My name is Aaron Barczewski (pronounced “bar-chess-ski”) and I am a PHP developer with over seven years experience working in the marketing and telecommunication industry. I specialize in the design and implementation of microservices through API-driven architecture. I graduated from Colorado State University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. I served in the US Army as an intelligence analyst and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. In my free time I like to go out and take pictures of space objects (astrophotography), design and build rockets, and I play the drums.

About Me

Specializing in API and event-driven architecture to deliver robust and scalable software applications to tackle complex technical challenges.

Collaborative team player and effective communicator, regularly engaging in pair and mob programming to boost productivity and instill a knowledge-sharing environment.

Proficient in full-stack development, adept at utilizing both backend and frontend frameworks or creating custom frameworks to provide greater flexibility for complex projects.

Experience

PhoneBurner Inc, Laguna Beach, CA | Sr. Software Engineer | March 2021 - August 2024

Actively contributed to a software engineering team utilizing Agile methodologies to maintain and enhance a Laravel-based monolithic web application with a robust API-driven and event-driven architecture in PHP. Developed efficient HTTP clients for interacting with external APIs. Improved the user experience by writing Vue.js components and maintaining legacy code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery.

  • Developed a PHP and Vue.js application to screen illicit recorded voicemails, significantly enhancing customer security and phone traffic safety.
  • Implemented an asynchronous listener system that serializes Doctrine ORM entities in PHP, which greatly improved platform reliability and performance.
  • Enhanced the phone number ordering system in PHP and Vue.js, providing users with a more reliable and seamless experience when purchasing phone numbers through the platform.
  • Built and improved the number inventory API with event sourcing, significantly boosting data consistency and enhancing the overall user experience.

Madwire LLC, Fort Collins, CO | Software Engineer | March 2018 - March 2021

Responsible for designing, building, and maintaining PHP applications that aggregated marketing and advertising data from external sources such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn that were stored in AWS Aurora databases. Additionally, I contributed to developing an internal API that utilized this data to provide customers with reporting and analysis for their ad campaigns.

  • Developed a custom Active Record ORM library in PHP that was compatible with both MySQL and Aurora, to seamlessly bridge the database and business logic across multiple applications. This innovation greatly improved flexibility and reduced system complexity.
  • Designed and implemented a Python API with Flask to automate database migrations for over 1,000 databases leading to substantial improvements in performance and consistency.
  • Engineered and optimized MySQL queries to enhance memory efficiency and overall system performance resulting in significantly faster page load times for large customers.

Smart Software Solutions LLC, Pierre, SD | Full Stack Web Developer | June 2017 - Feb 2018

Developed LAMP stack web applications utilizing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery to create reliable and visually appealing platforms tailored to individual customer needs. Additionally, I maintained and implemented new features in both WordPress and Java applications.

  • Developed a custom queuing system in PHP and MySQL for a taxi service application, significantly enhancing both performance and reliability.
  • Optimized and refined MS-SQL queries for a Java application, leading to substantial performance improvements and an enhanced user experience.
  • Designed and built a Java application to parse raw data from files to generate MySQL scripts, dramatically increasing productivity for client products requiring MySQL database seeding.
  • Created a C# application to retrieve data from an external stock trading API, enriching a WordPress application with real-time trading information.

Education

Bachelors of Science in Computer Science - Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Bachelors of Science in Microbiology - Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Skills

  • PHP
  • Python
  • MySQL / SQL
  • Laravel
  • Vue / React
  • HTML / CSS / JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Object-relational Mapping ( ORM )
  • REST
  • AWS ( Dynamo, S3, Aurora )
  • Object-oriented Programming ( OOP )
  • GitHub
  • Event Sourcing
  • Docker
  • PHPUnit
  • CI/CD

Astrophotography

I started doing astrophotography near the end of 2020. I stumbled onto it by watching YouTube videos and was amazed by the spectacular pictures one could take with pretty simple equipment. After taking my first picture, which was the Orion Nebula (shown on the left), I was hooked and began my journey in making higher quality pictures.