Derek Schaefer Email & Phone Number

Denver, Co, Us

Salt Lake City, Ut, Us

I've been acting as an individual contributor with a limited number of companies in on application development and cloud engineering projects, while enjoying some time off and exploring new opportunities.Projects have included an AWS overhaul that involved containerization upgrades and database migrations, transitioning an application stack from application-managed user records and authentication to OpenID Connect, and e-commerce web application development, etc.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

I was promoted to Director of Engineering to formally take on the management responsibilities needed to facilitate growing the engineering organization into multiple cross-functional teams, while continuing to act as a technical lead as a player/coach hybrid. In this role I acted as both a first and second level engineering manager as the team grew over time. I was also responsible for technical project planning and recruiting.I led projects that included the development of new end-user facing products, iterating upon our API integration offerings, e-commerce features and integrations, sustainability initiatives, the engineering side of our successful FDA clearance initiative, infrastructure development, developer experience initiatives, and more. Relevant projects involved both internal stakeholders, like product managers and executives, and external stakeholders, like clients, partners, and contractors.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

I acted as a founding engineer helping to prototype, build, launch, and grow the world's first online refractive vision test. We built a web application platform that primarily served an interactive, two-device digital vision test experience, as well as a portal for doctors to review test results. As the product evolved we also built a public API and supporting end-user features to facilitate partner integrations for online retailers and insurance companies.In the period that followed the initial launch, I helped develop numerous new features, flows, and supporting products to meet market demand. This included payment processing, additional vision tests to serve different types of patients and partner channels, ultimately resulting in the creation of a new interactive voice-driven single-device vision test to greatly increase accessibility and conversion. I lead both backend and frontend engineering initiatives.With growing commercial success came the need to grow the engineering team, and thus a shift in personal responsibilities to include an increase in leadership and management duties.

I acted as an individual contributor for a few software product startups during this period, with a focus on web application and backend development. I eventually transitioned to a full-time position at Visibly (then Opternative).

Evanston, Illinois, Us

Expanded upon and maintained a web application platform that helps professional service firms manage their project lifecycles, including preparing proposals, tracking progress, obtaining feedback, monitoring performance, aiding human resources, social media integration, document indexing, and more.

Oakbrook Terrace, Il, Us

Designed, implemented, and maintained web-based software to assess and predict grain producer risk and profitability by tracking cash sales, futures/options, and crop insurance spreads. The system projects potential risk and profitability at a range of production yields and market values in order to ensure optimal merchandising decisions.

Chicago, Il, Us

Maintained all department websites and related technologies. Coordinated with department leaders to guide content creation and maintenance.

Chicago, Il, Us

Researched and developed natural language processing and semantic data mining algorithms in Java. The resulting software was used to analyze biomedical research papers and map entity relationships in order to automatically build a searchable dataset of biomedical knowledge.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Accepted to Google's competitive Summer of Code internship program. Designed and implemented a heuristic data analysis and type abstraction algorithm for arbitrary type conversion using PHP. The end-product was integrated into phpMyAdmin, a MySQL administration tool with millions of users.

Needham, Ma, Us

Designed and implemented a new company website and associated content management system.