Resumé

You can find a printable copy of my resumé here.

Experience

Staff Software Engineer

ConvertKit, April 2023 - present

ConvertKit helps 600k+ creators work smarter – not harder – with email, automation, and monetization tools that work together to drive continuous growth.

  • Support platform stability of distributed system responsible for sending over 2.5 billion emails per month
  • Designed and built initial version of 3rd-party developer platform, including a new version of the public-facing API and an app store. This enables product offering and revenue growth while minimizing product footprint and maintenance costs
  • Migrated microservice responsible for processing 2 billion email opens and link clicks per month to use time-based Elasticsearch (ES) indices with zero downtime and data loss. This enables future data-retention policies to reduce infra spend and zero downtime ES upgrades
  • Architected and implemented custom middleware for rerouting, pausing, and dropping problematic jobs based on partial arg matching. This allows us to quarantine operations that flood our queues and reduce incident risk
  • Created automated CI workflow to autogenerate OpenAPI specification and user-facing documentation from the developer test suite to eliminate developer time spent maintaining documentation
  • Designed and implemented easily extensible authorization layer for managing multiple access control models (RBAC, ABAC, RuBAC) used throughout the system, including in the frontend, backend, and distributed workers.

Principal Software Engineer

Cloud City, May 2021 - Mar 2023

Cloud City is a San Francisco-based senior full-stack development and design consultancy. Cloud City delivers wholehearted software design and development that betters our world by providing user-centered design, elegant code, and product consulting to teams of any size.

  • Collaborated on algorithm for optimized physical print fulfillment of digital assets which was granted patent US-11782662-B1. This transformed the client’s business by providing a unique value proposition for customers looking for fast and reliable direct mail solutions
  • Implemented challenge-response test using IETF’s new Privacy Pass protocol, hcaptcha verification, and rate limiting to prevent bot and malicious traffic for RubyGems
  • Led development effort for replatform of customer-facing dashboardfrom a legacy frontend framework to a modern framework prioritizing web accessibility best practices. Built reusable datepicker and dropdown components ready to be open-sourced by client
  • Led team of globally distributed developers to build commerce compliance platform using Rails, Stimulus, Turbo
  • Advised on project scope and estimates, including revising current project timelines, to ensure team success and on-time delivery for multiple 3-6 month projects across multiple teams
  • Managed scope and milestones for large team of FTEs and contractors to increase team productivity 3X over 4 weeks and deliver 2 key project milestones
  • Spearheaded initiative to update engineering leveling guide to remove bias and facilitate more productive promotion and performance conversations between managers and ICs

VP of Delivery

Tandem (formerly DevMynd), Feb 2021 - May 2021

Tandem is a trusted strategy, design, and technology partner in Chicago and San Francisco. We deliver custom software that inspires people and drives business forward.

  • Served as liaison between delivery team and company executives; served as advocate for delivery team needs as a whole
  • Drove adoption of company's delivery processes; Responsible for maintaining and updating processes regularly
  • Ensured on-time, on-budget delivery for our projects by identifying and mitigating complex project and team risks; served as escalation point and ultimate decision-maker in these cases
  • Proactively monitored and adjusted staffing based on skillsets, level, and capacity
  • Provided technical and architecture guidance for project teams
  • Served as escalation point and ultimate decision-maker for mitigating project risks
  • Drove consistent, quality delivery of client work
  • Had authority to speak to clients on behalf of Tandem to identify and resolve complex situations
  • Served as a public face of Tandem, published and presented on behalf of Tandem
  • Continually elevated company standards for equity in hiring and retention, including defining and facilitating a historical and present-day pay equity audit

Engineering Manager

Tandem (formerly DevMynd), Mar 2019 - Feb 2021

  • Balanced hands-on keyboard software development responsibilities with management responsibilities in a 50/50 commitment
  • Spearheaded internal process changes including: rewriting job postings to be more inclusive, advocating for pay transparency, writing career path guidelines to support equitable promotions, writing interview rubrics to align with career path expectations and minimize bias, guiding creation of a codified apprenticeship program, and leading team to revamp our hiring code challenges for more equity in evaluation of candidates and better alignment with our career path
  • Managed and sponsored a team of 6 developers including 1:1s, bi-annual performance reviews, goal setting, accountability, and identifying career opportunities
  • Coached developers on client engagement, consulting, technical decision making, and leadership skills
  • Managed hiring process for the engineering practice, including coordinating phone screens, take-home code challenges, and onsite interviews
  • Collaborated with other engineering managers to create yearly budgets and plan team-wide professional development and team-building activities within the budget

Principal Software Enginer

Tandem (formerly DevMynd), Dec 2019 - Feb 2021

  • Successfully planned and delivered complex, multi-team or system, long-term projects, including ones with external dependencies
  • Provided strategic guidance to clients outside of the realm of pure technology, including: organizational design, process, hiring, digital transformation, legacy systems, etc.
  • Decomposed large-scale enterprise systems and architectures in an easy to understand way for other team members
  • Collaborated with design, product, and other disciplines on the scope and definition of architecture, systems, projects, etc
  • Advocated for software testing practices and CI/CD implementations with other team members and with clients
  • Led engineering sales efforts including scoping proposals and SOWs, leading client discovery calls, and creating project estimates.
  • Adeptly used pair programming as a mentorship and coaching strategy with other team members

