Matt Feifarek : Technology CV
Tech Work Experience
- 2020-Current
- Consulting Chief Technology Officer for [Blue Trunk Foundation], a nonprofit dedicated to collecting and sharing information for travelers that have special health or accessibility needs. I’m advising the organization and rebuilding their core product, moving some systems to SaaS platforms and redesigning/reimplementing the custom core for sustainability, full documentation, pragmatic/conservative tech choices, and feature completeness
- 2008-Current
- Independent consultant. My main client has been a manufacturer in the steel industry; I make web-based calculation tools and software prototypes, technical drawings, have managed projects, and supervised marketing materials including print catalogs and direct email campaigns.
- I had one successful web app that was in live production from 2006 through 2018, and several other shorter-lived apps.
- 2013
- Launched “Twinkler” a web-based toy that makes art from images. I wrote the engine, designed and built the site, made all the graphic elements and images, and wrote and illustrated the explanation sections (which I really like).
- 1997-2008
- Founder, Digital Alchemy, a web-development company specializing in data-driven websites for small businesses. Clients included Eileen Fisher, Compaq, Castrol, Rainforest Alliance and many small organizations including a financial news startup, a hi-fi speaker manufacturer, a jazz archive, and high-school debate organizations.
- In the early days, the web was “DIY”. We made our own versioned content management systems, asset management systems, authorization/authentication systems, form generation libraries, and so on, and administered our own servers. We used these frameworks, tools and systems in our client work and our own projects.
- Key independent projects included “FolioSpace”, a portfolio service for artists to showcase their work online, CocktailDB.com, a sophisticated cocktail recipe database using most of the frameworks mentioned above (still online, though not updated in 10 years).
- 1996-1997
- Founder and director of production at Coherent Light, a startup in New York City with a focus on audio/visual post-production work, video-graphics, and 3D animation.
- Coherent Light worked on a wide variety of projects including the production of the first demo reel for Autodesk’s 3D-Studio MAX, various short videos, films, commercials, and a web-based soap opera.
- After pivoting from videographics/audio-post to the web, we secured one round of venture capital to design and build a retail search engine. We were ultimately unable to raise a second round of financing, and closed up shop gracefully.
- 1995-1996
- Web developer, graphic artist at D3 Design in Kansas City, MO. Coded Kansas City Public Television’s first website.
- 1995
- As a freelance web developer, I made the first corporate site for Porter Novelli, then the world’s fourth largest public relations firm.
Skills Summary
- 24+ years experience in web development, back-end, front-end, deployment, and most associated technologies
- Prioritization on UI/UX and user- and task-focussed sites, including complex data exploration calculation tools
- 20+ years expertise with Python and server-side data-driven web frameworks on both relational (“RDBMS” or SQL) and object-store (“OODBMS” or “NoSQL”) databases
- 20+ years experience in Linux system administration (Debian/Ubuntu based) including cloud, virtual, and RaspberryPi
- 30+ years experience in computer imaging, digital photography, and graphics, including generated imagery, vector graphics, and 3D modeling/rendering/animation
Details
Deep Expertise
- Python and server-side web frameworks (Pyramid, Pylons)
- Associated Python libraries: Mako templating, SQLAlchemy, requests etc
- HTML, CSS, SCSS, browser-based development/debug tools
- Digital imaging, including bitmap and vector: Photoshop, Lightroom, The Gimp, Imagemagick, Inkscape, CorelDraw
- Debian-based Linux operating systems (since before Ubuntu!), including deployment, command line expertise
- bash, git, vim, ssh (etc)
- NginX, Apache
- Google’s Cloud services (Gmail, Drive, Docs, Photos)
- Tools including Vim, ssh, version control, imagemagick, command line interfaces and shell
Working Competency
- Test-driven development and unit testing (pytest, nose)
- Basic competency in browser-based Javascript
- Imaging Tools: Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, others
- Parametric CAD/CAM: Autodesk Fusion 360
- Miscellaneous tools: VSCode, Git (and Github), Mercurial, SublimeText, DiffMerge, brew
- MacOS, Linux Desktops, Windows, Chrome, ChromeOS, Firefox, Android etc.
- Raspberry Pi platform (especially for hifi audio use)
- Strong interest in networked hifi audio (PulseAudio)
- Cloud hosting: Linode
Familiarity
- Databases: PostgreSQL, ZODB, SQLite, MS-SQL
- Modern Javascript, REST
- Front-end and client-side frameworks like Bootstrap, Vue
- Google AppEngine, AWS
- Docker, Vagrant, VirtualBox