Andy Kish
Technology Abstractionist and Object Orienter
About
Technical leader, engineering polymath, and systems architect with proven experience scaling products from inception to millions of users. I bring a rare combination of deep technical knowledge across the entire technology stack; from bare metal to cloud infrastructure to user experiences, and everything in between.
Core competencies:
- Systems Architecture: Designed and implemented scalable distributed systems supporting 1M+ concurrent devices
- Full Stack Development: Extensive production experience with modern JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems (Node.js since 0.4, React, Modern frameworks), Rust, Python, and C/C++
- Mobile app development: Android (Java/Kotlin), react-native, and a smattering of iOS (Swift/ObjC)
- Hardware and Firmware: Embedded Linux (ARM, MIPS), Real-time systems (FreeRTOS), MCU development (ESP32, SAMD21)
- Infrastructure: Cloud architecture, CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, database migrations at scale
- Protocols & Standards: REST APIs (that other developers love), MQTT, CoAP, BLE, WiFi, NFC
Recent focus areas:
- Rust-based systems programming
- Modern JavaScript run-times (Deno, Bun)
- Edge computing, distributed systems, AI implementation at scale
- Hardware-software co-design
- IOT Secure device provisioning and fleet management
- Cybersecurity and compliance standards
I thrive on solving complex technical challenges that span multiple domains. My background allows me to bridge gaps between hardware and software teams, architect cohesive solutions, and build systems that scale. While I'm comfortable across many technologies, I focus on selecting the right tool for each specific challenge rather than forcing particular solutions.
Work Experience
Director of Technology
At SkyBell I've been able to truly exercise my full stack skill-set, all the way down to the hardware. While most of my work has centered around web technologies (AWS ECR/ECS, Fargate, EC2), I've been able to make great contributions to the other facets of the SkyBell platform including firmware (Buildroot embedded Linux running on ARM and MIPS) for our doorbells and with our mobile apps (Android specifically, Kotlin, Java) used to interact with them. While most of the SkyBell stack is in Node.js, a language I am an expert with, I have been able to further develop experience with other languages like Rust, Erlang, and Elixir that parts of the SkyBell platform are written in.
Highlights
- Admin for 1M+ device IoT System
- Hardware development
Senior Software Engineer
Since the start of 2020, I've been freelancing with Gun.io, a fantastic boutique technical talent agency. I've been able to help out with projects of all different kinds, with new emphasis on mobile apps (both iOS and Android) using development technologies like Cordova, and React Native (using Expo.io). Often I'll be hired for a specific role or technical development task, but then be requested to be kept on to further improve areas like dev-ops, monitoring, and infrastructure scaling. While I am still part of the Gun.io talent pool, I have not taken any contacts with them since July of 2020.
Highlights
- Data Modeling
- Mobile Apps
Head of Engineering
Hired as a Senior Developer, I quickly proved myself by leading a complete re-architect of their Node.js backend so it would be much more scalable, robust, fault-tolerant, and completely AWS based. I implemented an entire devops continuous integration workflow that automates our AWS deployments in a "blue/green" fashion using Jenkins. I’ve also setup a customized ELK stack for our own metrics and analytics. This is in addition to the other engineering team leadership work I do like, hiring new developers, code reviews, technical and security reports, and ensuring the overall technical health of the company.
Highlights
- Team lead
- Data Architect
Full-Stack Senior Developer
I was hired on a contract basis to maintain and enhance McDonald's award winning "Our Food, Your Questions" campaign (Node.js, MongoDB), after my contract was up Tribal/DDB came to see me as a well-rounded developer and offered me a full time web developer position. At Tribal I got to work with even more large well known brands (McDonald's, Subaru, Canadian Tire, Google ... many more) building everything from simple social media plays, to complex Arduino or Electric Imp based "connected objects" hardware projects. I also worked with a variety of languages and platforms, it was a rewarding new challenge every other week.
Highlights
- Implementation of many large recognizable brands digital strategy.
Full-Stack Senior Developer
Originally hired as a front-end JavaScript developer, I quickly began to fill gaps in areas well beyond just the client side. I was involved in almost every aspect of the IT operations; from back-end (a mix of PHP frameworks, Node.js and Python), to sysadmin (in the Amazon cloud), to QA (building a rudimentary Jenkins CI system) and beyond. I wrote and documented most of the formerly used (as of Nov. 2013) login integration and data migration (users and comments) code and procedures.
Highlights
- Great exposure to the heart of Canadian start-up culture
- Incubated in the Ryerson DMZ
- Migrated CBC.ca old comment system to Viafoura
Front-end Web Developer
Enterprise web development at it's finest. The Globe and Mail's development team is strictly by-the-book agile programming using an enterprise Java backend. I was on a front end team developing with HTML/CSS/JavaScript using JSP and JSLT templates for their proprietary Java CMS (Escenic). I was integral in building the new "Dashboard" web app addon for TGAM subscribers. This app uses real-time communications implemented with CometD (Bayeux server). I also helped maintain their only Python/Django app, a URL shortener for tgam.ca
Highlights
- Enterprise development
Web Application Developer
At Trapeze, I was on the front-end team working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In addition to my standard front-end duties, I worked with our backend team extensively honing my Python skills into mastery (mostly using the Django framework). I worked on many major brands including Canadian Tire, Kraft Peanut Butter, Shoppers Drug Mart (and Pharma Prix), Oreo, Maxwell House, Tassimo and many others. Trapeze used to encourage their developers to work on research projects, thanks to that perk I am now well versed with upcoming technologies and methodologies like responsive design, WebGL, NFC and Node.js.
