Alberto Vargas

Technology consulting firm focused on providing software engineering and data analytics consulting services across sectors and variable-sized businesses. We are most fond of mission-based and people-centered organizations looking to leverage their software and business strategies to positively impact their clients and stakeholders.

Most recently, Cacique Consulting is undergoing extensive R&D to understand civic tech oriented software solutions to leverage existing municipal-level food waste recycling data. A main goal is to implement time-series forecasting models and interactive data exploration dashboards to communicate environmental impact metrics to policymakers and interested residents.

Since our inception, we have worked with organizations to accomplish some of the following:

• Establishing foundational frameworks for cross-country food recipe compliance systems
• Product Management centered on API development and data pipeline streamlining strategies.
• Customer discovery survey leveraging research methodology to inform sustainable hospitality product development.
• Mobile design and development across ESG carbon accounting and food waste diversion projects.
• Modernizing legacy systems for ASL Interpreting Services web portal.

• Admitted to selective 12–week industry-oriented educational program to improve my climate literacy via expert guest speaker sessions, career support panels, and project-based work.
• Attended and participated in weekly climate science panel discussions within the domains of Transportation, Food & Agriculture, the Built Environment, and others, resulting in increased built rapport with other fellows.
• Contributed to three climate tech projects focused on Climate Resiliency, ESG carbon accounting, and sustainable travel, applying full-stack development skills to mission-driven sustainability startups.
• Leveraged research methodology background to inform sustainable travel product development and customer discovery surveys.
• Enhanced React Native frontend components and streamlined API data ingestion pipeline for ESG carbon accounting app.

• Developed scalable RESTful API endpoints, SQL relational database models and complex queries for internal and external use, resulting in reduced payroll friction by 50-75%.
• Led development and implementation of Electron.js Deep links via Node.js, streamlining communications between users by over 75%.
• Fostered direct collaboration with product managers, designers, and internal teams, resulting in the delivery of 6 user-centric high value features for the Daycast software work roadmap.
• Built API connection between Slack and Stripe payment system to summarize paid subscription behaviors in internal channels, resulting in improved understanding of user subscription behavior.
• Collaborated with engineering, product, science, and marketing teams to build impactful solutions, resulting in the delivery of the Tobacco Control Policys Tool's Graphic Health Warnings public health data portal.
• Committed to high standards of quality by participating in 100+ code reviews and creating and maintaining technical documentation while ensuring accountability and discipline against deliverable timelines.
• Partnered regularly with engineers, product managers, and designers to write implementation plans and execute requirements for 100+ user stories using Pivotal Tracker Agile project management tool.
• Processed large volumes of regulatory data using federal government API services, streamlining federal regulation code processing load by >90%.

Participated in technology apprenticeship focused on applying software development, Quality Assurance and Testing, Information Security, and other tech skills on projects for Enterprise, Small Business, and Agency partners.

Crafted testable custom UI components for the production codebase of Pouracle, a craft beverage rating application.

Designed and developed interactive data visualization dashboards using D3.js, Typescript, and React.js.

Analyzed and visualized social determinants of health data. Worked with electronic health records data using Python to evaluate the predictive validity of social determinants of health screening tool and health outcomes and utilization. Supported grant writing and research proposal submission to obtain external funding to expand research and support ongoing operations of the Center

Triaged and solved advanced support tickets using Linux-based clusters, storage environments, and services. In addition, I reviewed existing and craft WordPress sites with written and visual technical documentation destined for UNC researchers.

Collaborates with clients to develop full stack web apps for diverse research projects.

Consultant Developer

Consulted team of developers for >180 hours in front and backend development of four automated weather web applications. Used D3.js to render animated data visualizations of longitudinal weather forecasts. Integrated a Redis database to a web socket to enable live streaming of relevant weather information.

Front-end Trainer

Tailored 20 hours of live remote front-end development training for a team of 3 graphic designers, focusing on HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, responsive development, and data visualization with D3.js.

Engaged students and reinforced their knowledge of core web development concepts in individual and group settings. Assisted instructors with clerical responsibilities in the classroom and involvement with students during office hours.

I worked with a multidisciplinary team of UNC faculty to read, clean, transform, summarize, and harmonize data from 430 participants of the Mothers and Others Family-Based Obesity Prevention randomized controlled trial. I also crafted R-Markdown technical documentation with step-by-step walkthroughs of data cleaning procedures and embedded graphics using the ggplot2 data visualization library.

I managed a research agenda with a focus on cardiometabolic disease risk factors in the Dominican Republic with a team of researchers. Our projects included conducting a worksite wellness evaluation on over 500 private insurance company employees to assess nutritional health. I spearheaded the design and execution of statistical analyses to calculate the risk of hypertension in male and female company employees.

I analyzed dietary, environmental, and cardiovascular risk factors in >2,000 women participants of the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS) under the mentorship of Linda Adair, PhD. In addition, I inspected, reviewed, and updated nutrient content data for >600 food items to visualize diet trends in the Philippines for 18 years from 1994-2012. During my master's thesis, I applied longitudinal regression analyses to understand how blood pressure changed with changes in urbanicity in adult participants of the CLHNS from 1998 - 2012.