Derrek Gass

Software Engineer

Lambda Phase Systems LLC•  January 2020 - Present

Freelance Software Development & Engineering Consultancy

Full Stack Engineer

Northwestern Mutual•  March 2021 - February 2023

• Designed and executed improvements for an internal web application responsible for receiving financial data streams from BlackRock and Bloomberg. The application conducts quantitative analytics and delivers valuable data insights to investors across diverse sectors. This effort fosters enhanced collaboration, dependability and consensus for a long-standing financial institution undergoing modernization. • Crafted a range of innovative features and enhancements tailored to amplify collaboration, transparency, and operational efficiency for investors. These additions encompass daily email summary notifications, analytical dashboards, data export functionality, user-friendly note functionality, interactive activity feeds, and streamlined automation of multifaceted business tasks. As a result, substantial time savings and an elevated level of reliability were achieved. • Addressed significant technical debt through migrating the high-yield investment group away from an obsolete and unreliable .Net and PowerBi application and seamlessly integrating the group within our collaborative ecosystem. The result was a marked enhancement in the accuracy and resilience of financial data, along with a strengthened culture of cooperation.

Engineering Lead

Flashpoint Learning•  January 2019 - December 2019

• Spearheaded the front-end development and full-stack integration of an application encompassing flashcard sets, tutorials, and an instructor dashboard. This initiative aimed to aid educators catering to students facing accessibility challenges. I undertook a comprehensive role across the tech stack, crafting this project as a Progressive Web App (PWA) using React and SpringBoot technologies. • Developed automated unit and integration testing with Jest and JUnit in support of our CI/CD pipeline, increasing code coverage by 50%. • Drafted our project charter, maintained our product backlog and repository, delegated requirements to team members through scheduling and assignment of tasks, and arranged weekly code reviews and merging of pull requests across multiple teams. • In my capacity as project manager, I orchestrated client meetings aimed at comprehending business objectives. I dynamically reevaluated the prioritization of functional requisites as we moved closer to finalizing the deliverables and fulfilling the terms of the work contract.

Student Project - Team Lead

Digital Systems Project Management•  June 2018 - August 2018

• Oversaw the design, prototyping, documentation, and delivery of a cross-platform application that automatically tracks student attendance (including spoof-detection), with an administrative dashboard provided as a native plugin to the canvas platform.

Software Engineer

Hi.Delivery•  April 2017 - August 2018

• Bootstrapped a platform as a service for business owners to track online sales, inventory, delivery, and invoicing through a convenient dashboard, including business analytics and real-time monitoring of delivery drivers and customer interactions, while allowing customers a portal to place orders and manage subscriptions with each service provider, and also track the status of each live delivery. • Developed reusable, responsive UI components with unit and integration testing in support of our business goals, such as driver navigation, live order tracking, and manager dashboards.