Richard Flynn
Software Developer II at Higher Logic Vanilla
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRichard Flynn is a Backend Software Developer with a decade of experience building reliable web services and integrations, currently driving backend work at Higher Logic Vanilla from Montreal. He specializes in PHP, Node.js, REST APIs and MySQL, and has delivered integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Zoom and LLM sentiment analysis for forum content. Richard has a strong QA and test-automation mindset—contributing tests and security/permission fixes to the popular open-source Vanilla forum ecosystem—and recently redesigned a queue system that reduced job failures and improved logging. A former PhD candidate and educator, he brings rare interdisciplinary strengths in communication and analytical rigor to product- and data-sensitive engineering problems.
10 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts - BA, English and Philosophy, Bachelor of Arts - BA, English and Philosophy at Guilford CollegeDiploma in Full-Stack Web Development, Diploma in Full-Stack Web Development at Concordia UniversityMaster of Arts - MA, Liberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies, Master of Arts - MA, Liberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies at The New SchoolDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, English Language and Literature/Letters, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, English Language and Literature/Letters at Brandeis University
Stackoverflow
11reputation
3kreached
0answers
1question
Github Skills (15)
plugin-development10
unit-testing10
php10
phpunit10
testing10
security9
test-automation9
user-authentication9
authentication9
plugin8
co8
addon8
openpyxl6
python6
javascript4
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
vanilla/addons
Feb 2020 - Jan 2023
Official add-ons and tools for Vanilla Forums.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:8 reviews, 36 commits, 22 PRs in 2 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Richard primarily focused on enhancing and maintaining the Vanilla Forums add-ons, particularly the TrollManagement and jsconnect plugins. Their contributions involved modifying existing code to improve security, handle permissions more effectively, and refine the logic for user moderation. The user also addressed translation inconsistencies and refactored code for clarity and maintainability within the plugins. Several commits also involved the ShareThis and Ignore plugins.
discourseadd-onsvanilla-forumsaddonsforum
vanilla/vanilla
Dec 2019 - Jul 2020
Vanilla is a powerfully simple discussion forum you can easily customize to make as unique as your community.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:344 commits, 84 PRs, 156 pushes in 7 months
Contributions summary:Richard primarily focused on developing and testing core functionality within the `vanilla/vanilla` repository, a forum platform. Their contributions involved implementing new unit tests, specifically for case-insensitive array searching and other core general functions. They also fixed a minor documentation issue within the code. The work demonstrates a focus on improving code quality and ensuring reliability through comprehensive testing.
vanilla-forumssimple-discussionphpforumdiscussion-board
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