Professional

Professional Experience

A detailed description of my work history.

King's     When I first was hired by King's Family Restaurant I was given the job title, Utility. This position's duties included collecting all the used dishes, glasses, and utensils from around the restaurant, clean them, and restock them. I also was responsible for the general cleanliness and sterilization of the entire restaurant. I was soon promoted to Cook, where I became responsible for the preparation of all food, as well as the cleanliness of the utensils, grills, and fryers. Within two years of starting, I was promoted to Shift Supervisor, where I was given the responsibility of managing the entire restaurant during the overnight shift. I used the cash register and waited on tables, so that I would be able to fill in properly assist all my staff, and perform each job if needed. As shift supervisor my duties included having good communication skills, with both my employees and customers, good management skills to ensure everything ran as it should and all tasks where completed before the end of shift, and excellent decision making skills. By giving me this responsibility King's showed great faith in my trustworthiness and skill level, as well as my personal motivation and ability to motivate those around me.
Applebee's     After leaving King's over scheduling conflicts, I started at Applebee's as a Line Cook. Once there, I was soon put in charge of running the entire kitchen during my shifts. As a testament to my hard work and dedication, I was awarded Employee of the Month during my second month. I was responsible to learn the new computer system off site, and for teaching it to all my coworkers, including part of the management staff.
Bayer     In order to earn a Bachelor's Degree in Information Science and Technology, Penn State requires an internship be worked for no less than three months. I was hired for my internship at Bayer Corporation. While at Bayer, I was given the task of recreating an outdated interactive chart which displayed Bayer's company structure and order of operations. The previous chart had been created in an old word processor program by several different people, which made it inconsistent and hard to follow. My task was to learn Visio, and use it to create an up-to-date version of this chart that was more visually appealing, easy to follow and understand, and more easily navigable. I completed this task ahead of schedule, and was highly complimented on my surpassing their expectations.
Highmark Raeder Landree     Soon after graduating I was contacted by Raeder Landree, a contracting firm. They contracted me to Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, where I was trained as a Quality Assurance Agent. My task was to perform quality assurance checks of the highly sensitive data that was being copied from their ICIS program to a new more automated system called OSCAR. By giving me this position, Highmark trusted me not to disclose the private insurance information contained in each file. After approximately six months, I advanced to a higher level of QA in the company, where I remained until my contract expired.
Giant Eagle     After leaving Highmark, Raeder Landree placed me with Giant Eagle as a Help Desk Operator. While there, I gained valuable experiences using different equipment and software packages. I took problems from both telephone calls and emails. As part of the Technical Help Center we gave support to all corporate offices as well as all grocery stores, pharmacies, optical centers, and GetGo fuel sites. All calls were logged using Peregrine ServiceCenter 5 for tracking purposes. Being a Level 1 operator I was responsible to make service calls for broken equipment, such as registers, fuel pumps, printers, fax machines, PCs, and handheld scanners. I was also responsible for troubleshooting any software problems, ranging from users locking out their accounts, to any software issues from programs needing rebooted, reconfigured, or any procedural issues the employee may not be aware of. The basic tools used were SMS or pcAnywhere to remote into users PCs or registers, Site Communicator to remotely control fuel site software, and Active Directory. While there, I supported Microsoft Windows XP, NT, Unix, and IBM Mainframe systems.
PNC Pomeroy     When Giant Eagle make the business decision to outsource it's Technical Help Center, I accepted a new position with Pomeroy Staffing to work at PNC Bank's Technical Help Center. I spent two to three weeks in their training room, taking calls and learning their system. I took calls from employees who had lost or forgotten their passwords, or that were reporting faulty and malfunctioning equipment for maintainence or replacement. These calls were logged into PNC's system.
Dollar Bank     After a month's time at PNC, I was offered a position that was more inline with my education and career goals, as a Junior Programmer Analyst at Dollar Bank. At Dollar Bank my years of experience creating webpages for friends, family, and local small burinesses. I was trained to use Visual Studio, and began advanced web programming using C# ASP.Net. After several months, I was put in charge of the entire site redesign, which also coinsided with our upgrade to .Net 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008. Using these, I designed a Masterpage and new css file that would ensure unform designs across all pages on Dollar Bank's site, all using a printout from a graphic design firm contracted to create the site's overall look and feel. I trained my fellow programmers in my department and my immediate supervisor, which totaled eight altogether, on the implementation of these tools; and I organized the deployment of this design, assigning everyone their individual tasks and parts of the upgrade. This design is still in use today at dollarbank.com.
    My next major task at Dollar Bank was a project that lasted over three years to accomplish. I was given the assignment of creating a site where approved third party mortgage brokers could gain access to reports, information, and even submit new mortgages to the bank, all of which had been done via email, fax, and phone up to that point. This website would need to be secured so only approved parties could access it with a user name and password. Once they gained entry, the site would display the current mortgage rates, fees, and other information created specifically for that borker, and give them an entry form to submit new mortgages and refinances. As this form was filled out, it would read the information as it was entered, and adapt to show only available rates and products. Something that was previsouly impossible, and necessitated numerous phone calls and emails to correct should a mistake be made. This project was long delayed and took so long to accomplish as it had to adapt to all new local, state, and federal regulations that were being made at the time. This site is now live, and can be found at here.
    While that project was coming to a close, I was reassigned to take over the bank's mobile development for Apple products. I assumed maintainence duties of the online banking app already deployed into Apple's App Store, and have since made several modifications, including all system updates pertaining to the launch of iOS 7. I also took control of the business banking app that had yet to be completed. This app, while 75% complete, required me to learn our business banking practices and finish creating app to mirror what is available on the website. I was then in charge of debugging the app, and correcting any design flaws or technical errors that were found in both my new code and the code I had inhereted. The retail customer app can be found here, while the business app can be found here.
    During my final months at Dollar Bank, I was instrumental in starting major updates and redesigns to both the website and the mobile apps. For the website, we decided to go with a responsive design that would work on all the differnt devices, browsers, and operating services used in the world today. For the mobile devices, we made had wanted to move away from having apps written in native code and move to more of a shared codebase utilizing HTML5 with Angular JS as a backbone. To accomplish this, we began using IBM MobileFirst that would coincide with the company's move from Team Foundation Server (TFS) to IBM Rational.
Dollar Bank     After over nine years at Dollar Bank, I decided it was in my best interest to move on to a new company where there was still room to grow as a developer without moving into management. I was hired by UPMC Health Plan and began in April of 2016 where I would preform similar duties that I had done at Dollar Bank, that being creating, updating, and maintaining websites and web services using C# in Visual Studio. After several months, I fell into the role of managing the web services for the member portion of the site, and began working closely with the UI, backend, and database teams. These teams and the current ongoing project were selected as one of the few to pilot the usage of SCRUM methodolgy which the company was moving towards.