About
Web Developer, Engineering Manager & Scrum Master.
That means I develop webs, manage engineers, and master scrums.
- Website: chriswcowan.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chris-cowan-444a2543
- Phone: +609 276 1743
- Location: Howell, NJ
- Years Slinging Code: 10
- Years Mastering Scrums: 3
- Email: chriswcowan@gmail.com
- Freelance: Available Part-Time
I have been slinging code for 10 years now, mostly in web development on a Microsoft stack. I have worked in the enterprise, on consumer-facing apps, as a consultant, and most recently as a manager. In my current role I have enjoyed bringing the benefits of Agile development to my teams and customers, improving my department’s DevOps and CI/CD, mentoring junior devs, and still love to get my hands dirty in code whenever I can.
Also, I'm an amateur gardener and chicken farmer. Yeah.
Skills
Tech Stack
Resume, Plain Old Version
Full Stack Web Developer, Engineering Manager, and Scrum Master.
Sumary
Christopher W. Cowan
Seasoned Software Development Professional with 10 years of experience in designing and building Web Apps, Desktop Apps, APIs and Services in the .NET Ecosystem, as well as managing teams doing the same.
- 144 Windeler Rd, Howell, NJ 07731
- (609) 276-1743
- chriswcowan@gmail.com
Current Employment
Software Engineering Manager
2017-Present
Gaming Laboratories International, Lakewood, NJ
- Leading a team of nine Software Engineers, primarily working in enterprise software on a .NET Stack
- Hiring and mentoring Junior Developers
- Challenging and empowering Senior Developers
- Led the conversion the GLI Software Development Department from a Waterfall process to a SCRUM-like model.
- Improved team code quality, velocity, accountability, and estimate quality by adopting agile principles and continuous process improvement.
- Fostered an environment of open communication and a culture of self-improvement through servant leadership.
Education
Bachelor's of Science in Software Engineering
& Minor in Physics
2006-2010
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ
Professional Experience
Senior Back-End Engineer
2015 - 2017
We Are Mammoth Consulting, Chicago, IL
- As a self-managed developer on a small team, I fulfilled my primary role of providing C#/.NET web development expertise while also filling responsibilities from dev team lead to project management to requirements elicitation.
- Designed and built dozens of C#/.NET web apps and APIs. Worked as a sole developer, a team lead, and a team member on many different projects.
- Designed and built the company’s first Xamarin cross-platform mobile application for a new client. Helped define culture and development processes around mobile development at WAM.
- Led many “code meetups” – weekly Go2Meeting discussions amongst the dev team used to share new ideas and establish and discuss best practices.
Senior Web Developer
2014 - 2015
Key Software Systems, Wall, NJ
- Served as lead in-house developer for a new Fleet Management SaaS web application. Fleet Commander successfully launched in 2015.
- Improved software development practices across all Key Software products by implementing agile methodologies and advocating the use of modern development tools. Facilitated the adoption of Git source control, productivity tools such as Resharper and WebEssentials, and basic unit testing for major legacy projects.
Software Engineer
2011 - 2014
Gaming Laboratories International, Lakewood, NJ
- Designed and built in-house software solutions independently and on small agile teams for the leading electronic-gaming certification and test lab in the United States. Contributed to most phases of the development cycle, from helping to elicit requirements from other departments to design and implementation to end-user support.
Resume, Cooler Version
2010-2014 - Software Engineer @ GLI
I started off my career in Software Development at Gaming Labs International, where I designed and built internal tools to support the company's primary mission - the testing and certification of casino gaming machines.
2014 - EDI Developer @ Key Software Systems
When I first started at Key Software Systems, I primarily worked in the EDI department, where we wrote custom software to automate the exchange of data between our customers and their customers. In 2014, I abstracted out what was common across EDIs and wrote a generic version that could accept many different types of data feeds, so that many of our simpler EDIs could be installed and configured rather than coded from scratch.
2014-2015 - Web Developer @ Key Software Systems
In the second half of my time at Key Software Systems, I worked on a fleet-tracking web app called Fleet Commander. The project was intended to sell to our existing shipping/logistics customers, and provided real-time fleet management, from seeing your vehicles live on an on-screen map to knowing how full the gas tank is in every vehicle of the fleet. Cool memory: Having the ODB trackers plugged into our cars and digging into the mountain of data to pass judgement on our co-worker's driving habits).
2015 - Senior Software Engineer @ We Are Mammoth Consulting
In 2015, I joined a web development consultancy based out of Chicago called We Are Mammoth. Goofy name, yes, but an awesome group of people. I was primarily a back-end engineer for WAM, and started off my time there working for our biggest client, Fidelity, on pension platform sites for their clients. The work was a little intimidating at first (the first site I built was for Pepsi, by way of Fidelity - whoa) but I loved the work and picked it up quickly.
2016 - Senior Software Engineer @ We Are Mammoth Consulting
In 2016, I worked on many pension, 401k, and benefits platforms on behalf of Fidelity - including for United Airlines, University of California, GE, PepsiCo, and General Dynamics. The coolest project I worked on that year was as lead developer on what we called Project Phoenix - where we worked with Fidelity to abstract out what was common across pension platforms and built a full-stack solution around it. This cut down significantly on the effort and cost to build specialized versions for each client.
2017 - Senior Software Engineer @ We Are Mammoth Consulting
In 2017, I changed gears a bit at WAM. While I still did some work for Fidelity, my primary focus was WAM's first mobile project - an app for insurance agents working in the field. I worked with another developer on a Xamarin implementation of the common app, and built tested & deployed it on Android and iOS. As the company's (and my) first mobile app, I got the opportunity to not only learn a lot about mobile, but help blaze the cultural and technical trail for how the company approached mobile development in the future.
2017-2018 - Software Engineering Manager @ Gaming Labs International
In 2017, I was becoming more interested in the human side of software develompent, and so I went back to work at GLI and took over a development team of nine engineers. I started the new gig by leaning on my comfort zone and jumping into coding with the devs. For my first year, I did more coding and less managing than a manager should do, but that was necessary for a couple reasons - First, I needed to know exactly what the flavor of legacy ****-sandwich I had just inherited was before I could presume to improve it. Second, I had to earn my employees' trust and respect - and there is no better way to do than to jump into the trenches and to do the worst jobs (bug tickets, here I come).
2018-2019 - Software Engineering Manager @ Gaming Labs International
In my second year as an engineering manager, I mostly worked on helping the department adopt Agile processes. For new development, I converted us from a traditional waterfall model, which was not meeting the needs of the business's rapidly-evolving and often unclear requirements, to a SCRUM-like iterative sprints model. This resulted in more rapid delivery of value (happy customers!) better estimation of effort (happy management!) and clearer work expectations (happy developers!). I also converted our support and maintenance team from a totally ad-hoc process to a Kanban-style process, and instituted SLAs to keep us accountable.
2019-2020 - Software Engineering Manager @ Gaming Labs International
Most recently, I have been focused on architectural improvements in our department. Some of the initiatives I have worked on include breaking up our massive monolithic application suites into smaller applications (sometimes microservices), transitioning our team from using unrestrained Entity Framework queries all over our code to an organized Dapper/straight SQL service/repo pattern per application space, instituting double-approval Pull Requests for new code to ensure code quality, and being an evangelist for unit tests and the DRY/SOLID code that best supports them.
Contact
Send me words and I'll send you words back.
Location:
144 Windeler Rd, Howell, NJ 07731
Email:
chriswcowan@gmail.com
Call:
609 276 1743