Senior Software Engineer

Tandem (formerly DevMynd), Dec 2017 - Dec 2019

  • Led an 8-person development team building custom cloud software for a large government client to replace 65+ on-premise deployments of legacy application. This reduced hardware costs and contributed to reduced decision-making costs of nearly $1B/year due to unified digital records
  • Upgraded legacy Rails application and optimized performance of ActiveRecord queries to be able to effectively scale and support revenue targets
  • Set and advocated for development processes that support the goals of the product team while maintaining code quality and developer productivity
  • Worked closely with design lead and product owner to set feature roadmap and determine priority and timeline for dependent and intersecting features

.NET Developer

Chamberlain Group (CGI), Jun 2017 - Dec 2017

Chamberlain Group (CGI) is a global leader in access solutions and products. As the corporate parent company to LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin and Grifco, CGI designs and engineers residential garage door openers, commercial door operators and gate entry systems. CGI's products are connected through their innovative MyQ technology which empowers users to control or monitor their entry points through smartphone access.

  • Developed and maintained message oriented middleware system for connected IOT devices
  • Refactored monolithic service into 20+ microservices for device communication to simplify maintenance and code dependencies and make downstream event management more flexible
  • Worked with small team to implement domain driven architecture and migrate microservices into new architecture while maintaining backwards compatibility with legacy services

Solutions Architect

Making Waves (formerly Nansen), Mar 2014 - Jun 2017

Making Waves (MW) designs and develops digital services and solutions including portals, e-commerce, intranets, mobile solutions, custom built applications and market communications. MW combines design thinking and advanced technology to create user friendly solutions that engage and excite their audiences.

  • Designed extensible framework solution, distributed as Nuget packages, to be used in 20+ web applications allowing more budget allocation for design and implementation of new features
  • Led technical sales process to identify key technical requirements and provide the estimates for use in proposals and statements of work.
  • Migrated and redesigned public facing website for national pet food company from proprietary CMS into EPiServer 7.5 resulting in increased extensibility and shorter development cycles
  • Enhanced and maintained EPiServer 6R2 ecommerce site to handle more than 2,000 orders/week
  • Created wide variety of API integrations for client applications, including email management systems, CRM systems, validation and identity protection systems, Google Maps, CASS validation, OpenTable, among others.
  • Created custom MVC application to manage more than 2 million customer records in lieu of a CRM system

Developer

Adage Technologies, Jun 2013 - Feb 2014

Adage Technologies is an eCommerce web design and development firm in downtown Chicago.

  • Remotely managed world-renowned performing arts client, including project estimations, weekly releases, and client communications
  • Refactored existing purchase path for client to improve performance. Post-launch, the site manages over 3,000 concurrent users in the purchase path with minimal stress; up from 1,500 concurrent users causing the site to crash pre-launch
  • Created EPiServer templates and configuration forms to allow client to independently manage business rules for their website
  • Leveraged Backbone.js library to create framework for displaying user’s Facebook friends’ ticket purchases on performance detail pages and in a select-your-own-seat control

Technical Consultant

Perficient, Feb 2012 - Jun 2013

Perficient is the leading digital transformation consulting firm serving Global 2000® and enterprise customers throughout North America.

  • Designed and built social functionality for large hospital intranet using SharePoint 2010 and NewsGator Social Sites
  • Worked with a team of 15 consultants to conduct a company-wide intranet migration process from SharePoint 2010 to 2013
  • Constructed tile framework for major Perficient intranet homepage on SharePoint 2013
  • Used Javascript and jQuery plugins to create interactive cubicle reservation app for SharePoint 2013

Team Leader, Corps Member

Jumpstart, 2009-2011

Jumpstart is a national early education organization working toward the day every child in America enters kindergarten prepared to succeed. We provide language, literacy, and social-emotional programming for preschool children from under-resourced communities and promote quality early learning for all children.

  • Led 6 college students to provide developmentally appropriate educational activities to young children.
  • Facilitated team planning meetings and planned and led biweekly in-classroom activities to promote children’s educational development.

Education

DePaul University, Chicago, IL

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Minor in American Sign Language Studies - Summa cum laude

Technologies and Tools

I've worked with every technology listed below though it may have been a few years or it may have only been for a small project. In general, the technologies are listed in order of my familiarity.

Ruby, Rails, Javascript, React, Vue, Git, HTML, CSS, Postgres, Node, TailwindCSS, SQL, ASP.Net, Entity Framework, MVC, C#, Web Forms, WebAPI, EpiServer, Python, Angular, jQuery, SuitCSS, Backbone.js, TFS, noSQL, RabbitMQ, Couchbase, SSMS, C++, Powershell