February 2017 and December 2018 - Present

I started consulting with Syrinx in early 2013 and moved up the ranks fast. I have directly worked with marketing on initiatives related to branding, design, and UI / UX, resulting in better accessibility on both desktop and mobile browsers. I have performed discovery on both new technology and several problem domains to better empower management regarding customer acquisition and leveraging of said technologies. I have attended several meetings representing the company as an advisor, have diagnosed customer problems, proposed solutions, and written several statements of work on behalf of the company.

Skills: Advising, Creation of SOWs, Desktop and Mobile Design, Diagnosis of Problems, Discovery, Proposed Solutions, UI / UX

Sefas

Sefas brought me in to handle the rebuild / modernization of a client facing proprietary system. I assisted with the prioritization of work and implementation of the front end. I helped dictate solutions that remained flexible, while allowing the backend api to be defined in parallel. I built modules to break out complexity and ease understanding of the component library. I contributed to an in house node project for the unification of their front end across all of their javascript projects.

Skills: Vue.js, HTML, CSS, JS, LESS, Node, NPM

Zipcar

Zipcar picked me up to maintain their legacy Ruby on Rails backend. Having experience with both Rails and Torquebox saved Zipcar both time and resources. A few months later management brought me on to the core api services team to assist in the delivery of new microservices. While on this team I built bridges to their old system, and worked on features that were key to strategic partnerships. Several months later I was transferred to the account services / billing team to work on initiatives that directly impacted high value customers and their satisfaction.

Skills: Microservices, Java, Groovy, Kotlin, JRuby, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Torquebox, HTML, CSS, JS, Rspec, Factory Girl, Postgres, Bash, New Relic, Adyen

Cumberland Farms

From friends and family launch, to public release, to growing pains, I have been involved with the Cumberland Farm's SmartPay platform. I increased customer engagement through integration of a rewards program, added in-store promotions within their app, and overhauled their maps by adding filtering by product, hours, and location. I stopped headaches by being their go-to developer for maintaining their infrastructure, APIs, third party integrations, and their iOS, Android, and mobile web applications. I helped foster better customer relations by advising on UX, API workflows, and third party integrations to prevent negative impacts. I reduced costs by taking a document driven and a test first approach that has led to easier on- boarding of new developers. I also leveraged existing tools and libraries to further minimize the required developers needed to properly maintain the application. I maximized uptime by building out a high availability server setup which could incur multiple server failures and still preform at peak load.

Skills: iOS (Objective C), Android (Java), JRuby, Ruby on Rails, Eventmachine, Nginx, Torquebox, HTML, CSS, JS, Capistrano, Capybara, Rspec, Factory Girl, jQuery, jQuery Mobile, Minitest, MySql, RHEL, Zipline, Retalix, Bash, New Relic, Python

Nashville Electric Service Senior Developer, December 2017 - December 2018

I was brought onto the NES team as part of an initiative to bring in developers with contemporary experience. As part of the team I have assisted upper management with the selection of technologies and third party vendors giving them confidence in the solutions being acquired. Day to day at NES I balance building new applications and support for several Enterprise Applications, assisting in providing the business the tools they need to keep Nashville’s lights on. One initiative I took on had me refactoring a legacy application in which I was able to remove several thousand lines of code. This positively impacted my teams ability to deliver new features for said application. I also redesigned and implemented a new user interface for an application that simplified the user experience and eliminated confusion.

Skills: Advising, UI / UX, C#, HTML, CSS, JS, Bootstrap, AngularJS, TFS, Oracle

Other Ventures April 2008 - April 2013

The Tech industry moves fast, and after a while (say eight years) you get diminishing returns regarding relevant experience. Prior to the work listed above I started as a Junior Web Developer and soon moved up the ranks from contract work to senior developer. If you want to talk shop about old projects feel free to shoot me an email at email@richardrissanen.com.