Summary
I take great pride in a wide range of engineering experience, and recognize that technology is best as a force multiplier. By automating rote tasks, connecting disparate systems, and building platforms, I contribute to my community through enablement.
Staff Engineer, Democratic National Committee
Aug '18 - Present
- Led technical design and implementation for key DNC Tech tools, including an ecosystem-wide data warehouse, associated self-service IAM, ETL pipelines & orchestration, Django & React webapps, public APIs, and cloud infrastructure
- Broke up thorny problem spaces into actionable work and intentionally allocated to specific colleagues to ensure knowledge diffusion and aid their professional growth
- Sought high-leverage solutions in an environment with significant churn; COTS configurations, aggressive automation, and platform designs amplify our impact
- Mentored multiple generations of DNC staffers on technical topics (emphasizing maintenance, security, and efficiency) as well as institutional knowledge
- Contributed wherever needed: hardening election-day apps, adding DNS records, debugging user queries, planning disaster recovery scenarios, forecasting cloud spend, building Looker Studio reports, verifying voter signatures, etc.
Backend Lead, 18F (General Services Administration)
Sep '14 - Aug '18
- Contributed core code and architecture to a wide range of projects and partner agencies such as a donations platform, a proxy layer for data.gov, federal spending data ingestion, census dataset deduplication, legacy database migrations, and more!
- Spanned the full development stack (e.g. devops, ETL, APIs, AppSec, UI, reporting) most often with a small team of engineers, designers, and product experts
- Promoted to "Lead", a mentorship & standard-bearing role, of 30+ engineers across disparate teams; hosted post mortems, bar-raising discussions, and 1:1 sessions
- Screened >100 resumes and interviewed nearly 50 candidates for technical positions across the federal government, focusing on aptitude and tolerance for bureaucracy
- Evolved from the "code machine" archetype into more holistic problem solving and systems thinking; cultivated subject matter expertise & user champions
Backend Developer, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Dec '12 - Sep '14
- Shipped a public federal regulation (CFR) viewer and comment system, writing a sophisticated parser to automate structure, reference, and definition extraction
- Implemented an internal GIS tool for surfacing loan discrimination concerns
- Improved CFPB Tech culture through hosted presentations & discussions, working-group leadership, style guides, and thoughtful code reviews
- Promoted adventurous ideas with quick prototypes and internal demonstrations
Chief Developer, Toodalu LLC
Aug '10 - Nov '12
- Led backend development & infrastructure for a location-based financial startup
- Primarily utilized Scala (Lift) for logic and PostGIS & MongoDB for data storage
- Navigating several product pivots, stepping away as the team was acqui-hired
Web Developer, Network Ninja Inc
Jun '08 - Aug '10
- Improved and extended a custom PHP case management tool for pro bono legal aid; worked within a small team in weekly sprints based on client needs
- Introduced automated testing (PHPUnit), wrote scripts for new-client setup, and transitioned the team from an in-house ticketing system to a COTS product