Thomas R.
Staff Full-stack Engineer at Vitally.io- Claim this Profile
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Bio
Thomas Bruketta
Thomas is a true master of both the technical and interpersonal craft. He can execute at both micro and macro levels. He is equally adept at solving a complex frontend animations, setting up a backend architecture, pitching new business to a potential client, mentoring a junior developer, educating a team of engineers, or giving useful feedback. His professional range of skills is truly astounding! In my time working with Thomas he was incredibly generous in helping me on complex problems even though he wasn't my direct manager! He was always available to provide quick feedback, pair program, or connect me to the right resource. He is the kind of technical director who empowers others and increases their capacity to be self sufficient. He is a fierce advocate for best engineer practices as well as for equity and inclusion practices. Engineers with the vast experience and range that Thomas has are quite rare and I would work with him again in a heartbeat.
David Brewer
I've worked with Thomas in a few different contexts. First, as peers working as individual contributors at Second Story. Much later, reporting to Thomas in his role as Executive Technology Director at Instrument. And finally, as a Technology Director working on a different team at Instrument. Thomas is one of the most talented developers I have ever worked with, across multiple languages and frameworks, and constantly learning and expanding on his craft. But what makes him truly special is his ability to share that personal sense of curiosity and growth with others, in his roles as mentor and manager. On top of expertly supporting and guiding developers he managed directly, Thomas was almost always running one or more book clubs, workshops, or other learning activities to help those around him grow in knowledge and effectiveness. He was a true "force multiplier" at Instrument, helping those around him to grow in many ways and sponsoring those who needed it with great results. I feel very lucky to have had him as my manager, to have learned from him, and to have been on the team he built. If your organization is looking for a technical leader who knows how to build a great team, how to effectively manage a team with empathy and compassion, and who can also personally solve hard technical problems... you found him!
Thomas Bruketta
Thomas is a true master of both the technical and interpersonal craft. He can execute at both micro and macro levels. He is equally adept at solving a complex frontend animations, setting up a backend architecture, pitching new business to a potential client, mentoring a junior developer, educating a team of engineers, or giving useful feedback. His professional range of skills is truly astounding! In my time working with Thomas he was incredibly generous in helping me on complex problems even though he wasn't my direct manager! He was always available to provide quick feedback, pair program, or connect me to the right resource. He is the kind of technical director who empowers others and increases their capacity to be self sufficient. He is a fierce advocate for best engineer practices as well as for equity and inclusion practices. Engineers with the vast experience and range that Thomas has are quite rare and I would work with him again in a heartbeat.
David Brewer
I've worked with Thomas in a few different contexts. First, as peers working as individual contributors at Second Story. Much later, reporting to Thomas in his role as Executive Technology Director at Instrument. And finally, as a Technology Director working on a different team at Instrument. Thomas is one of the most talented developers I have ever worked with, across multiple languages and frameworks, and constantly learning and expanding on his craft. But what makes him truly special is his ability to share that personal sense of curiosity and growth with others, in his roles as mentor and manager. On top of expertly supporting and guiding developers he managed directly, Thomas was almost always running one or more book clubs, workshops, or other learning activities to help those around him grow in knowledge and effectiveness. He was a true "force multiplier" at Instrument, helping those around him to grow in many ways and sponsoring those who needed it with great results. I feel very lucky to have had him as my manager, to have learned from him, and to have been on the team he built. If your organization is looking for a technical leader who knows how to build a great team, how to effectively manage a team with empathy and compassion, and who can also personally solve hard technical problems... you found him!
Thomas Bruketta
Thomas is a true master of both the technical and interpersonal craft. He can execute at both micro and macro levels. He is equally adept at solving a complex frontend animations, setting up a backend architecture, pitching new business to a potential client, mentoring a junior developer, educating a team of engineers, or giving useful feedback. His professional range of skills is truly astounding! In my time working with Thomas he was incredibly generous in helping me on complex problems even though he wasn't my direct manager! He was always available to provide quick feedback, pair program, or connect me to the right resource. He is the kind of technical director who empowers others and increases their capacity to be self sufficient. He is a fierce advocate for best engineer practices as well as for equity and inclusion practices. Engineers with the vast experience and range that Thomas has are quite rare and I would work with him again in a heartbeat.
