Curriculum Vitae

Summary/Highlights

  • Currently a senior backend engineer
  • Technical career ladder (ie, would move to staff engineer but not to management)
  • Experience in 5-person startup through large multinational corporation
  • Long experience with Python
  • I have code in both the Linux kernel (just a smidge) and the Elixir standard library
  • Comfortable with public speaking in both English and Spanish
  • Will not work on “defense” or gambling

Experience

Work

NextRoll

Senior Backend Engineer November 2021 – November 2024

  • Organized effort to reduce team’s AWS costs (from ~1400 EC2 instances to ~700)
  • Reduced system start times and overhead by using Elixir to preprocess data into Erlang binary format
  • Migrated legacy code base across major versions, including Python 2 to Python 3, Flask 2.0, and SQLAlchemy 2.0
  • Scale: maintained a service answering more than 1.2 million requests per second with a p90 response time of 14 milliseconds

Tech: Erlang, Python, Elixir, Flask, SQLAlchemy, Terraform, Docker

Axios

Senior Backend Engineer July 2019 – November 2021

  • Optimized API for 7x maximum users and 200x speed ahead of 2020 election
  • Owned mobile app’s backend service
  • Integrated mobile and site backend services to reduce overall system complexity
  • Co-designed backend API for media library
  • Extended frontend for media library
  • Ensured completeness of Spanish translations in mobile app interface

Tech: Elixir, Phoenix, Absinthe, Python, Django, Flask, Javascript, React, OpenAPI, LaunchDarkly, Honeycomb, OpenCensus, GraphQL, Protobuf, Docker

The Washington Post’s Arc Publishing

Senior Software Engineer February 2017 – July 2019

  • Led trainings on unit testing and writing testable code
  • Advised on implementing agile processes
  • Developed progressive web application (PWA) for Infobae (the most popular news site in Argentina), which was highlighted at Google I/O
  • Overrode Bootstrap column framework with CSS grid (on compatible browsers) to ensure more consistent appearance
  • Added automated linting to codebase to improve code quality

Tech: Javascript, React, Python, PWA

Full Measure Education

Senior Software Engineer February 2016 – January 2017

  • Ensured accessibility (508 compliance) on software for government-funded schools
  • Extended, tested, and validated interfaces with proprietary systems
  • Maintained 100% code coverage

Tech: Javascript, AngularJS, Angular Material, Ionic, Ruby on Rails, RSpec, Karma

Trove (acquired by Social Code)

Software Development Engineer August 2015 – January 2016

Tech: Python, Javascript, UnderscoreJS, BackboneJS

Sourcefire (acquired by Cisco)

Software Engineer II June 2012 – July 2015

Software Engineer I January 2011 – June 2012

  • Maintained framework for packaging product and OS upgrades
  • Maintained backup/restore and troubleshooting tools for our product
  • Integrated product with OEM hardware systems
  • Enhanced system integrity checker
  • Wrote a new MIB and the corresponding SNMP subagent

Tech: Perl, Bash/Shell, Python, C, Makeself, Linux

Popvox

Contractor March 2012 – October 2013

  • Developed new features and APIs in Django application, including database schema design
  • Created embeddable widgets and JSON APIs
  • Maintained scripts to fetch data from the Library of Congress and generate reports
  • Overhauled deployment system to improve site reliability and redundancy
  • Assisted in data migration from MySQL to PostgreSQL
  • Performed all necessary server maintenance on both Ubuntu and Amazon Web Services servers

Tech: Python, Django, Javascript, JQuery, MySQL, Postgres, Perl, LaTeX, AWS

Blue Storm Technology

System Analyst/Programmer (Contract) April 2010 – December 2010

  • Performed security certification & accreditation
  • Extracted binaries from Ubuntu system images and repackaged for Red Hat
  • Developed firewall capabilities

Tech: C#

Sine Nomine Associates

Test Engineer March 2009 – April 2010

  • Tested AFS on a variety of standard Unix systems
  • Co-designed a new network-based filesystem

Tech: SuSE Linux, AIX, HP-UX

Applied Security, Inc

Systems Engineer Intern May 2009 – August 2009

  • Automated system installation on Red Hat servers
  • Created and maintained RPM packages

Tech: Bash, Kickstart, RHEL

Washington Post Newsweek Interactive

Web Developer & Research Assistant Intern August 2007 – December 2007

  • Increased efficiency of adding new blogs by customizing Movable Type to support multiple templates
  • Scraped government websites to CSV for database input
  • Found SQL injection vulnerability in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign site

Tech: Python, Perl, CSS, Javascript, JQuery

Open Source

Growstuff

Contributor 2014

  • Added photo functionality to several components
  • Figured out how to store harvest info to be comparable across units

Maintainer 2015

  • Reviewed PRs
  • Improved unit test coverage

Ubuntu

Contributor 2007 – 2009

  • Reviewed patches and packaged results

Developer 2009 – 2012

  • Mentored developers-in-training
  • Maintained packages in the Universe component
  • Improved accessibility of OS installer

Developer Membership Board 2012

  • Weighed-in on who should have commit access

Other

I have patches in the following:

  • Erlang: modernized TypEr codebase 2022
  • Rebar TypEr: collaborated on plugin to connect TypEr to Erlang build tool Rebar3 2022
  • Elixir: added replace_lazy/3 function to Maps and Keyword modules in standard library 2021
  • Spree: extension updates to work with API updates (Ruby on Rails) 2014
  • Gally: created sign language tutor desktop application (Python, Qt, KDElibs) 2009
  • Linux kernel: added quirk to fix audio issue with suspend/resume (C) 2009
  • GNOME Terminator: fixed accessibility bug (Python, PyGTK)
  • GSynaptics: added ability to configure touchpad speed and acceleration (C, GTK+) 2007

Education & Certifications

The George Washington University 2006 – 2010

BS Computer Science

Instituto Cervantes 2023

Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE)

Level B2, does not expire