About Me

Hi! I'm Brian. I'm a sofware developer and architect based in North Georgia near Chattanooga. My passion is finding elegant solutions that use software to solve real, felt needs and I've had privilege of helping organizations and clients do just that for close to twenty years. For me, software isn't just code in an editor - its an art of sorts with each solution unique in it's own special way. That's what makes each project so unique and what makes this craft so exciting!

Contact Details

Brian Lehmann
P.O. Box 84
Graysville, GA 30726
brian.lehmann@outlook.com

Credentials

Prefer a traditional Resume?

Download Resume

Work

The Vincit Group

Software Development Manager and Lead Architect • September 2021 - Present Software Architect • August 2019 - September, 2021
Software Development Manager and Lead Architect • April 2018 - August, 2019
Senior Software Developer • August 2015 - April, 2018

My time with The Vincit Group has been an awesome opportunity to take the skills and techniques I learned over the years and apply them to a growing team. When I came onboard as a Full Stack developer, one of my primary responsibilities was to begin building an internal software stack that was reusable by a small team to build on economies of scale for several projects. That same stack needed the flexibility to be used across the varied Vincit Member Companies. A big piece of that stack and my more recent work settled on a backend of REST API’s implemented on Web API using .NET Core behind a multi-purpose Auth system which allows authentication and authorization using JWT tokens. For the front end, we landed on Aurelia and Typescript (with some React starting to be sprinkled in).

A big part of this experience has been the opportunity to work collaboratively on a distributed software stack. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking, talking, debating, and building around core concepts like separation of concerns and single responsibilty tied together with ideas like Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection. Having a team that not only cares about but also has a focus on the craftsmanship of producing quality software has been a real pleasure. That’s what makes this most recent opportunity of taking on the role of leading this growing team of professionals so rewarding. Now, I don’t only get to build great software, but I also get to officially continue mentoring and coaching my team mates toward those same goals.

CBMC, Inc.

Lead Software Architect• March 2006 – May 2015

My time with CBMC was some of the most formative of my career. Working as the only developer on a small team, I was able to take on the at times daunting task of building out many of the core online tools for a nation wide non-profit. This included building out web presence, online event registration and e-commerce platforms used by a broad audience. Many of these projects proved to be from the database (mostly SQL Server) all the way up through business logic layers to web-based front-ends using Service Oriented Architecture. This is also where I fell in love with C# as a language - inheriting a legacy code base in an unfamiliar language is a great, immersive learning environment!

A big part of my work was also tied to enterprise systems. During my tenure there, CBMC adopted MS CRM as it's ERP platform. It then fell to me to find ways to integrate that very flexible platform with a variety of other systems. In the end, CRM became the core of our data platform with all of our web properties and tools integrating with it. I was also tasked with building a REST API to expose a strong subset of that CRM tool to integrate with a large Learning Management System (LMS) being built by an outside third party team.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

Manager, Provider Data Management • December 2005 – March 2006
Systems Project Consultant (Programmer/Analyst) • July 1998 – December 2005

BCBST is where I got my start on my unlikely journey into a career as a developer. Hired in a temporary capacity for what was to be a short term role helping proof manuals for doctors, I was oddly also introduced to the world of reporting and data analysis. What started out as helping with MS Access reports soon led to helping with Access forms and then into VB 6 applications. Thanks to a wonderful manager willing to take a risk on an inquisitive kid, I was able to expand over several years to eventually lead the team responsible for Provider Data.

Key Projects during my tenure at BCBST included the development of an ASP.NET (good 'ole Web Forms) application to provide queryable access to Provider data including dynamic mapping and distance based calculations. This gave access across the organization to data that was previously restricted to only a few individuals based on expensive per-seat licenses. I also developed a desktop query engine using VB and SQL server that gave on-demand access to data previously limited to static reports. This revolutionized the way the department conducted business and became part of the fabric of day-to-day business processes.

Special Projects

Terminal Velocity Labs, LLC

Founder and Solutions Architect • November 2011 - Present

Terminal Velocity Labs is at its core a creative outlet for me. It's a vehicle to help friends with projects, explore new ideas, and generally experiment with technology that's currently outside the scope of the "official" things that I have on my plate.

As an example, Digital Night Stand came out of Labs from a desire to play with ideas for an alarm clock using UWP. That turned into an Android experiment using Java, then Xamarin. There's even an iOS version in Swift floating around but we're not talking about that right now...

Skills

Rather than share the laundry list of all the languages, frameworks, technologies, and methodologies that I've used in my career, here's a quick a list of the more recent that I'm finding exciting, helpful, useful, or effective. (And I guess a few that help me learn patience in the face of frustration.) I'm convinced nobody cares about the checklist version of this list - if I'm wrong, you can find something closer in my traditional resume.

Lanugauges

My native language is C# and I suppose I'm an OO type of guy at heart. On the client, most of my focus is Typescript but I'm also partial to straight modern javascript. I think type checking in Javascript is the future, however. Typscript, Flow or something else - I just find Typescript familiar. Beyond the bread and butter, I'm also facinated by Swift. From my viewpoint, it's quirky, but I keep being drawn to to the modern, clean terseness of it. I think Kotlin looks the same way, but I haven't as much chance to experiment there. (And, yes, for productivity on mobile I'm still often drawn back to Xamarin.)

Frameworks

Frameworks are one of those topics where it seems like you always have your pet preferences and can't help the haunting feeling about all the ones you haven't heard of yet. For the web, I've had a lot of succes with Aurelia for full blown SPA apps. However, I have to admit that React is probably the "flavor of the month" for me at the moment. Throw in Mobx and I'm loving the lightweight feel for building up the composition of web apps.

On the data side of things, I'm still an ORM guy at heart. Especially when I'm in true "Full Stack" mode and/or dealing with "Forms-over-data" style projects. Lately, however, Dapper has been slowly winning me over. I've gone from an initial detractor when my team first wanted to introduce it to finding it invaluable in some specific situations where speed or distributed async is a must. Oh, and Mongoose has to get a special mention - it (and Mongo) are newer to me but I'm finding them a joy to work with on a specific project at the moment.

Technology

I live in a primarily Microsoft world for a large of number of my current projects. That means .NET is a primary platform for me. For the last couple years, however, that's primarily been focused on .NET Core. ASP.NET Web API exposing relational data modeled in SQL Server is the backbone of most of the production systems I'm responsible for. The scrappy newcomer in my world, however is using Express and Mongoose to expose document data from Mongo. What started as an experiment on a new project has turned into an obsessive, torrid affair. I guess I still feel like I'm cheating on an old friend, but I'm absolutely fascinated by that stack at the moment.

Education

Tennessee Temple University

Bachelor of Science • May, 1998

Major: History
Minor: Political Science
Graduated Valedictorian

Some Feedback on Digital Night Stand

  • "Does everything you need. Adjustable screen brightness, multiple alarms and snooze options, quick local weather forecast under the time, and more. Bottom line is I use it every night."

    John

  • "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted".

    David

  • "I use digital night stand every night. I turn it on last thing before I go to bed at night. It gives me all of the information I most want during the night and the next morning..."

    Jim

  • "Love this clock ! It's functional and you can add your own pictures to the background. Love it."

    Elizabeth

Have a project that you want help getting started? Think I might be of help with something specific or just feel like saying "Hey"? - Please feel free to get in touch!

Address

Brian Lehmann
Terminal Velocity Labs
P.O. Box 84
Graysville, GA 30726
brian.lehmann@outlook.com