David Brewer
I've worked with Thomas in a few different contexts. First, as peers working as individual contributors at Second Story. Much later, reporting to Thomas in his role as Executive Technology Director at Instrument. And finally, as a Technology Director working on a different team at Instrument. Thomas is one of the most talented developers I have ever worked with, across multiple languages and frameworks, and constantly learning and expanding on his craft. But what makes him truly special is his ability to share that personal sense of curiosity and growth with others, in his roles as mentor and manager. On top of expertly supporting and guiding developers he managed directly, Thomas was almost always running one or more book clubs, workshops, or other learning activities to help those around him grow in knowledge and effectiveness. He was a true "force multiplier" at Instrument, helping those around him to grow in many ways and sponsoring those who needed it with great results. I feel very lucky to have had him as my manager, to have learned from him, and to have been on the team he built. If your organization is looking for a technical leader who knows how to build a great team, how to effectively manage a team with empathy and compassion, and who can also personally solve hard technical problems... you found him!
Thomas Bruketta
Thomas is a true master of both the technical and interpersonal craft. He can execute at both micro and macro levels. He is equally adept at solving a complex frontend animations, setting up a backend architecture, pitching new business to a potential client, mentoring a junior developer, educating a team of engineers, or giving useful feedback. His professional range of skills is truly astounding! In my time working with Thomas he was incredibly generous in helping me on complex problems even though he wasn't my direct manager! He was always available to provide quick feedback, pair program, or connect me to the right resource. He is the kind of technical director who empowers others and increases their capacity to be self sufficient. He is a fierce advocate for best engineer practices as well as for equity and inclusion practices. Engineers with the vast experience and range that Thomas has are quite rare and I would work with him again in a heartbeat.
David Brewer
I've worked with Thomas in a few different contexts. First, as peers working as individual contributors at Second Story. Much later, reporting to Thomas in his role as Executive Technology Director at Instrument. And finally, as a Technology Director working on a different team at Instrument. Thomas is one of the most talented developers I have ever worked with, across multiple languages and frameworks, and constantly learning and expanding on his craft. But what makes him truly special is his ability to share that personal sense of curiosity and growth with others, in his roles as mentor and manager. On top of expertly supporting and guiding developers he managed directly, Thomas was almost always running one or more book clubs, workshops, or other learning activities to help those around him grow in knowledge and effectiveness. He was a true "force multiplier" at Instrument, helping those around him to grow in many ways and sponsoring those who needed it with great results. I feel very lucky to have had him as my manager, to have learned from him, and to have been on the team he built. If your organization is looking for a technical leader who knows how to build a great team, how to effectively manage a team with empathy and compassion, and who can also personally solve hard technical problems... you found him!
Experience
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Vitally.io
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United States
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Staff Full-stack Engineer
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May 2023 - Present
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Bitski
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United States
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Software Engineer
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Feb 2022 - May 2023
I architected and implemented a transition from 2 monolithic REST backend services (split only due to data center security concerns) into a federated Apollo GraphQL super-graph of 5 subgraphs organized around shared types and product domain. Depending on the needs of each subgraph, I built each in either Node.js+typescript or Rust. This has created a single unified location for all API queries, metrics and documentation (Apollo Studio). Client-side engineers can quickly build features without… Show more I architected and implemented a transition from 2 monolithic REST backend services (split only due to data center security concerns) into a federated Apollo GraphQL super-graph of 5 subgraphs organized around shared types and product domain. Depending on the needs of each subgraph, I built each in either Node.js+typescript or Rust. This has created a single unified location for all API queries, metrics and documentation (Apollo Studio). Client-side engineers can quickly build features without searching for hand-written backend-specific documentation (usually out of date). Backend engineers are able to choose the right stack for their domain, avoid breaking changes using the Apollo suite of automated tooling and get access to realtime performance metrics and client usage. I also improved the code-quality and standards across all frontend repositories and many backend ones by setting up automated tests, lint rules and performance tests. These have drastically increased confidence in our deploys and enabled solid DevOps practices of publishing to production many times a day. Finally, I have build and converted many frontend components (in Svelte) to a Design System library which allows us to share components across many apps. This also allows designers to quickly iterate on designs and