Summary
I am an engineering lead active in software development, web architecture, and infrastructure automation. I enjoy helping teams realize the value of their work by improving the reliability and speed of software delivery. I have a strong background in DevOps practices and have been actively developing my software leadership skills over the last six years.
My focus is on remote opportunities to create positive social impact through technology. My ideal next role is as a tech lead or engineering manager supporting small to medium-sized teams.
Specialties
I write code day-to-day in Python, but am also familiar with Ruby, Go, Bash, and TypeScript.
I am deeply familiar with how the Django web framework works, but also have a solid understanding of Express, Rails, and Serverless Framework.
I am proficient with infrastructure tooling, such as Ansible, AWS SAM, Docker, Packer, Terraform, and Vagrant.
I have managed multiple production systems in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem and have a strong understanding of API Gateway, Batch, ECS, ElastiCache, IAM, Kinesis, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, and VPC.
I have maintained and tuned a wide variety of data stores. I am deeply familiar with PostgreSQL, but also understand how Memcached, MySQL, Redis, and Riak work.
Experiences
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Increased observability across applications by integrating Datadog for log, metric, and trace aggregation. This enabled us to isolate and fix key application performance issues.
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Helped establish a process to prioritize and address technical debt alongside existing work streams. This empowered engineers to advocate for improvements to enhance application sustainability.
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Forged relationships with external teams (e.g., Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, upstream and downstream consumers) to better negotiate cross-team dependencies. This enabled us to ship complex integrations sooner, and with fewer setbacks.
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Helped scale cloud-based lab operations software from a single instance, to multiple instances, each supporting distinct geographic locations. This enabled us to grow our business.
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Developed tooling to repeatably apply database schema changes across all lab software instances. This reduced the number of mistakes we made due to manually applied database schema changes.
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Built Amazon Lambda-based processes to automate the aggregation of application data into a centralized data lake. This enabled our data analytics teams to generate insights about our business.
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Instituted organization-wide system for making architecturally significant decisions. This standardized and increased transparency around our engineering decision-making process.
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Iteratively improved the engineering hiring process by introducing an apprenticeship program, standardized application assessment, and on-site interview loop. This made us feel better about our hiring practices.
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Helped hire software engineers across teams, conducted performance reviews, and aided in peer professional development. This gave me a new perspective on what it means to be an engineering leader.
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Assembled cross-functional working groups to address organization-wide issues around business development and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This helped break down organizational silos.
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Instituted an engineering growth ladder. This improved clarity in our growing engineering organization.
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Founded the organization’s first web application infrastructure team. This enabled us to scale the engineering organization.
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Assembled software delivery pipelines with reproducible development environments, immutable deployment artifacts, and infrastructure as code (IaC). This standardized our application delivery processes.
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Built and maintained a set of open-source Terraform and Ansible modules for cross-project use. This improved our infrastructure component reusability and aided in recruiting.
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Defined an incident response procedure to catalog production issues blamelessly. This added structure to our incident response process across teams and enabled us to better learn from our mistakes.
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Participated in technical pre-sales engagements with companies across the country. This improved the effectiveness of our sales cycles.
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Maintained official Chef cookbooks for Riak and Riak CS. This provided our users with standardized ways to install our products.
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Built tooling around Docker, Datomic, Omnibus, and Vagrant for the Riak ecosystem. This made it easier for users to integrate our products with other common tools in the ecosystem.
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Automated the end-to-end data preparation and publishing process for core data sets. This enabled us to focus on more sophisticaed data sets.
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Converted an SEC filings full-text search prototype into a cloud-native service with a distributed data ingestion pipeline and search index. This led to our very first interactive data product.
Community Involvement
I participated in several rounds of mock interviews with boot camp students. In those meetings, I provided feedback on resume, interview responses, and career path choices.
I co-founded a modern software leadership focused book club in Philadelphia. I helped recruit speakers, panel moderators, and attendees interested in software leadership.
I led students (ages 8-18) through basic web development projects using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I also streamlined student and volunteer on-boarding processes with documentation and virtual email accounts.
I co-founded the first DevOps focused user group in Philadelphia. I worked to grow a community for individuals interested in bridging the gap between development and operations.