deankayton@gmail.com | +27762703783 | gitlab.com/dnk8n | github.com/dnk8n | linkedin.com/in/dnk8n | stackoverflow.com/users/1782641
Passionate Software Developer | Advocate for Playful Learning & Tech Education | Bridging Code & Community | Aspiring to Innovate & Mentor in Progressive Education Systems.
Programming Languages & Frameworks: Python, Bash, Typescript, PostgREST, FastAPI, Django, React, MUI
Data Engineering: PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, fan-out/fan-in & other data processing architectures
NLP: ChatGPT, GPT-4, Llama 2, spaCy, Gensim, Doc2Vec
DevOps & Scrum Culture: Shared Responsibility of Ops, IAC, CI/CD, Highly Available systems, Docker, Compose
Cloud Infrastructure: AWS (EC2, S3, IAM, ECS, Lambda, CloudWatch), Terraform, strong GNU/Linux skills\
Wakoma - Subcontracted Software Developer
Mar 2023 - Aug 2023
- Built a time-tracking system with Azure AD for logging in 100+ users, surpassing the prior 25-user limit.
- Managed dev cycle on my own, from client liaison to handover, ensuring timely delivery & client satisfaction.
- Engineered ephemeral infrastructure for robust deployments, RBAC/RLS DB features for security, 3rd-party data auditing integration for traceability, visualizations with customizable axes for user-configurable analytics. Technologies: Docker, Compose, Github Actions, PostgreSQL, PostgREST, CyanAudit, React, MUI, Typescript, D3.js
Vianova - Back-End & Data Engineer
Apr 2022 - Nov 2022
- Developed vehicular fleet optimization product; collaborated with data science lead & client relations team.
- Integral in communicating technical feasibility & producing MVP using fan-out/fan-in pipeline architecture.
- Startup with strong DevOps/Scrum culture, pair programming, joint IAC, builds, & unit test responsibility. Technologies: Python, FastAPI, PyTest, Meta Prophet, AWS EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, IAM, CloudWatch
Wakoma - Freelance Software Engineer
Nov 2020 - Apr 2022
- Maintained software (Lokal) of open-source Nimble, winner of best overall proof-of-concept in IEEE Comp. Technologies: Ansible, Docker, Hetzner Cloud, Wireguard VPN, Github Actions
Imperial College, London - Natural Language Processing Intern
Jul 2021 - Sep 2021
- Processed GB of flight/travel data, tokenized documents & trained models leveraging Wikipedia API. Technologies: Python, AWS, Gensim, Scrapy, spaCy, AllenNLP, Word2Vec, Doc2Vec, MatPlotLib, SciKit-Learn, Numpy
Tuesday Innovation - Freelance Software Engineer
Jun 2019 - Jun 2021
- Maintained system for managing self-test skin swabs, implemented CD, bug-fixes, SQLite to PostgreSQL migration, team technical handover, incorporated async task scheduling, email, logging, alerting & monitoring. Technologies: Docker, Traefik, Prometheus, Grafana, Gitlab CI/CD, Python, Django, PostgreSQL, FastAPI, Terraform
HIV Diversity Group, Uni. Cape Town - Bioinformatics support
Oct 2018 - May 2021
- Maintained systems to manage sample storage & catalog genetic sequences; maintained VMs.
- Tech support for researchers; applied ML in effort to predict broadly neutralizing antibodies.
- Wrote pipelines & CLIs for processing DNA sequences, generating automated reports. Technologies: Ubuntu, MySQL, Docker, Django, Python, Julia, Bash, Jupyter, SciKit-Learn, Numpy, Orange, Singularity
OpenDNA - Backend Engineer
May 2017 - Oct 2018
- Startup; responsible for DevOps culture, CI/CD, high availability, log mgmt, IAC, & Blue-Green Deployments. Technologies: AWS Kinesis & Lambda, Elasticsearch, Python, Apache Storm, Jira API, Bitbucket Pipelines, Terraform
Vision OSS - QA Test Automation Engineer
Jul 2015 - May 2017
- Startup with strong Scrum culture, responsible for automation, builds & releases, for Linux & Microsoft. Technologies: Jenkins, JMeter, Powershell, Bash, Python, GNU/Linux, VMware
Traficon - Traffic Microsimulation Modeller
Aug 2014 - Jul 2015
- Applied Python to bespoke road traffic & pedestrian models, simulating taxi & multi-story parking systems.
Durham University - MEng(Hons) Civil Engineering
Oct 2008 - Jul 2013
- Thesis: Genetic Algorithms in optimization of space-frame roof structures, simulation produced in Matlab.
Aug 2023 Prompt Engineering Compared pre-trained Llama 2 vs GPT-4 to override system prompt for AI assistant
Jul 2023 Rural Coding Comp Advised on technology education syllabus, taught 9-12 year olds on Arduinos
May 2023: Creatures Exploration into evolutionary stable strategies (& chatGPT) inspired by 'The Extended Phenotype'
Apr 2021 Research DB Built using Hasura & Django, allows researchers to find applicable projects & funding - demo
Oct 2020: Image Reduce Serverless API, re-encodes images to requested resolution in webp format
Mar 2020: Google Hashcode Evolutionary Algorithm applied to a book-scanning problem
Jan 2019: Orange-FastX An Orange extension which modifies its file widget to handle fasta and fastq files\