Bill Blondeau

Seeking employment.

My current employer is excellent and the work has been professionally rewarding, but I need to address my work/life balance. I'm looking to downshift and to head in a different direction.

Downshifting, in this case, means practical changes that reclaim more of the hours in my life. A downshift might include things like:

• Moderate reduction in hours worked per week;
• Shorter commute time;
• Increased proportion of remote work.

I'm open to various arrangements and options.

The different direction I am looking for is to hit the ground running, and sustain a reasonable workweek. More than anything, this means playing to my strengths: increased scope for my existing aptitudes, preferences, and skills.

In practical terms, I'm looking for reasonable compensation and good health benefits. Relocation is pretty much off the table: I'm limited either to the parts of Madison, WI within practical bicycling distance, or a remote-work position.

What type of technical work do I want to do?

Basically, either something I'm already good with, or something that's unusually compelling.

• Data Work. Whether design, analysis, setup, transformation, validation, maintenance, or a pleasant mixture of them all, data is my first love. It can be tabular, relational, hierarchical, or graph-based; it can be persisted in databases or filesystems.

  My command of SQL and the various DDL dialects is solid. I've worked with most of the open and proprietary relational databases. I know how to design schemas and use them.

  I'm good with ETL. I have always had to roll my own data pipelines, transformations, and orchestrations, but am very interested in learning how to use some of the industry tools that take care of the low-level work.

  I'm comfortable and experienced with NoSQL databases (Redis particularly).

  Whatever you want done with XML, I can probably do it quickly. (XPath, XSLT, XML Schema, SAX, XQuery.)

  I understand basic graph theory and various triple notations, and have no difficulty understanding and using graph databases (e.g. Neo4j).

  I have worked as a data architect on warehouses: designed star schemas, defined data intake processes, and analyzed the integrity of audit trails.

• Programming. I strongly prefer the back end: data access and transformation, service API design and implementation, utility scripting, CLI work. That said, I do know my way around the front end. I have worked with asynchronous JavaScript, HTML3, CSS3, XHTTP.

  My preferred general language is Python; I am also competent with Java and PHP. I am reasonably familiar with a grab bag of other languages and frameworks.

  Supporting technologies: I am very familiar with Git, including some of the lesser-known aspects such as rebasing. I use VirtualBox heavily. I have worked with NAGIOS monitoring: writing scripts for it and documenting its use for coworkers.

  I do have a solid grasp of RESTful and microservice styles of service design and management. I've done both.

  I work to leave code in place that's understandable, friendly for sight-reading, unambiguous.

• Technical Writing / Documentation. I'm good at this. I know how to do it, and why. I treat technical documentation seriously. I have a portfolio of example work here.

  I'd be interested in a pure-play tech writing position; but I also bring these skills to any development job.

• DevOps. My current and prior positions have given me considerable experience in DevOps work. The more I do it, the more I like it.

  My ability with the Linux command line is solid. Particularly in the Rabble job, I learned to write scripts that behave correctly on the command line, so that they can be piped and invoked in standard fashion.

  My preferred orchestration language is Python. My fluency with Python scripting for the command line is probably my key DevOps skill. Other basic strengths include my long understanding of database operations, version control systems, build systems, deploy systems, and API services.

  I know basic server administration (caveat: Linux only. My understanding of Windows system administration is very incomplete). I am comfortable with the remote tools such as ssh, scp, rsync, etc.

  Most of my cloud experience is with AWS. I have also used Google Compute.

OK. Interested?

Further down this page you'll find links to my résumés, addressing various interests and practices.

Availability cannot be immediate—I would have nontrivial close-out responsibilities to Web Courseworks—but it's negotiable for a good opportunity.