Nicholas Westby: Polymath Programmer

Applied Skill Set

Some examples of how I’ve applied my skills to various projects:

• Created custom SQL indexing algorithm for real time auto-suggest and search of IGT’s PAR sheets.
• Implemented a highly customized and themable Google map for IGT’s MegaJackpots website.
• Used LINQ to Entities to interact with IGT’s database.
• Added parallax scrolling and an innovative hover effect to IGT’s Pop Culture microsite (no longer available).
• Applied output caching to BrandingBusiness and MVC donut caching to Celestron to vastly improve page load times.
• Integrated the Umbraco CMS into IGT and MegaJackpots, allowing non-technical users to make any content changes.
• Built numerous sites atop an Umbraco backend, from the ground up: BrandingBusiness, Celestron, FirstHealth, Accuride.
• Wrote the front-end JavaScript and CSS for the fully responsive BrandingBusiness using Node.js and the Less CSS preprocessor.
• Integrated e-commerce functionality for Celestron using the Shopatron API.
• Leveraged jQuery in nearly every site, such as the AJAX forms on BrandingBusiness.
• Committed several accepted pull requests to the Git repositories for the Umbraco core and the popular uCommentsy and Archetype packages.
• Deployed a scalable multi-site Azure cloud instance for a number of my personal sites (also see my Umbrazure article).
• Setup, configured, and deployed a number of sites to IIS on AWS (Amazon Web Services) servers.
• Configured HTTPS for FirstHealth, Accuride, and OneOC.
• Configured a reverse proxy for Celestron and OneOC to seamlessly integrate legacy components with the new websites.
• Built a paged event list with AngularJS for OneOC.
• Used AngularJS and C# to build the Umbraco form builder, Formulate, which is a continually evolving open source project.
• Nearly every site I have built has used responsive web design for appropriate UX on all devices.
• For most of my career, I have been able to lean heavily on my knowledge of regular expressions to search, parse, and manipulate large amounts of data quickly (previously I used a tool I built, but now I mostly utilize RegexBuddy).
• I typically use Visual Studio for backend development, and WebStorm for frontend development.

Websites I Built

I have worked on many websites, but these are some of the ones I had a leading role in building from scratch.

Sunrise Growers

Lead full stack developer of this fully responsive food provider's website.

Accuride

Lead developer of this manufacturing website, with primary effort on the backend implementation.

OneOC

Sole full stack developer of this volunteer enabling website.

Celestron

Lead backend developer of this e-commerce website for a leading telescope manufacturer.

FirstHealth

Lead backend developer of this healthcare website.

Irvine Offices

Lead full stack developer of this reusable single-page microsite.

BrandingBusiness

Sole full stack developer of this agency website.

Ceris

Lead backend developer of this single page application (SPA) website for a healthcare accounting company.

Jacuzzi & Sundance Spas

Lead developer of Jacuzzi.com and SundanceSpas.com.

AllCare Health

Lead developer of this healthcare website, with primary focus on the backend implementation.

IGT

Primary developer of IGT.com and MegaJackpots.com. Moved both into the Umbraco CMS with internationalization support.

Whitepages, 411.com & PeopleSearch

Senior software engineer on high-traffic people search and property intelligence platforms.

In the past, my focus was on building desktop applications, and more recently my focus has been building and maintaining websites.