Brandon Groce
Software Engineer
brandon@groce.dev
206-550-3950
Seattle, WA 98118
Hello!
I'm a 15 year software guy who's been banging on computers since I was 5. I started my professional career working small to medium projects in the php era, using cms systems and frameworks with mysql to build anything and everything. I moved on to work for several game companies, working on starwars and marvel games; quickly moving into positions of application design and architecture and leading teams to success, until ultimately heading to The Mouse himeself for a bit. At Disney, I worked as a solutions engineer for their one identity system, helping teams of some of the biggest names across the world integrate our user account and auth product.
For the last 5 years, I've worked for a top 10 insurance company, doing development, design, operations, planning, architecture, and ultimately hiring and leading a team. I'm a Seattle guy, but my work has taken me to California, Wisconsin, Boston, and even Shanghai for knowlege share, presenting designs, and pitching ideas. If you don't see me around learning and building something new, I'll be off somewhere traveling in one of my self converted travel vans!
Technology Summary
Language
Primary: JavaScriptTypeScriptPHPHTMLCSS
Secondary: JavaSwiftPythonBash
Framework
Primary: ReactNextExpressMeteorAngularDrupalWordpressCypress
Secondary: SpringSymfonySenchaBackboneDroolsLoopbackSelenium
Server
Primary: LinuxNodeApacheNginxAWSDocker
Secondary: TomcatJettyIISKubernetes
Persistence
Primary: SQLMongoDBMemcachedRedisGraphQL
Secondary: HibernatePDOPrismaElasticSearch
IT Work Experience
American Family Insurance | Homesite | Assurestart
Software Engineer | Team Lead | Manager
amfam.com | homesite.com
Aug 2016 - Oct 2020
FTE
- Designed and developed an front page portable commercial insurance widget to start quoting based on industry and employees
- Created a nodejs express data service to simplify deployment of commercial insurance widget changes
- Architected a rules system and service to manage individual whitelabel partner needs based on LOB, state, and industry
- Worked with teams to develop, fix, and maintain commercial insurance front end application built on Drupal
- Worked with remote teams in Boston and Madison to support home and auto LOB applications built in backbone, react, loopback, express, spring
- Heavily involved in front end, workflow, and executor node microservices as well as complex insurance spring/drools rules engine
- Rebuilt and modernized old auto quoting system to new React FE
- Created new master data object service for managing quotes using graphQL
- Integrated data and a/b systems including splunk, new relic, google analytics, optimizely
- Participated in react training camp (1 week), on site agile training (3 months), and many offsite conferences
- Re-engineered and optimized memcache and redis systems
- Was promoted 3 times and ultimately hired and lead/managed a team to rebuild a new home insurance quoting platform
- Planned and designed architecture for new home quoting platform, including front-end, services, integrations, persistence, and operations
- Worked with stakeholders, teams, POs & PMs with planning and lead meetings and presentations in 3 states
- Trained, hired, assisted, and mentored many employees across a large number of teams
- Consistently received awards and bonuses for meeting and exceeding team/company expectations
The Walt Disney Company | DTSS
Solution Engineer
disneystore | starwars | abc | marvel
Feb 2015 - Aug 2016
Contractor
- System integration with technologies including JavaScript/CSS, Objective-C, Android-SDK, Java, Ruby
- Assisted in on-boarding developers to multiple identity platforms for full lifecycle
- Work with other internal development teams to help them migrate their sites, applications, and systems
- Troubleshooting, debugging, and analysis of code written and maintained by other teams
- Contribute features and bug fixes to external and internal code repositories (Java, Angular, PHP)
- Work with technical writers to continuously improve documentation
- Lead meetings on integration, tools, process improvements, and compliance
- In depth troubleshooting across multiple internal systems and external applications
- Built multiple tools to support onboarding, compliance, reporting, and testing efforts
- Worked efficiently with heavy workloads, aggressive timelines and multiple business units
- Oversaw and managed over 30 projects from initial design to production launch
