About - Steffen Blake - Mon, Jul 10, 2023

Contact Info

Name: Steffen Blake

Skill Chart

Last Updated: 2023-07-09

This list is neither all comprehensive nor necessarily perfectly up to date. I’m constantly deep diving into random new (usually useful) skills. If you have further questions regarding specific stuff, absolutely shoot me an email!

====== Skills =======

C# ---------------------------------- ★★★★★

.NET Core --------------------------- ★★★★★

ASP.NET MVC ------------------------- ★★★★★

Unity ------------------------------- ★★★☆☆

Godot ------------------------------- ★★★☆☆

Razor Pages ------------------------- ★★★★☆

Javascript (Web) -------------------- ★★★★★

└ Javascript (Vue) ------------------ ★★★★★

└ Javascript (Svelte) --------------- ★★★★☆

└ Javascript (Electron) ------------- ★★★★☆

Javascript (Node) ------------------- ★★★★☆

Typescript -------------------------- ★★★★☆

CSS / SCSS -------------------------- ★★★★☆

SQL --------------------------------- ★★★☆☆

Unit Testing (Moq, nUnit, xUnit) ---- ★★★★☆

Code Review / Peer Management ------- ★★★★★

APIs (REST, Consuming, Designing) --- ★★★★★

Docker ------------------------------ ★★★★☆

Kubernetes -------------------------- ★★★☆☆

Bash: ------------------------------- ★★★★☆

Experience

The largest portion of my work experience is within Peer Management roles. This includes training new employees, team management, leadership skills, code reviews, and consultation. I am quite comfortable in roles that involve working alongside others and lending a helping hand wherever needed. Code reviews took up a respectable portion of my workload in the past few years, due to my rigorous standards and keen eye for details, as well as ability to help out with spotting areas that require additional training or assistance for fellow peers.

I have learned documenting code and architecture are paramount to this process, and even more so maintaining that documentation! It is substantially easier to bring new team members on board and get them up to speed when there are clear and concise directions for them to work through.

Interested in hiring me?

I’m looking for a team that welcomes change and growth with open arms. Ideally pioneered by a strong leader with integrity and an open door policy. Strong lines of communication, well documented company policies, and transparency are must haves for me. I’m an ethical developer, which means I’m not interested in developing anything that might put human lives at risk or in danger. Part of being transparent means being up front about my limitations, and though they are few, this is a strong moral ground I stand on. I will never allow myself to write a line of code that could result in the endangerment of human lives, or puts their social safety or well-being at risk.

My Relationship with AI

I have a large amount of experience in Artificial intelligence, and am extremely interested in pursuing this vein further. AI has a massive variety of applications and its a booming realm creating a lot of exciting new transformations to the software industry. But with these powerful new tools comes an immense responsibility that AI developers must shoulder, as it can be abused. I welcome the use of AI to better human lives with open arms and will pursue that with a passion. But AI is powerful, and as the writers of the 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man starring Toby Maguire wrote: “With great power, comes great responsibility”

Work History

Senior Software Developer - 2020-2023

Lawdepot (Sequiter Inc.), Edmonton AB

Architecture Centre for Exellence team participant, handled architecture update conveyance for Notarization team to rest of ACE team members, liason for company wide improvement discussions and actionable items.
Notarization Application Development, full stack responsibilities including database modifications/improvements, stored procedure management, C# dotnet backend through Asp.Net Core Web API, and front end development of Vue 3 web app.
Dockerization improvement process. Liason for Docker/Kubernetes related ongoing improvements/migration process as company shifted from monolithic architecture to microservice dockerization

Senior Software Developer - 2017-2020

Pleasant Solutions, Edmonton, AB

Lead team in building Speech Recognition AI module for new flagship product, ‘Paranoid’
Composed the full stack of a Big Data pipeline for in-house software that processes data on the scale of millions of entries per hour. Included full error and crash monitoring. Record runtime of well over a year and a half without a single crash or error.
Frequently involved in hands on client projects. Very familiar with client relations and triaging of Agile workflows through BAs/PMs.

Software Development (Open Source) - 2013-Present

Varied, Global

Frequent participant in open source projects. Cut my teeth on dozens of community projects, working hands on with senior developers on global remote scales.
Extremely comfortable working with others remotely and tackling tasks in decoupled and asynchronous manners.
Different teams use different tools, which means familiarity with a massive variety of tool stacks. Whether it was Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, Gogs, Gitea, or any other form of Version Control Container, I have likely used it at some point or another.

Education

MCSD: App Builder: Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer - 2019

Microsft

MCSD: Web Applications: Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer - 2018

Microsft

Bachelor’s of Education (Incomplete): Mathematics + Physics - 2013

University of Alberta

Partially completed degree, was hired to work as a Software Developer full time before completion, have not gone back to finish it yet due to working full time ever since.

High School Diploma - 2010

Leduc Composite High School - Leduc

Personal Stuff

I have a lot of hobbies and they are constantly expanding, but there are definitely a handful of things I don’t see myself ever losing my passion for.

Dungeons and Dragons (and any other type of tabletop RPGs really)

I’ve been predominantly a Dungeon Master for as long as I can remember. Pretty sure I ran my first real D20 based game when I was thirteen. Recently my attention has really been focused on One Page Dungeons and their modulare ability to be injected into any ole game. In fact I recently submitted a One Page Dungeon to Dungeon Contest you can feel free to check out!

I think what I love the most about TTRPGs is how players constantly surprise you, not just with their solutions to problems and ability to improvise as a group, but also the fact that you often get to see completely new sides to people close to you through the lens of group roleplay.

Magic the Gathering

Now don’t get me wrong, I love board games and card games in general, but king among kings in my heart is Richard Garfield’s baby here. I have never encountered such a fine tuned and advanced game with design so eloquent and carefully administered. The UX and Design of MtG is breathtaking at times, and I absolutely love some of the tidbits of info Mark Rosewater has spent his time teaching the world.

I honestly could just sit and talk shop about this game all day!

Ants

Ants are marvels of nature and one of the creatures I think humans bare the most resemblance to. There are a lot of things we have in common with them. They are architects, they have paramedics, practice medicine, and even practice animal husbandry!

I have had a passion for Formiculture (raising pet ants) and finally got my hands on some nice high quality Formicariums recently (better known by the term “ant farm”) so look forward to blog posts in the future on my progress on this hobby!

Ferrets~!

I have four wonderful little cat-snake carpet-sharks. I teach them tricks and like to take pictures of them, so look forward to, perhaps, the occasional cute ferret pic on my blog posts!

Programming

Oh yes, and I suppose it probably goes without mentioning but here we are. I am a software developer both at work and at home. Its a big hobby and it never ceases to provide new layers of depth and interest. Every day is another puzzle to solve, and I wouldn’t have my life any other way!

Game Development

And of course the entire reason I became a programmer in the first place, way back in the day, is game development. Largely my initial foray’s into this realm were through Dungeons and Dragons, card games, board games, and etc. However I have slowly been assembling my skills with Unity and its dotnet core interfacing. I have recently picked up tooling such as Tiled, Aseprite, and Atlased to compile together performant sprite style workflows.

In conjunction with supertiled2unity, these pieces all come together into Unity to allow for some pretty solid results. I’m really hoping to get a daily dev vlog/stream up and running on my Youtube and Twitch!

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