John Pickard
Back End Developer at Freelance
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJohn Pickard is a seasoned back-end developer with 11 years of professional experience building high-performance systems, primarily using Perl and MySQL, and a demonstrated ability to learn and apply new technologies. He has held senior engineering roles at agencies and hardware startups and now works freelance from Charlottesville, bringing both product-focused and systems-level perspectives. His open-source contributions to high-profile scientific projects (CMS software and Monte Carlo generator tooling) show comfort navigating large codebases and writing automation scripts in Python for complex simulation workflows. With a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and an MS in Electrical Engineering, he combines deep technical rigor with practical software craftsmanship. Known for thoughtful database design and index optimization, he excels at translating stakeholder needs into maintainable back-end solutions.
11 years of coding experience
21 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Electrical Engineering, BS, Electrical Engineering at University of PennsylvaniaPhD, Biomedical Engineering, PhD, Biomedical Engineering at University of Virginia
Stackoverflow
308reputation
19kreached
10answers
4questions
Github Skills (25)
c-language10
python10
scripting10
cplus10
cpp10
cprogramming-language10
simulation9
simulations9
automation9
monte-carlo9
automations9
configuration-management8
file-management8
algorithm7
algorithms7
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
cms-sw/genproductions
Apr 2020 - Mar 2021
Generator fragments for MC production
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:9 commits, 2 PRs, 6 comments in 11 months
Contributions summary:John primarily contributed to the development of scripts for generating configuration cards used in Monte Carlo production, focusing on a specific physics model within the generator framework. Their work involved writing Python scripts to create different mass points and related configuration files. The contributions include modifying existing scripts, correcting alignment, and fixing output name conventions. These scripts seem designed to automate the creation of input files required for running simulations with varying parameters.
productionfragments
cms-sw/cmssw
Apr 2017 - Jan 2026
CMS Offline Software
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 reviews, 5 PRs, 35 comments in 8 years 10 months
Contributions summary:John implemented a component method for the Ecal barrel digi and waveform simulation. This involved modifying the `EcalDigiProducer.cc` file to include new parameters and digitizer logic. Furthermore, the user added a fix for D96 relvals by modifying `relval_steps.py`. Lastly, the user merged a branch into `ecalComponentMethod`, demonstrating involvement in larger codebase integration.
cmshepcerncms-experimentc-plus-plus
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