- Assisted with localization efforts for UI, email, account recovery and marketing in 10+ languages
- Developed innovative applications for Innovation Days and won first place 2015 for most immediate need
Area 52 Games | SBI
Senior Platform Engineer
area52games.com | smartbombinteractive.com
Jun 2012 – Feb 2015
FTE
- Sole architect and engineer of full platform stack for Star Wars IP MMO game
- Worked solutions with publishers, IP owners, and foreign (Asia) investors
- Built game front end container site with authentication (symfony2, jquery, mongo, oauth)
- Created customized Drupal content, game, and account management app (drupal, mysql, mongo)
- Developed high performance client / server applications (backbone, node, jquery, underscore, amdJS)
- Built clean, browser and platform compliant, xhtml layouts from PSD asset files (photoshop)
- Designed and developed platform rest services platform app (spring, jetty)
- Integrated with 3rd party APIs (PlaySpan, DisneyID, Disney Guest Experience, Facebook)
- Designed and created secure provider agnostic game token session auth system (jquery, spring, node)
Gazillion | The Amazing Society
Web Application Engineer
gazillion.com | amazingsociety.com
Sep 2010 – Jun 2012
FTE
- Created and maintained the platform from conception - to launch – to currently 2 million+ users
- Maintained and extended CSR application (codeigniter, jquery, pure)
- Worked and integrated with Spring Webservices and Unity3d Client
- Integrated with 3rd party APIs (PlaySpan, Parature, Google In-App Payments, Facebook, WildTangent)
- Internationalized Website and supplied a shippable product for our in game catalog (Magento)
- Built clean, browser and platform compliant, xhtml layouts from PSD asset files
- Extended WordPress with 20+ custom plugins for content, billing, and game administration
- Designed and constructed DB schema for new features and SQL procedures to assist with deployment
Consider: Open
Lead Developer
consideropen.com
Mar 2010 – Sep 2010
Contractor
- Conceptualized ideas for monetization of assets and future development
- Lead and implemented team building and best practices exercises as well as optimization techniques
- Contributed to reusable code base by building and abstracting Paypal objects and WordPress Plugins
- Assisted in project management, UX, UI and database schema design
- Coded a startup social networking application
- Contributed a payment module to an existing social networking application
- Built a knowledge base for an established software company
Health Global Connect
Web Developer
healthglobalconnect.com
Mar 2009 – Sep 2009
Contractor | Volunteer
- Developed a social networking site from the ground up in a team environment
- Built a full featured messaging system in CodeIgniter utilizing ajax and jQuery technologies
- Created a model for storing hierarchical data in MySQL with improved query performance
- Promoted from unpaid intern/volunteer to paid contract employee
Brandon Groce
various
2006 - Present
Consultant
- Consultant for Metaverse Mod Squad building Zen Desk applications and server api applications
- Consultant for customer portal application integration with data services – www.viableware.com
- Prototyped a recipe library, aggregation, and grocery shopping application in 3 weeks. The project was funded - www.gatheredtable.com
- Created and developed bids and proposals for websites, cms, apps, modules, ecommerce, and more
- Primary developer and consultant for Modern Dog Design (20 years in service) – moderndog.com
- Designed, developed, and deployed local karaoke company website – myabsolutekaraoke.com
- Built mobile karaoke application utilizing jQuery mobile – mobile.myabsolutekaraoke.com
- Developer and consultant for VillageOnCall - now caringbridge support planner - www.caringbridge.org
Education
Seattle Central
IT Web Development
3.9 GPA - Presidents List
- TA'd classes
- Tutored students
- Gave class presentations here and at Highline College after completion
Activities
- Health Global Connect
- National Association of Psychometrists
- MS Walk (emcee & DJ)
- Developer Week
- Disney Dev Innovation Days (1st place winner)
- Google Hackathon (2nd place winner)
- Adobe Roadshow
- React training (on site)
- Agile training (on site)
- McCarthy core training
- jQuery Hack Day
- DrupalCon
- WebVisions
- Symfony Live
- PostgreSQL conference
- Udemy Courses: swift/ios, iot, ai & ml, et. al.
- 35yr pianist & composer
- Emcee & DJ company owner/operator
- Build & remodel houses and campers
- Space and aviation nerd
- Karaoke
- Permaculture
- Philomath