Artisan Solutions

Bringing Artistry to Application Development

Artisan Solutions is the consulting company of Peter Swartwout.

Peter lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wonderful wife Dara. When he's not building beautiful software, Peter plays and studies the beautiful and ancient game of backgammon.

Put my 25+ years' experience to work on your next software project. I have multi-project professional experience with:

Distributed systems integration
Technology modernization
REST and GraphQL API development
CI/CD pipeline setup
Cloud computing with AWS or GCP
App security, OAuth 2.0, SSO, third-party auth setup
High performance computing with web socket io
Front-end development in Typescript with React or Vue
Custom software

Domains I have professional experience with include:

Auto & Truck Rentals
Vehicle Fleet Management
Health Care
Drug development / Clinical trials
Banking
Package Delivery
Moving & Storage
Robotics

My status is: available. Please contact me to set up a free consultation.

Current resume in PDF format.

phone: 412-254-4603
email: peter@artisansolutions.llc

Solution Design & Architecture

My whole career has been about making sound engineering decisions. It's not about the newest or coolest technologies. It's about finding the solution you and your team can actually deliver in the time and budget you have.

It's always a balancing act between feature set and simplicity, build vs buy, performance vs rich user experience. I am good at managing the interplay of different priorities.

Clean, Well-Tested Code

Your applications won't do much without code. To insure the very highest quality, embrace testing in all environments, from the developer's laptop to production. Automated unit tests are a given. You also need automated UI testing, end-to-end system integration testing, security vulnerability testing, and of course good old manual testing by subject matter experts.

I can show you how to embed quality metrics into your team's process. Think continuous integration, code coverage, static code analysis, security vulnerability analysis and many more tools can be embedded into the SDLC with low impact and maximum benefit.

Team Leadership

I can lead teams from start to finish on complex projects. I have always gotten rave reviews on my project deliverables, tests, cloud deployments and team dynamics (aka we have fun while getting things done).

I love mentoring and coaching newer developers and can also talk solution architecture with your most senior technologists. In my last FT role I was both a hands-on Lead Consultant and also a People Manager for 4-5 direct reports. So I'm familiar with HR management as well as project management and I enjoy both roles.

Communication

Communication is my superpower. I am equally comfortable talking about requirements with business leaders, UX/UI with product designers, technical trade-offs with engineers, and KPIs with management.

Consulting

Let me help you with your software development process as well as the tasks. I know what works and what doesn't. Contact me to collaborate on what this might mean in practice. All teams and projects are different but there are many commonalities.

How to Work with Me

I can consult directly with you on an hourly basis though my company, Artisan Solutions LLC. Contact me for current rates. Or if you would prefer, you can hire me to work on a specific idea on a project basis. Initial conversations are always free.

Alternatively, you can partner with a software services firm and hire me a sub-contractor as I have done many times in the past. Check out my list of superb partners I have worked with below.

I can also take on bigger projects and staff them with my own team. Let's talk!

Clients

Here are some of the many clients I have helped through the years, listed most recent first. Click or tap on a card to reach their website.

As a contractor with Highline Solutions, I helped Sheetz improve their public website reliability by providing greater insight into their microservice integrations and enhancing their business process documentation.

As a contractor with Focused Labs, my team added new features to the PODS public website and modernized existing UI technologies.

My role was front-end developer working in React and Typescript.

While a consultant with Robiti, this project enhanced a touch-screen application for an automated kitchen fulfilling food orders.

The UI provided both a control panel for the robot and a collection of real-time visualizations.

My role was front-end developer working in Vue and Javascript.

While a consultant at Focused Labs, this project enabled commercial fleet customers to purchase products and services from Ford Pro.

My roles were solution consultant, Java/Spring developer and Vue developer.

While a consultant at Focused Labs, this project created a portal for electric vehicle manufacturers to manage their energy credits in California. They can also track their sales and emissions data.

My roles were solution consultant, GraphQL developer, Kotlin/Spring developer, React developer.

While a consultant at Focused Labs, this project integrated Hertz and Uber, later Hertz, Uber and Tesla, to enable car rentals directly from the Uber app.

My roles were solution consultant, REST API developer, Kotlin/Spring developer.

The project was GlobalCode, a SaaS app to help scientists manage their specimen data during clinical trials.

My roles were Lead Dev, Ruby on Rails developer, Angular.js developer and part-time HR manager.

I was a full-time employee at Global Specimen Solutions, a Labcorp company, for 4 years.

As an independent contractor at Korn Ferry, my team created a content editor as a SaaS app. This used new-at-the-time React.js integrated with an API supplied by NoSql database MarkLogic.

My role was React developer, Redux developer, Javascript developer.

As an independent contractor at Fedex Ground, this project enabled advanced mapping features, previously unavailable in a browser.

My roles were Java/Spring developer, Java Flex developer.

Partners

These are service & staffing companies I have worked with, either as a consultant or as a sub-contractor, listed most recent first. Click or tap on a card to reach their website.

Highline Solutions is a growing software consulting company based in Pittsburgh. They provide high-end architecture and development services to Sheetz and many other companies.

As a sub-contractor, I worked on site reliability at Sheetz and food technology innovation with a startup in the Culinex family of companies.

Based in Pittsburgh, Robiti is an innovative new software services company specializing in user interface design and development for robotics.

I worked as a sub-contractor doing UI development in Vue for a robotics company working on automated kitchens to fulfill food orders.

Based in Chicago, Focused Labs is a software services company specializing in digital transformation, legacy modernization, and AI enablement.

I worked at Focused Labs for 2 years. My job title was Lead Consultant / Software Engineering Manager. I was approximately 80/20 engineering/management. I had 4-5 direct reports.

OpenArc is a software solutions, staffing & recruiting firm based in Pittsburgh. They have delivered extremely high quality software solutions to hundreds of clients. OpenArc gets consistently good reviews from satisfied clients.

I was a sub-contractor here for a job at DQE Communications.

Truefit is a software solutions business based in Pittsburgh. They have partnered with many clients to deliver high quality software. They are know for mobile apps and SaaS apps but have expertise in many different tech stacks and business domains.

I was a sub-contractor here for a job at Global Specimen Solutions.

Summa Technology & Business was a software and business consulting firm based in Pittsburgh. They have since been acquired by CGI, an international IT and business consulting services firm.

While at Summa I worked on a wide variety of projects for many clients, some of whom are highlighted above: PNC Bank, BodyMedia, UPMC, Cigna and Pitt School of Medicine.

I worked at Summa for 4 years. My job title was Senior Technical Consultant.