Victor Davis
Backend Developer | Machine Learning Engineer | Data Scientist
| 🔗 gitvictor.dev | 🔗 GitHub |
📋 Summary
AWS-certified backend developer with 15+ years experience. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, both technical and non-technical. Intellectually curious lifelong learner. Test-driven developer (TDD) with an obsession for literate programming: I write beautiful, readable, modular, maintainable, scalable, self-documenting code, and the CI/CD pipelines to deploy it. Specialized in the Python ML stack (NumPy, Pandas, NetworkX, SciPy, Scikit-Learn, Matplotlib, Plotly) and API stack (SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Flask, FastAPI, Swagger, Sphinx). Preferred environment: AWS + Linux + Docker/Kubernetes + SQL/Python/R + Git/GitHub + Slack.
🏛️ Experience
Machine Learning Engineer @ Resultant | Indianapolis, IN (REMOTE)
Jun 2024 - Present
Thoughtfully collaborating with a team of humble, hungry, and smart fellow consultants to build data-driven solutions to hard problems.
- Helped to build and scale a state government record linkage and data exchange system (Airflow, Kubernetes, GCP)
- Augmented the data science staff of a large rental car company, wrangling messy real-world data to produce actionable insights for optimizing fleet operations (Databricks)
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning @ Evident ID | Atlanta, GA (REMOTE)
Dec 2022 - May 2024
Principal developer of a document extraction service in the insurance industry. Strong grounding in math concepts (graph theory, Bayesian inference, information theory, linear algebra) and machine learning approaches used to build and scale an in-house component for machine-assisted data entry.
- Built, tested, scaled, and maintained the OCR tooling (OpenCV, Tesseract) used internally to convert raw incoming PDF (and scanned image) documents into structured data (Python, Kubernetes)
Software Engineer @ Toptal (REMOTE)
Dec 2017 - Dec 2022
Contracted with a wide variety of clients contributing to products related to backend development, data wrangling, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, data visualization, and numerical optimization.
- Tested and optimized code for a hotel pricing software (R) | Brussels, BE
- Created BI dashboards for pediatric doctors securely sharing anonymized diagnosis and treatment information across regional centers in South America (R) | Santiago, CL
- Principal developer of the data analytics library for a FinTech startup building, validating, and monitoring financial models (Python) | Brussels, BE
- Corporate trainer teaching the R programming language (R) | Seattle, US
- Presented talks at trade conferences and published in trade journals | New York, US
- Backend developer & data scientist contributing to a B2B Marketing SaaS product (Python) | London, UK
- Data science consultant for an early-stage sports marketing startup (R, Python) | Georgensgmuend, DE
Python Developer @ Unrival | London, UK (REMOTE)
Feb 2020 - Nov 2022
(VIA TOPTAL)
Backend developer & data scientist contributing to a B2B marketing SaaS product.
- Designed and implemented NLP models on unstructured data crawled from the web
- Principal backend developer (APIs, databases, AWS services) for flagship product and experimental products
Python Developer @ Yields.io | Brussels, BE (REMOTE)
Jun 2018 - Jan 2020
(VIA TOPTAL)
Principal developer of the data analytics library for a FinTech startup building, validating, and monitoring financial models.
- Wrote, optimized, tested, and maintained a financial timeseries model validation library (Python)
- Designed, built, trained, validated and monitored the ongoing performance of financial models
- Used machine learning, deep learning, and statistical techniques for building and validating financial models
- External hire embedded into the engineering team at an award-winning FinTech startup
- Presented company product and vision at third annual WBS conference in New York
IT Consultant @ Boaz Media Network Solutions | Blairsville, GA
Dec 2014 - Aug 2018
Supported the software needs of local area small business owners (manufacturers, banks, dental offices) via a small-town IT service provider.
- Supported operators in inventory control, BOM and router management, material ordering, and logistical optimization
- Created BI dashboards, KPI scorecards, and inter-departmental reports (Crystal, SSRS)
- Installed, developed, and maintained software and analytical tools for local small businesses
Software Developer @ Waffle House | Norcross, GA
Sep 2010 - Apr 2014
Developed and maintained internal systems for the corporate office. Worked in a variety of environments, and quick to master new areas, from 1970s-era COBOL-based AS/400 platforms to modern stacks. Mainly focused on getting multi-generation platforms talking to each other using principles of strong data design.
- Created interactive Google maps using Javascript, KML, and geospatial algorithms
- Implemented mathematical algorithms in COBOL to optimize system performance
- Generated BI reports based on analytical insights (SQL, R)
- Wrote adapters and data pipelines for inter-platform communication
- Built interactive Excel and SSRS reports for business stakeholders
Branch Manager @ Vector Marketing | Marietta, GA
Dec 2005 - Jan 2009
Started as an entry-level sales representative, promoted to sales manager at home office, then ran a seasonal branch office. Negotiated office space, hired & managed office staff, and interviewed, trained & managed a sales team. Proven track record of working independently in a small business environment to create new dollars for the company.
- Personally sold $60,000 in Cutco cutlery in-home at kitchen tables
- Attended professional sales conferences, performed service calls and worked trade shows
- Conducted individual & group interviews, ran training classes, managed a team of sales representatives
- Created $98,000 in new business managing a seasonal branch office in Columbus, GA
🎓 Education
BS, Mathematics @ Southern Polytechnic State University | Marietta, GA
Jan 2005 - Jan 2007
📚 Publications
📝 Certifications
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (2021-28)
- AWS Certified Developer Associate (2022-25)
- AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty (2021-24)
🥾 Extracurricular
Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker
Feb 2017 - Aug 2017
Thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail (AT) along the US East Coast:
GA → NC → TN → VA → WV → MD → PA → NJ → NY → CT → MA → VT → NH → ME