for participating apps to get these improvements without additional effort. Show less I architected and implemented a transition from 2 monolithic REST backend services (split only due to data center security concerns) into a federated Apollo GraphQL super-graph of 5 subgraphs organized around shared types and product domain. Depending on the needs of each subgraph, I built each in either Node.js+typescript or Rust. This has created a single unified location for all API queries, metrics and documentation (Apollo Studio). Client-side engineers can quickly build features without… Show more I architected and implemented a transition from 2 monolithic REST backend services (split only due to data center security concerns) into a federated Apollo GraphQL super-graph of 5 subgraphs organized around shared types and product domain. Depending on the needs of each subgraph, I built each in either Node.js+typescript or Rust. This has created a single unified location for all API queries, metrics and documentation (Apollo Studio). Client-side engineers can quickly build features without searching for hand-written backend-specific documentation (usually out of date). Backend engineers are able to choose the right stack for their domain, avoid breaking changes using the Apollo suite of automated tooling and get access to realtime performance metrics and client usage. I also improved the code-quality and standards across all frontend repositories and many backend ones by setting up automated tests, lint rules and performance tests. These have drastically increased confidence in our deploys and enabled solid DevOps practices of publishing to production many times a day. Finally, I have build and converted many frontend components (in Svelte) to a Design System library which allows us to share components across many apps. This also allows designers to quickly iterate on designs and for participating apps to get these improvements without additional effort. Show less
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Viasat
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United States
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Telecommunications
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700 & Above Employee
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Engineering Head - Customer Success
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Jun 2021 - Jan 2022
I lead the teams which provided web and native apps to allow Viasat customers to manage their internet service. I, along with several team leads who reported to me, lead a transition from a single monolithic React Native app to a new composable app architecture based on micro-frontends. This allowed each individual product feature team to design, release and deploy new features for their vertical without being blocked or requiring orchestration with other teams; drastically increasing… Show more I lead the teams which provided web and native apps to allow Viasat customers to manage their internet service. I, along with several team leads who reported to me, lead a transition from a single monolithic React Native app to a new composable app architecture based on micro-frontends. This allowed each individual product feature team to design, release and deploy new features for their vertical without being blocked or requiring orchestration with other teams; drastically increasing throughput. I also spearheaded the migration from using many monolithic GraphQL services with incompatible semantics and design to a single unified federated super-graph on the Apollo GraphOS platform. This allowed client-side engineers to have a single API and source of documentation and to be able to develop features without learning the ins-and-outs of every unique backend. It also enabled backend engineers to confidently evolve their backends without the fear of breaking existing services by leveraging Apollo's suite of automated tooling. Finally, I also lead the Design Systems team responsible for shared company-wide designs, design tokens, CSS themes and React components. These allowed designers and engineers across the company to quickly create new features which matched the company design language.
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Lead Frontend Architect and Engineer
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Nov 2020 - Jul 2021
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Instrument
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United States
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Marketing Services
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300 - 400 Employee
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Executive Technology Director
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Jul 2018 - Sep 2020
Founded and ran the internal agency-wide engineering team. This team was a home for specialists who would not be fully resourced on an individual client team. We allowed client teams to scale up their expertise in complex areas by partnering with them on projects and loaning our expertise to them. This team included: experienced detail-orients project managers, iOS engineers, CMS specialists, 3D graphics engineers, UX strategists and rapid prototypers. We also assisted client teams by… Show more Founded and ran the internal agency-wide engineering team. This team was a home for specialists who would not be fully resourced on an individual client team. We allowed client teams to scale up their expertise in complex areas by partnering with them on projects and loaning our expertise to them. This team included: experienced detail-orients project managers, iOS engineers, CMS specialists, 3D graphics engineers, UX strategists and rapid prototypers. We also assisted client teams by helping pitch projects and working with vendors to provide engineering resources for skillsets the team itself did not have. Finally, we also housed the QA department which provided in-house quality resources to teams to improve project outcomes.
