Senior Software Engineer with 8 years of experience in enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems and full-stack .NET development. I specialize in Aras Innovator customization, enterprise application architecture, and manufacturing domain solutions. My work focuses on building scalable, maintainable systems that serve critical business operations in automotive manufacturing.
I thrive in environments where complex business requirements meet technical challenges, particularly in manufacturing contexts where reliability and performance are paramount.
Technical Expertise
Core Technologies
- Backend Development: C# ASP.NET Core, Razor Pages
- Frontend Development: TypeScript, JavaScript, Handsontable Data Grid, Telerik Kendo Controls
- Styling & Build Tools: SASS/SCSS, Webpack
- Database & Caching: SQL Server, Query optimization, Database design, Redis
DevOps & Infrastructure
- Containerization: Docker for application deployment
- Orchestration: Kubernetes (Rancher)
- Monitoring & Observability: OpenTelemetry instrumentation, Grafana Tempo distributed tracing, Elasticsearch APM
- CI/CD: Pipeline management for PLM development team
Specialized Skills
- Real-time Applications: SignalR for live data synchronization
- PLM Systems: Aras Innovator customization and integration (8 years)
- Performance Engineering: Application profiling and SQL query optimization
- System Architecture: Scalable enterprise application design
- Dependency Injection: Custom DI container implementation in constrained environments
Development Practices
- Git, Agile/Scrum
Professional Experience
Senior Software Engineer | Gentex Corporation
May 2025 – Present
Enterprise PLM development team member supporting 3,500 monthly users across Engineering, Quality, Product Launch, and Operations. Contributes to maintaining 70+ active PLM solutions, 7 client applications, and 25 system integrations with a team of 6 developers.
Technical Leadership
- Mentors new hires and interns on system architecture and best practices
- Leads infrastructure and CI/CD initiatives for the PLM development team
- Serves as primary technical contact for contract development teams
- Drives technical decisions for system modernization and performance optimization
- Provides on-call infrastructure support for production systems
Platform Improvements
- Replaced generated switch-statement instantiation across two projects with reflection-based class discovery, removing the code generation step and laying the groundwork for the dependency injection container
- Implemented a reflection-based dependency injection container for Aras Innovator method code — an environment without native DI support — that instantiates all 1,353 production methods
- Enabled dependency inversion across the method codebase, decoupling business logic from its dependencies
- Supported the team's unit testing initiative by making method code independently testable without requiring full Aras runtime context
Software Engineer | Gentex Corporation
May 2021 – May 2025
PLM Web Interface Migration
Led migration of the custom Aras Innovator web interface from .NET Framework NancyFx to ASP.NET Core with Razor Pages. Collaborated closely with an external contractor over 8 months, serving as primary technical lead.
- Converted from Windows IIS hosted to Linux Docker hosted in Rancher Kubernetes
- Resolved .NET Framework dependency blockers for the Linux migration by converting an internal C# library to .NET Standard and replacing third-party libraries with cross-platform equivalents
- Implemented YARP reverse proxy to route traffic between the legacy NancyFx and new ASP.NET Core instances, enabling incremental feature migration without a hard cutover
- Leveraged the existing Redis session store to maintain shared session state across both backends, allowing users to be transparently served by either instance without re-authentication or service interruption
- Introduced NancyFx compatibility shims to isolate migration changes to core integration points, allowing the majority of the codebase to compile and function unmodified while ASP.NET Core development proceeded in a parallel branch
Secret Management
Migrated application secrets from a shared KeePass file on a central Windows network share to Azure Key Vaults, removing broad infrastructure-wide access to sensitive credentials.
- Implemented per-application authentication via client secrets, with each application loading only its required secrets on demand at runtime
- Separated development and production credentials into distinct Key Vaults with differentiated access levels, establishing environment-based access controls
Application Modernization
- Implemented attribute-based dynamic dispatch using reflection to route requests to the correct item viewer classes, eliminating repetitive routing and setup boilerplate across the system's many page types
- Deployed a self-hosted Grafana Tempo instance for distributed tracing, integrated with the company-wide Grafana stack, and instrumented applications using OpenTelemetry
Handsontable Data Grid Framework
Designed a reusable data grid framework now used for 95% of manually defined grids and all dynamic grids in the PLM system.
- Replaced a one-shot server-rendered loading model — where grids were loaded once via JSON and saves were constructed client-side — with a round-trip architecture enabling incremental updates, server-side validation, and saving
- Built a dynamic type system that maps Aras Innovator's AML structure into strongly typed C# class hierarchies with bidirectional AML serialization, mirrored in TypeScript on the client side to maintain strong typing across the full stack
- Extended grid configuration granularity from the row and column level to per-cell, enabling fine-grained business logic and rendering control for individual cells
Aras Innovator Major Version Upgrade (11sp12 → 12sp09)
Led major version upgrade without vendor support.
- Diagnosed upgrade failures by reverse engineering incompatibilities between custom integrations and the new platform version
- Utilized fuzzy integration testing to validate network requests pre- / post-upgrade
- Refactored custom PLM solutions to restore compatibility with the upgraded Aras platform
Junior Software Engineer | Gentex Corporation
May 2017 – May 2021
Application Observability
- Migrated application monitoring from New Relic to a self-hosted Elasticsearch APM stack, gaining direct control over instrumentation and alerting
- Implemented Elastic RUM for real-user monitoring across client-facing applications
Work Instruction System
Designed and implemented a multimedia work instruction system for manufacturing touchscreens based on Toyota methodology (steps, key points, reasons). The system provides multilingual support with video and image content for global manufacturing operations, developed in close collaboration with Industrial Engineering teams.
Webpack Bundler Implementation
- Migrated ASP web project build system from manual resource loading to Webpack bundler
- Developed a custom plugin to support the server-side rendered architecture
- Primary maintainer since 2019
Part Quality Alert System
Created a specialized quality alert interface for manufacturing operators with image-focused layouts for visual good/bad part defect comparisons. Worked directly with the Quality team to ensure the system met compliance requirements and visual communication standards.
DFMEA & PFMEA Templating
Built templating and module reuse systems using Aras Innovator's Content Modeling Framework. Enabled a single source of truth for the Mechanical Department with automated document generation based on filter criteria.
- Developed PFMEA modules for document section reuse, reducing compliance documentation time
- Migrated legacy DFMEA and PFMEA data across major version upgrades
- Developed complex SQL reports that queried subsections of large FMEA documents and filtered results by high RPN values
- Optimized FMEA document loading performance by 10x through SQL query optimization
Personal Projects
Game Boy Emulator (Zig) A partially functional emulator capable of running select titles — an exploration of low-level systems programming outside of the .NET ecosystem.
Bowling League Tracker (Angular, TypeScript) A data visualization application in active use by a friend group for league statistics and history.
Certifications
Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) | Scrum.org | February 2023
Beyond Code
Cycling
Regular cycling for fitness and recreation — aligns with an interest in sustainable transportation and active living.
Bowling
Member of a USBC registered bowling league and compete in local tournaments.
Golf
Participate in a weekly golf league during the season.
Gaming
Play automation and factory-building games including Factorio and Satisfactory.
Contact
- Email: broderickhyman@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: broderickhyman
- GitHub: broderickhyman
