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Philip Brocoum

Philip Brocoum

Software Engineering Manager

coding & shipping at Syncta in Portland, OR

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About Me


Hello! 👋 I'm Philip, and I began developing with Ruby on Rails at a startup in NYC in 2007. I have 10 years of Software Engineering experience, and 4 years as a Manager and Lead Engineer. I've climbed from Developer to Senior Developer, to Lead Developer, to now Senior Engineering Manager leading a world-wide remote team of twelve.

I head up development at Watts Syncta as our Senior Engineering Manager in Portland, OR. I build our web & mobile apps for backflow testers and water purveyors with Ruby on Rails, RESTful APIs, React.js, and deploy via AWS to the web, App Store, and Google Play. Syncta was acquired by Watts Water Technologies in 2018.

My Skillset

Atlassian
Management

Engineering leadership, hiring & management of remote Agile teams across the world

Full-Stack
Full-Stack Development

Shipping apps since 2007. Backend, front-end, APIs, web, mobile, App Stores.

Ruby
Ruby on Rails

App development with Ruby on Rails majestic monolith

React
React.js & Next.js

Responsive single-and-multi-page-apps in TypeScript deployed to Vercel

GraphQL
GraphQL & REST APIs

Creating and consuming robust and performant APIs

Html
HTML/CSS/JS

Frontend design with HTML 5, CSS 3, and JS/TypeScript/jQuery

Mysql
MySQL/PostgreSQL

DB administration of MySQL & PostgreSQL

Aws
AWS/Azure

Scaling cloud infrastructure in AWS and Azure with Chef, including EC2, RDS, and S3

DevSecOps
DevSecOps

Production apps w/ SOC 2 compliance & CI/CD on Bitbucket, AWS, Vercel, Apache, Nginx, and Puma

Docker
Docker

Containerize all the things!

Git
git

git-flow is my preferred branching model

Linux
Linux

Ubuntu & CentOS server administration / bash scripting

My Career


I started in tech as an analyst at Brightidea back in 2007 when I was 25. At that time, I was transitioning away from mathematics and education. I taught myself Ruby on Rails and was hired a year later at readMedia as their first full-time developer. We grew the company and turned it into what Merit is today.

I now lead all development at Syncta as our Senior Software Engineering Manager in Portland, OR. I hire and roadmap the projects for our team, take the technical lead on new and existing apps, and plan for my team's career advancement. My passion has always been to hire great teams to build great products with great technologies.

Syncta site

Syncta

Syncta provides mobile software for backflow testers and water purveyors. I hired the team, plan their career advancement, and roadmap our projects. I'm hands-on with our main Ruby on Rails app, the API that powers our iOS and Android apps, and our SOC 2 security compliant AWS infrastructure.

Visit Syncta
Merit site

Merit

Merit showcases student achievements at hundreds of colleges and universities. Meritpages.com is the largest Rails app I've ever worked on, comprising eight Rails apps deployed in a services architecture on an AWS Ubuntu Linux cluster.

Visit Merit
Gogreenride site

Go Green Ride

Go Green Ride is an eco-friendly ridesharing alternative to Uber. GoGreenRide.com and its accompanying iOS and Android apps use a Rails backend that heavily utilizes geolocation services and is deployed on Rackspace using Phusion Passenger.

Visit Go Green Ride
Readaboutme site

readabout.me

readabout.me was the predecessor to Merit, focusing primarily on students. The Rails app was deployed on Heroku initially, but with its success we quickly outgrew Heroku and switched to AWS.

Visit readabout.me
Readmedia site

readMedia

readMedia sends press releases to newspapers via mail merge for its clients all over the country. I upgraded the readMedia.com Rails 2 app to Rails 3, helped move it onto AWS, and was one of three developers working full-time on the app for many years.

Visit readMedia
Brightidea site

Brightidea

Brightidea provides innovation management software-as-a-service. As one of their early employees, I helped with sales, onboarding, consulting, traveling, and running their software.

Visit Brightidea

Education

I majored in mathematics in college and grad school, and my first career was as a teacher in New York City. However, I always loved computers and quickly transitioned to my new career as a developer.

Fun Stuff

I often program for fun, and you can browse my side projects on GitHub. I once wrote a Ruby script to nab myself tickets to The Daily Show, which was first-come-first-serve on its website at the time, and you never knew when tickets would become available.

Education

I majored in mathematics in college and grad school, and my first career was as a teacher in New York City. However, I always loved computers and quickly transitioned to my new career as a developer.

New York University
— M.A. in Math Education (class of 2006)

I attended NYU through Math for America where I took my theoretical knowledge of mathematics and added practical knowledge of teaching.



NYC Department of Education
— Math Teacher (2006 – 2007)

After getting my Master's degree, I taught 6–8th grade math at the Shuang Wen School (P.S. 184) in Chinatown.

Fun Stuff


I often program for fun, and you can browse my side projects on GitHub. I once wrote a Ruby script to nab myself tickets to The Daily Show, which was first-come-first-serve on its website at the time, and you never knew when tickets would become available.

Poker Tracker

Made with React.js, Material UI, and deployed on Firebase, I built an app to track $30,000 of my own live poker winnings.

Go all in with Aces

View on GitHub

Munch

The game of Munch! Can you beat the computer? I doubt it...

Test your wit

Sci-Fi Voter

Sci-Fi Voter definitively answers the question, "What is the best Star Trek episode?"

View on GitHub

Docker Dashboard

Simple terminal dashboard for Docker using Tmux

View on GitHub

Taggy for Evernote

Taggy for Evernote was my app in the Mac App Store. Taggy makes your Evernote tags function as you want them to: hierarchically.

View on GitHub

Arkanoid

Arkanoid is my take on the classic Nintendo Breakout game. Written in C for MS DOS long ago.

View on GitHub

Personal Life

I maintain a healthy work/life balance. If you'd like to learn more about me beyond my professional life, check out the links below!

Youtube
My YouTube Channel

With 1 million views, my Yoshimoto Cube video is my 15 minutes of fame.

Chess
US Chess Federation

Rated 1618 USCF and 2000-ish on Lichess, I'm always looking to improve.

Poker
Poker in Las Vegas

I have over $30,000 in live poker earnings.

Toast
Toast the Dog!

Such a good dog, but he sometimes sits onkjf ssadkl

Contact Me

HHi there! I'm currently the Software Engineering Manager in charge of development at Syncta. We provide mobile software for backflow testers and water purveyors, and I lead the development of our Ruby on Rails app. If you've made it this far, drop me a line. Send an email and I'll speak with you soon 👍.

Send Me a Message

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