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Hello, my name is Pedro Costa. I am a Senior Software Engineer and a Zend Certified PHP Engineer (Yes, I'm in the yellow pages!) with 14 years of experience in the tech field, during which I have been through quite a few outages, production deploys, tight schedules, bug investigations, and more.

I currently work in the virtual experiences industry as a Senior Software Engineer for Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. Through my 6 years at the company, I acquired specialized knowledge in working with Payment Service Integrations that support a complex and dynamic virtual economy in Second Life around its own virtual currency, from which I am regularly exposed to the business needs behind fraud detection, digital payments compliance and regulations (PCI-DSS, for example), and handling of sensitive data (PII) abiding to CCPA and GDPR rules. As a Senior engineer I also participate in mentoring of junior engineers, designining and conducting larger system changes, and participating in important cloud infrastructure work.

Previously, I worked as a LAMP Stack Web Developer for Perfect World Entertainment, located in Redwood City, CA, where I maintained RESTful APIs and websites related to the billing platform behind Arc Games (arcgames.com) as well as the company's custom internal ERP software. I also participated in the integration/release of new games, such as Gigantic (PC), Livelock (PC/XBOX/PS4), and console versions for Neverwinter and StarTrek Online.

About Me

Senior Software Engineer and Zend Certified PHP Engineer

I love this field, I love to code, and I have no problem "digging" through legacy code to find answers for current problems. As much as I enjoy regular and personal focused time on code, I am a big team player who is also comfortable with mentoring other engineers and writing quality documentation; taking up on projects that require a great deal of collaboration with other professionals, especially those who don't code; and working closely with QA and Product teams.

I have been working remotely since 2016. Over the years interacting with engineering teams in many different time zones, I learned the pros and cons of remote work. I still enjoy it to this day.

I try to contribute to maintaining a positive and healthy work environment around me, as ways to fight discrimination and harassment. I believe it boosts productivity and help reveal a team's biggest potential when that's out of the way.

Even though it has been quite a journey in Software Engineering already, there are always tons of things that I need to improve on and learn. I am not the most brilliant Software Engineer out there but I am humble to provide the best I can offer from my experience and learn new content from other professionals.

  • My headquarters: California, USA.
  • Comfortable working in either PST or EST timezones

14 Years of Experience

Current - Dec 2015 Linden Lab
Field: Entertainment/Virtual Experiences
Senior Software Engineer

  • Responsible for one of the most sensitive code bases of Second Life, billing and digital payments integration, which powers a unique and strong virtual economy
  • Experience with Payment Gateway Integration w/ Paypal, Ingenico, Worldpay, Adyen, Skrill, and virtual currency/wallet
  • Experience integrating with fraud-detection providers for digital payments
  • Extremely careful with customer's privacy and security involved in digital payment integration systems
  • Experience working with Finance, Legal, Data Warehouse, and Compliance teams to comply with US and International regulations for digital payments as well as Liability Reporting
  • Experience with card/token migration between different payment service providers
  • Experience with card/token migration between different payment service providers
  • Backend Software Engineering using LAMP or Django with ability to take on basic/intermediary Front End tasks/needs
  • Linux Debian OS upgrades, basic package/image building, and conversion into container based apps
  • Cloud and container based software using Docker in AWS (ECS, EC2, Cloud Formation, Secrets Manager, and more)
  • Advanced technical support to our stakeholders for our payment services integration

Launched in 2003, Second Life is a pioneering virtual world featuring 3D-based user-generated content.

Python. Django. Docker. AWS. PHP. Linux. REST. JSON. MSSQL. MySQL. Git. Team City. Debian. Cron jobs. JavaScript. jQuery. HTML. CSS.

Dec 2016 - Nov 2015 Perfect World Entertainment
Field: Tech/Gaming
Web Developer

Joined the Web Development team to work mainly as a backend PHP developer but was also able to take on front end tasks when necessary.

Using the LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP), I contributed to the maintainance of RESTful APIs and websites related to the billing platform behind Arc Games (arcgames.com) as well as the company's custom internal ERP software.

I participated in the integration/release of new games, such as Gigantic (PC), Livelock (PC/XBOX/PS4), and console versions for Neverwinter and StarTrek Online.

LAMP. MSSQL. MySQL (MariaDB). Linux. REST. JSON. SSH. PHP. Git. Cron jobs. REST APIs. JavaScript. jQuery. KnockoutJS. UnderscoreJS. HTML. CSS.

Dec 2013 - Dec 2010 Conekta
Field: Tech/Telecom
LAMP Stack Web Developer

I have started at the company as the first PHP developer for a new team responsible for maintaining the application Credbell and for developing new solutions.

Conekta (www.redeconekta.com.br) is a Brazilian tech company in the Telecommunications business, playing an important role providing solutions to integrate cellphone credit distributors. Partnered with all major Brazilian carriers (Vivo, TIM, Claro, Oi, and others), Conekta offers Credbell as a solution to integrate them with thousands of points of sale nation-wide.

In the course of time, the team had grown up and I became the team leader, applying techniques from Scrum to manage the tasks, meetings, and projects together with my manager, the head of development.

During the last year of my participation at Conekta, I had contributed in the development of a customized PHP MVC framework for Credbell, based on famous and solid PHP frameworks (ZF, CakePHP, Symfony and CI).

LAMP. MSSQL. Linux. PHP. Git. Cron jobs. Javascript. jQuery. Bootstrap. HTML. CSS.

Dec 2010 - Sep 2010 Turbosite
Field: Data Center & Hosting
Software Developer

I had worked for three months as a PHP Developer at Turbosite and participated on the development of a custom application which enables the company to issue its invoices to Brazilian IRS automatically. This experience required a great engagement while establishing the communication between the application and government's IRS SOAP web server. I had also worked with other desktop languages such as Java and C++.

Aug 2010 - June 2010 Wmax Internet
Field: Digital Marketing & Web Design
LAMP Stack Web Developer

I had worked for three months as a Full Stack Web Developer and Analyst on a huge application which controls a charity institution network, receiving donations from people and providing tools to analyze, manage and report all the data from the main database (MySQL).

This job was a great opportunity to improve my skills in Front End Web Development using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

May 2010 - May 2009 Colegio e Faculdade Arnaldo, Brazil
Field: Education
LAMP Stack Web Developer

I had worked for one year as a PHP Web Developer and also as a Web Designer.

This was my first experience with PHP and actually coding. I have joined the project of a student registration software for courses at Arnaldo University and provided support to faculty members and students. I have also worked on a few microsites/flash pages for marketing campaigns.

May 2009 - Oct 2008 Colegio e Faculdade Arnaldo, Brazil
Field: Education
IT Technician

This was my first work experience. I have started working in a computer lab as a tutor for students from Arnaldo School and Arnaldo University.

Without previous experience, I had faced so many problems from which I had achieved a great deal of knowledge on computer hardware, network, and operational systems. Everyday at work I used to study a new content regarding computer and Internet. At that time, my interest for Computer Science had increased and I decided to study how to code.

Educational Value

Northwestern Polytechnic University, CA

M.S. in Computer Science (MSCS)

2015 - 2014
Zend Technologies

Zend Certified PHP Engineer

2014
Lindenwood University, Missouri

English as a Second Language Program (ESL)

2014
Centro Universitario de Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (BSCS)

2013 - 2008

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