Highlights
- Strong development team taught me how AGILE works
- Had strong recognizable brands as clients
BlueBand Media (now known “Blueband Digital”)
August 2008 – November 2010
Director of Technology
Leading a small team of developers we built end-to-end solutions for our clients mostly with a LAMP software stack. ExpressionEngine and Wordpress were our go to frameworks for PHP development. Working at BlueBand Media allowed me to garner a deeper understanding in many aspects of the consumer packaged goods industry. I worked on many projects from simple promotional draws and automated tweets all the way up to nationwide pin collection and entry contests that featured interactive social media content and technical treats like augmented reality. Being the go to guy to get anything technical done was my calling card here. I loved learning new technologies and seeing where I could mesh them with old ones I already knew, this comes in very handy in agency environments.
Highlights
- Introduced to the world of Consumer Packaged Goods marketing
Front-end Web Developer
At The Best Media, I was responsible for everything IT related. This spanned from ensuring our Linux server was still serving our hosting customers, to developing and maintaining client websites. During my time here, I honed my web development skills to master HTML4, XHTML, PHP, Javascript (Ajax, jQuery) and Flash Actionscript. I also dabbled in many other clients' web technologies including ASP, .NET (ASP, and C#), eRuby, Python and Perl.
Highlights
- No 'chosen' language here, fixed, or added to many different types of projects.
Hardware Technician
ICA Microsystems provided me with additional experience in many facets of IT businesses. While at ICA Microsystems I built, repaired and serviced all types of systems ranging from desktop PCs all the way up to the servers from our rack mounted server farm.
Highlights
- Helped administer the hosting co-location and p2p wireless internet provider services
Volunteer
Open Source Contributor
Contributor (and avid user) to the MyCroft.ai project. An open-source Amazon Alexa type virtual AI assistant. Working with this in my spare time has given me great practical insight into ML.
Highlights
- Working with TensorFlow and other AI/ML tools in a practical hobbiest way.
Contact
155 Dalhousie Street
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2P7 CA
Skills
Frontend Web Development Master
HTML CSS LESS SASS JavaScript TypeScript CoffeeScript React Next.js Vue Angular PouchDB So. Many. More.
Backend Web Development Master
Node.js Python PHP PostgreSQL MongoDB MySQL + Percona CouchDB Redis Memcached NGINX ElasticSearch/Lucene Cassandra
DevOps Master
Continuous Integration Blue/Green Deploys Docker Vagrant AWS Digital Ocean Jenkins Chat Ops Developer Environments BASH Linux Windows OSX
Hardware Expert
ARM and MIPS based embedded Linux Embedded Rust IoT interfaces (CoAP, MQTT) Mobile app interfaces (WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC)
Data Science Expert
ElasticSearch + Kibana InfluxDB + Grafana Cassandra TensorFlow, PyTorch ML Python Jupyter Notebooks AWS SageMaker, AWS Rekognition
Publications
shorten-node
Github
20 February 2012
A Node.js powered URL shortening web app with Heroku deploy instructions.
Languages
- EnglishNative speaker
References
I've had the pleasure of working with Andrew at Viafoura. Not only is Andrew a passionate, innovative , and, fearless coder -- he's a rare breed of swiss army knife technologist. He has an in depth knowledge of hardware, networking, software development and systems administration skills that put him in a category that few developers occupy. Andrew has a very curious mind and genuinely loves to experiment and contribute to cutting edge technologies and tools. He'd be an asset to any organization -- and he has my complete endorsement.
Andrew is a true full stack developer. For him it's equally easy to debug a cross browser CSS issue, refactor some backend python code or setup a new Linux server. This rare understanding of all layers of the application give him a clear advantage over his peers.
Andrew worked as a senior developer on our highest priority projects for us, in frontend, backend as well as dev ops. Andrew has a keen sense of detail in his work always taking pride in things like proper coding standards, automated testing, continuous integration as well as using relevant and modern technologies which reflected in the top notch quality and performance of his work. Andrew is a very skilled developer.
Andrew comes with a large depth of experience, knowledge and great ideas to any development team. He has the intuition around scale, infrastructure that every team should relish. You'd be lucky to have him as part of your team. Get em!
Andrew has a lot of passion and is not afraid to experiment with new technologies. He will move fast and get you a working version of a concept in no time. Andrew also brings a lot of energy to any team he is a part of, and a great socializer.
Andrew is a great technical expert who helped Wirkn build an amazing product!
Interests
Motorcycles
Super Sport MotoGP
Video Games
Kerbal Space Program Factorio Simulation FPS
Comic Books
Spider-Man Iron Man Dredd