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Paul Pearcy

Paul Pearcy

Software / Cloud Architect
Indianapolis, US
ppearcy@gmail.com

Background

About

About

I am a hands-on software architect that works at every level of the development lifecycle with a deep understanding of how to synergize design, development, deployment, and infrastructure to achieve quality, reliability, scalability, and affordability. The last few years I have been one of two lead Architects for the flagship Blackboard Learn LMS and have played a key role in evolving to a SaaS platform able to support our largest customers affordably and reliably.

Work Experience

Work Experience

  • Senior Staff Software Engineer, Anthology (Formerly Blackboard)

    Oct, 2013 - Present

    Oversee architecture on Blackboard Learn product.

    • Learn is a rapidly evolving product with ~10 major features delivered per month with 20+ teams and ~200 engineers involved. Learn consists of a core Java monolith with 25+ million lines of code and 20+ supporting services all deployed to AWS. This is a high volume transactional system handling 35+ million users a day achieving 99.99% uptime supporting key teaching and learning workflows. There is a large amount of feature work combined with traditional bug, security and performance fixes.

    • Work with PMs, UX, dev teams, and ops teams to evolve designs and orchestrate infrastructure.

    • Help the security team triage potential issues, understand severity, and recommend fixes.

    • Final tier of troubleshooting the toughest production issues through a deep understanding of the app tier and infra.

    • Brought on as Tech Lead/Fixer for projects that are struggling to help scope and implement successfully.

    • Manage our overall compute footprint consisting of over 5000 EC2 instances with a combination of spot and RI (reserved instances) EC2 usage working closely with the CloudFinOps team.

    • Serve as an AWS, Cloudflare, New Relic, Dynatrace, and PSPDFKit expert and liason.

    • Mentor and guide engineers at various tiers to help enable them to be independent and productive.

  • CEO/Software Architect, Limberware LLC

    May, 2012 - Present

    Built and manage a custom tax web for Pilots and Flight Attendants using Python/Django, operating for over 15 years with minimal intervention.

  • Director - Lead Software Engineer, Markit On Demand

    Aug, 2007 - Apr, 20124 years 8 months

    Focused on application development of core infrastructure applications, including document search, management system, and data processing. Worked with C++, Python, SQL, and Java.

  • Software Engineer, Motorola

    Aug, 2003 - Aug, 20074 years

    Software engineering tasks within Mobile Devices division.

  • Software Engineer Intern, Connectix Corporation

    May, 2001 - Aug, 20013 months

  • Software Development Intern, Bakerhill Corporation

    Jan, 1997 - Aug, 19992 years 7 months

Skills

Skills

  • Programming Languages

    Java

    Python

    SQL

    Scala

    Typescript/Javascript

    C/C++

    bash

  • Cloud Platforms

    AWS

    Cloudflare

    New Relic

    Snowflake

    Dynatrace

    Kubernetes

    PSPDFKit

  • Software Architecture

    System Design

    Deployment

    Infrastructure Management

Education

Education

  • Computer Science and Math (double major), Bachelors of Science, Purdue University

    Jul, 1998 - May, 2002

Awards

Awards

  • Blackboard PD Silver Award for work on Blackboard Annotate , Tim Thomlinson, Chief Product Officer

    Awarded on: Jun 01, 2019

  • Blackboard PD Gold Award for work on Learn CMS , Tim Thomlinson, Chief Product Officer

    Awarded on: Sep 01, 2018

  • Motorola Barvo Award , Motorola

    Awarded on: Nov 01, 2006

References

References

  • Shannon Monasco, SDE II Amazon

    Paul is superbly analytical and brilliant, yet easy to talk to and does not look down on you when you have questions.

  • Jeff Kibler, Cofounder SecondSight

    Paul is an extremely efficient and dedicated worker. He creates quality work with attention to detail. He works well on a team and individually . I could not give a more positive recommendation for Paul.

  • Aaron Hayes, Senior Software Engineer at Jump Trading

    Paul is a smart, incredibly hard-working developer who can be relied on to complete his tasks with minimum oversight. He is proactive in seeking out everything he needs to get the job done and he works relentlessly to meet his objectives. He would be a strong addition to any development team.