Jason McCandless

Jason McCandless

Data Platform Engineer | Full Stack Developer

I am a Data Platform Engineer with a passion for building web applications. I have experience in data engineering, cloud computing, data governance, and full-stack development. I am currently working on expanding my skill set in web development, AI, and cloud technologies.

My other interests include golf, travelling, & online gaming.

Contact me below!

Career Timeline

  • 2025–Present
    Freelance Full Stack
    Building a portfolio of web applications. Undertook the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification course.
  • 2022–2025
    Data Platform Engineer
    Integrated a vended Feature Store (Hopsworks) into the data pipeline. Managed ~120 RHEL Servers across 2 data centers and 3 environments. Worked with Data Scientists and other key stakeholders to enhance data accessibility and usability. Attended regular CAB meetings to demonstrate platform changes for production deployment. Delivered a smoke test suite to continuously validate platform uptime and serve as an early-warning system.

    Tech: Hopsworks, Apache Kafka, Java, Python, BASH, RHEL 8, Ansible (Infrastructure as Code), Github for version control
  • 2021–2022
    Big Data Engineer
    Worked with the Policy data team before it merged with Claims and Quotes to form a Data Lake. From there onwards I supported Claims, Quotes, and Policy MDMs existing applications as the Data Lake team began to build out new infrastructure.

    Tech: Dremio, Spark/Scala, Unix
  • 2019-2020
    Test Data Analyst
    Worked within the Privacy department's Obfuscation team. Used data masking techniques to protect sensitive information using Ab Initio and Delphix. Engineered a dashboard within our Obfuscation as a Service tool to extract and visualize obfuscation metrics.

    Tech: Ab Initio, Delphix, Bash, RHEL, SQL, ETL
  • 2017-2021
    Education
    Computer Science at Ulster University - Magee Campus
    Result: 1st Class Honors

Side Projects

  • Greensided
    A golf-themed social media platform.
    Users can create accounts, share their golfing experiences, and connect with other golf enthusiasts. They can sign up to clubs and participate in discussions/competitions, as well as log rounds across the world.

    Tech: Github Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, HTML, CSS, SQL, RESTful APIs, Next.js, TypeScript, Mantine, Vercel, Render, Supabase
    Visit the site

  • Upcoming Projects

    These are projects I am currently working on or planning to start soon to expand my skill set:


    Task Tracker
    Task management tool built with React Native.
  • Pet-Sitting Service App
    Flask app for connecting pet owners with sitters, with GraphQL.