About Me

Hello, my name is Richard Castera. I have more than 12 years of experience architecting, implementing, leading and launching large scale, high performance software products in a fast-paced agile environment. Highly skilled in big data –– driven by efficient backend and frontend development.

  • Current Position: Senior Software Engineer (SMTS) at Salesforce
  • Location: United States, New York
  • Languages: English, French, Spanish

Skills

PHP

Java

Node

Javascript

React

Vue.js

Angular

Backbone

Apache

Bash

Unix

MongoDB

MySQL

RabbitMQ

Memcache

Redis

Docker

HTML

CSS

Jenkins

Webpack

Gulp

Babel

Git

Photoshop

Fun Facts

2 Beautiful Children
2 Beautiful Dogs
1 Patent Inventor
32° FreeMason

Experience

Senior Software Engineer (SMTS), Salesforce

Nov 2011 ‐ Present
  • Design, develop and maintain PHP 7 & Java based micro-services that power various other services across Marketing Cloud
  • Design & develop RESTful API's for publishing and ingesting posts from various social networks
  • Lead our team to provide Facebook Ad integration into our product
  • Write automated and manual methods to test code coverage for any new features or bug fixes
  • Create Splunk alerts and Dashboards to provide insights into system health and allow the team to be proactive on potential issues that could impact SLA's
  • Document processes and code changes
  • Participate in MVP and product demos
  • Upgraded PHP 5 to PHP 7 along with Symfony upgrade
  • Mentor Jr. developers and conduct peer-testing code
  • Support professional services with customer cases and investigations

Director of Technology/Lead Software Engineer, SankyNet

Aug 2009 ‐ Nov 2011
  • Lead a team of 6 engineers through all phases of the SDLC
  • Implemented coding standards, agile methodologies and source-code control
  • Authored several Payment API's - Paypal, Authorize.NET, Blackbaud and Convio
  • Implemented and certified PCI compliant standards for customer websites
  • Introduced Search Engine & Social Media Optimization as a service
  • Wrote API Integrations for Blackbaud, Convio, Constant Contact, Facebook & Twitter
  • Built and scaled large, high trafficked, mobile-friendly websites using PHP, MySQL, APC, Memcache and CDN's
  • Active in business development, including aiding in the creation of proposals and presentations, RFP's and representing the company at conferences

Lead Software Development Engineer, Noam Design

Jan 2007 ‐ Jul 2009
  • Lead a team of 6 using Agile practices through all phases of the SDLC
  • Worked extensively with the Magento E-commerce platform & Zend Famework
  • Extensive work with PHP 4/5, MySQL, GD library, jQuery, Mootools and Prototype
  • Built custom CMS's for clients and updates to other systems such as Drupal, Wordpress and Expression Engine
  • Consult with clients to develop web sites and involved in strategic planning, including marketing and sales strategies
  • Demonstrated ability to complete large projects in deadline-oriented environments
  • Assisted in advertising, marketing and SEO strategies

Education

The Chubb Institute of Technology

2000 ‐ 2001

Diploma in Computer Programming

Queensborough Community College

1997 ‐ 2000

Computer Science