Joe Testa Email & Phone Number

I combine experience as a software developer, and training as a physicist, to solve problems in creating and enhancing effective software to meet our customers' needs. I have worked in all aspects of the software development and deployment cycle: product design & writing product specifications; coding; testing; writing user-friendly documentation; and communicating with and supporting end users. I have utilized my classroom teaching experience to design learning tools for new users of our products. Let's design and create software starting from the user/customer experience, rather than coming up with what seems like a great idea to the developer, and then fitting the customer experience in later. This can be especially challenging in legacy environments such as the mainframe, where many tools were developed before now-common interfaces were available. Ideally, the end user should almost never need to refer to a manual to get their tasks accomplished; but it's important to have great documentation for the times that someone does need to refer to it.My areas of experience include • TSO • REXX • IBM Assembler • JCL • VSAM • z/OS Tape Management Systems • FORTRAN • VSAM • ISPF dialogs • z/VSE • z/VM • Writing technical documentationalso some COBOL, HTML, QGIS, UNIX. Specific product enhancements include• Creating dialog tools enabling users to largely bypass the need to refer to a manual in order to accomplish most tasks. • Designing framework and implementing components of a product to transfer z/OS tape data to the cloud. Proficient at implementing interfaces to access all major z/OS tape management systems (RMM, CA 1, TLMS, Zara, Control-M/Tape). Experienced with IPCS, SLIP, XDC debugging, Atlassian JIRA, Confluence, and with ISPW CI/CD software control. Learning DB2/SQL.In several volunteer roles, I have demonstrated leadership skills. I was the first graduate student to chair a standing university committee at Ohio State, and serving as a graduate student government officer. I currently chair the Sierra Club's national Council of Club Leaders, which provides grassroots advocacy on behalf of the Club's 64 chapters and advice to the Club's Board of Directors; and serve as Executive Committee member, Parliamentarian, Information Technology Chair, and former Secretary for the New Jersey Chapter. I am also the webmaster for several advocacy organizations (using Drupal, WordPress platforms), and formerly was the coordinator in my community for New Providence FreecycleFest.

Listed skills include Software Development, Unix, Sql, C++, and 10 others.