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Technical Director
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Sep 2011 - Jul 2018
Built, hired, trained, managed and lead the engineering team that supported our Google client for 7 years. Grew the team from 4 engineers initially to 16 at its max. I worked with our production lead to estimate projects staffing, costs and timelines. I worked with out design lead when pitching projects to Google and working with their engineering leads to discover the best approaches for projects. As a team lead, I ran the scrum and sprint planning for all projects and ensured the… Show more Built, hired, trained, managed and lead the engineering team that supported our Google client for 7 years. Grew the team from 4 engineers initially to 16 at its max. I worked with our production lead to estimate projects staffing, costs and timelines. I worked with out design lead when pitching projects to Google and working with their engineering leads to discover the best approaches for projects. As a team lead, I ran the scrum and sprint planning for all projects and ensured the individual contributors would be able to execute on features without worrying about task sequencing or lack of specifications. As a team, we built many public projects for Google including the Google Drive marketing site, Google Fiber marketing site and the Google I/O conference (for all 7 years) site for marketing, purchasing tickets and booking sessions at the event. We also built interactive kiosks for live Google events. Because agency projects have such quick turn arounds (3-4 months), every one is different. Worked with wildly different technology stacks on each project depending on the client's needs.
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MetaLab
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Canada
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Software Development
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100 - 200 Employee
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Developer
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Jun 2011 - Sep 2011
I built a prototype of a new version of the Ballpark app (https://getballpark.com/) using modern (2011) technologies. Unfortunately there were visa issues which could not be resolved (employer was a Canadian company) and I had to leave. I built a prototype of a new version of the Ballpark app (https://getballpark.com/) using modern (2011) technologies. Unfortunately there were visa issues which could not be resolved (employer was a Canadian company) and I had to leave.
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Second Story
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United States
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Design Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Developer
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Mar 2010 - Apr 2011
I built many interactive kiosks using web technologies for museums. These were large touch-screens (in 2010!) which had to run for 24hrs while in use. I also built the Computer History Museum's Revolution site (this was cutting edge design in 2010): https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14 I built many interactive kiosks using web technologies for museums. These were large touch-screens (in 2010!) which had to run for 24hrs while in use. I also built the Computer History Museum's Revolution site (this was cutting edge design in 2010): https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14
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Saltmine
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Advertising Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Developer
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Jun 2009 - Mar 2010
Worked in an agency environment to build websites for clients in the entertainment, media, technology and healthcare spaces. Built high-quality web sites using Sitecore backends and web frontends which were required to conform to HIPAA laws. Worked in an agency environment to build websites for clients in the entertainment, media, technology and healthcare spaces. Built high-quality web sites using Sitecore backends and web frontends which were required to conform to HIPAA laws.
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Spinsix
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Phoenix, Arizona, United States
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Developer
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Jul 2006 - Jun 2009
Worked in an agency environment to build marketing websites for clients. Worked on new projects every 3-4 months, usually with a .NET backend and XHTML frontends. Delivered high-quality websites with great attention to detail in short timelines. Worked in an agency environment to build marketing websites for clients. Worked on new projects every 3-4 months, usually with a .NET backend and XHTML frontends. Delivered high-quality websites with great attention to detail in short timelines.
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LeadPile
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United States
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Advertising Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Developer
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Jan 2006 - Jul 2006
Built tools and sites in Perl to acquire leads from search ads. Built tools and sites in Perl to acquire leads from search ads.
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Grand Canyon University
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United States
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Higher Education
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700 & Above Employee
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Developer
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Sep 2004 - Jan 2006
Built the website and form which allowed prospective students to apply to the school. The tool was built in PHP. Built the website and form which allowed prospective students to apply to the school. The tool was built in PHP.
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Informative Graphics Corp (IGC)
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United States
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Quality Assurance Engineer
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Jun 1999 - Aug 2002
I was a member of the QA team testing Java-based CAD tools. I also implemented the company's test plan software and bug tracker in PHP. I was a member of the QA team testing Java-based CAD tools. I also implemented the company's test plan software and bug tracker in PHP.
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