Home

Hello, and thanks for visiting my personal website! I'm a Java web developer and manager who is fluent in many web development environments like HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery and more. I am passionate about many things from good coding practices to space exploration. Follow the links on this page to learn more about my career, opinion writing, and academic history.

Career Objective

After graduating from Iowa State University with a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering and a minor in Economics I was hired in 2012 by Lockheed Martin to do software development work in Omaha, NE. Our work involved developing HTML/Javascript web systems with a Java back-end for the US Air Force and a number of Combantant Commands (COCOMs) around the world. This web development work was a great learning experience for me and got me interested in many different aspects of web development from javascript and jQuery to proper use of caching and introduced me to the Springframework ecosystem. I then moved to Phoenix and worked with Choice Hotels helping revamp web-based hotel software for their SkyTouch Technology group. I worked with a couple other developers to move them from Rackspace servers to AWS web hosting, streamlined their development process, and oversaw development of automated Selenium UI testing of their extensive system. Today I work for KUBRA Data Transfer Ltd. on their software products for utility clients that are designed to help those utilities reach out to their customers for billing and other normal notifications as well as emergency storm events. I've been lucky to get a chance to work on development of a natural-language chat product for them using cutting-edge chat-bot technology and most recently I have been managing a development team that maintains a number of KUBRA's applications developed in Tempe, AZ.

My eventual goal is to find software or computer work I can do in the space exploration or satellite development field, as space exploration is really what excites and drives me.  In the meantime, I will continue to work to help great groups like SEDS-USA and Yuri's Night in my free time.

What I Enjoy

  • Working closely with customers, be they internal or external. I get a rush from knowing that we built a great new system or feature that will be useful to the end-users.
  • Working with the best technology and libraries that exist. I have worked with many older technologies in previously-written software, but life is great and development can be fast when you can use Hibernate with caching, Spring Data, messaging middleware like Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ, modern javascript frameworks, and the latest CSS, HTML, and SQL techniques.
  • Working with teams of people who make me a better programmer by challenging me with problems and helping me with solutions and industry experience I don't posess.
  • Doing interesting things in my free time. Most of my coworkers don't know that I work on live-streaming events and managing IT for conferences in my free time (very different from my normal job).
  • Playing with LEGOs. I mean who doesn't like LEGOs?

Contact Information

Rick Hanton
E-mail: hantonr at gmail.com
Powered by Drupal