Sunrise over mountain peaks above a sea of clouds
Derek Williams

Derek Williams

Software Architect · Full Stack Developer

A principal engineer, full-stack developer, software architect, and engineering team leader.
A starter, creator, learner, and mentor with deep experience building mission-critical software systems.
A systems thinker versed in AI-native tools.

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools

Client Side

Current Specializations

Experience

Principal Software Engineer

Architecting, designing, and coding store selling and checkout solutions. Modernizing POS devices and interfaces. Enhancing Pro Loyalty and Payment features. Deploying computer vision models and ML-based decision models. Building Kubernetes services deployed at cloud (GCP/GKE) and edge (in store).

February 2023 - Present

Principal Engineering Team Leader

Led payments engineering teams with staff direct reports and contractors. Developed new strategies and designs for our digital and card-present payments. Developed Spring microservices and native app frameworks for our customer-facing mobile and web apps and delivery platforms. Extended our Kubernetes (AWS EKS) platform.

April 2020 - February 2023

Enterprise Architect

Served as enterprise architect and lead developer for new product initiatives, cross-product integration, and technology standards.

October 2014 - April 2020

Senior Engineering Architect

Created and integrated high-volume payment systems for ACH, image, and risk analysis.

April 2007 - October 2014

Senior Software Engineer

Enhanced new payment applications and performance-tuned them to maximize throughput.

August 2006 - April 2007

Software Engineer

Developed telecommunication provisioning and performance analysis software.

January 2006 - August 2006

Senior Advisory Software Engineer

Created high-volume payment, remittance, and exception processing systems with VisualAge, Visual Studio, and DB2.

July 1996 - January 2006

Founder and Lead Developer

Founded this part-time research and contact venture which built leading-edge payment processing applications using C# and .NET.

July 2003 - March 2006

Senior Software Engineer

Built healthcare applications using VisualWorks Smalltalk, C/C++, and Sybase.

August 1993 - July 1996

Software and Systems Engineer

Developed and supported applications in C/C++ and DB2 for 401(k) processing.

April 1993 - August 1993

Staff Programmer

Created and maintained system and application products for bank check/image processing.

January 1988 - April 1993

Education

Georgia Tech

B.S. with High Honors · Computer Science

Gamma Beta Phi · Briaerean Society · Cooperative Program

1987

Columbus State University

M.S. with Highest Honors · Applied Computer Science

Phi Kappa Phi

2009