Experienced backend and data engineer, specializing in functional programming and type safety.
Additional skills in UI, operations, and database management, with a preference for startup environments.
Decades of experience spanning assembler-level coding and tuning, to architectural design.
Primary engineer on our member communications & behavioral nudges services.
Created UML diagrams to explain the latter’s legacy code.
Started maintaining our authN/authZ code, shortly before leaving.
Created a PII/PHI redaction library in 3 days, while waiting for another team (that took 3 weeks).
Ported my team’s projects to it; we were first to test redaction for the contractual deadline.
Taught Scala best practices to other engineers on my team.
Introduced http4s and FS2.
Led the initiative to reduce our ERROR-level log message count, from 500k/day to 15k/day;
and another to reduce our MySQL usage in order to improve performance.
Represented my team in efforts to migrate our systems to Azure, newer MySQL, Confluent.
Designed our division’s first monitoring subsystem, based on OpenTelemetry.
Worked with Operations to get it deployed.
Introduced GraphQL via a Sangria-based server, and interfaced it to a React widget library, to support their next-gen UI.
Introduced versioned libraries via automated sbt scripts, in order to aid in developing this new, second service.
Set up a production-grade CI/CD pipeline on Artifactory, Docker Hub, Bitbucket Pipelines.
Introduced Docker and Docker Compose, to aid their user testing and to deploy the backend to their offshore
team without source code access.
Recommended performance improvements in their PostgreSQL usage.
Helped adapt our product to said customer’s PHP code by creating an AWS Lambda deployment package
containing a custom-built PHP binary in a Java environment.
Also wrote the PHP output module while laying groundwork for other languages in the C syntax family.
Migrated the backend services to Akka HTTP, deployed on Fargate.
Re-coded the infrastructure deployment scripts—so that we could create a separate VPC for said customer—from
a mash of partially-deleted CloudFormation, Ansible scripts, and manual intervention.
The target deployment was Terraform scripting of a Kubernetes setup.
Interfaced with the Fortune 500 customer’s infosec team for their security review.
SigFigsenior software engineer
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Scala developer for feature development central to two funding rounds
Enhanced the data pipeline for a white label partnership with Swiss bank UBS.
Interfaced with UBS's architect and engineers, and the APIs they published.
Developed SigFig's design pattern for Akka microservices.
Introduced domain-specific data types, and means for automating their redaction for logging, using type classes.
Wrote the Yodlee and ACH partner interfaces, and their performance tests.
Began planning/architecting the Data Platform team's involvement for the company's first international
partnership, a goal for our Series E funding round.
Worked with the head of research and his staff to translate his specifications into code
for a new retail portfolio management product.
Primary engineer for the cash flow planning (a deterministic, linear optimizer), and Monte Carlo simulation subsystems.
Specialist for ad hoc JVM crash, multithreading, and performance problems.
Primary engineer for the investment universe selection, and asset data subsystems.
Produced a UML model, from research's data structure specifications,
that was the source document for a customer-facing data dictionary
as well as for an MDA (model-driven architecture) process of my creation,
of Java/EJB 3 and SQL code generation.
Led one other FTE in porting existing API to this new persistence unit.
Planned the data flow, customer data synchronization, and scalability. Consulted on performance tuning.
Assisted researchers in the quantitative analysis of the software by exposing intermediate results,
numerically analyzing and fixing algorithms, and creating simulation spreadsheets.
CNET Networkssenior software engineer
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Skills:
Agilitywarelead architect/engineer (contractor)
front-end engineer for a new software metrics product
Developed a 3-tier Swing/RMI/Hibernate system
to provide an executive dashboard for tracking software development projects.
Wrote 80% of the product, to attract first-round funding for this pre-VC software start-up.
Components written included a bound-property JavaBean data model with client-side write-through caching;
a real-time UI; CVS and ClearCase interfaces, including a CVS log parser.
Swing UI employed a custom TreeModel for managing sorting, visibility filtering,
and real-time forwarding of data model changes.
Maintained the UML model.
MyPersonal.comprincipal engineer, DBA, system admin (contractor)
Client was expanding their major Internet presence with an electronic cash trial project.
Joining a two-person team prototyping e-cash over the Internet,
I took charge of the administration and programming of the smartcard transaction management server,
initially to clear up a problem with the transition to HP-UX 10 and meet a three-month deadline for demonstration.
In the process, I encapsulated the key constructs into C++ classes,
cleared up multi-process synchronization problems with multithreading,
cleaned up cross-process structure usage, and reduced code size by half while adding features.
With the value management stable, I created a three-tier Java UI for remote customer support,
based on an RMI-JDBC data server, to support HTTP-encapsulated firewall piercing.
Acting as sysad and DBA for our group, I redesigned the production system storage for mirroring,
restructured Oracle tablespaces, and installed HP-UX upgrades.
TRW Financial Systemscontractor
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repeat contractor for various custom B2B projects
Skills:
Created a data warehousing subsystem in C++ to convert to Informix datatypes.
Ported an error logging subsystem from Solaris BSD to System V.
Wrote a Perl-based profiler for Aion knowledge base applications, to identify a system bottleneck.
Consolidated makefile code project-wide.
Created tools, in Perl and C++ on Solaris, for the integration team for a payment processing system.
Debugged project libraries.
Developed a yacc- and lex-based conversion tool for loading their database from text files.
Member of the database team for a wholesale lockbox processing system.
Designed and coded a Windows UI, using MFC, for administration of the workflow database. Introduced first C++ design into the company,
representing the workflow system's objects.
Designed Sybase schema and wrote internal design document.
Bank of Americacontractor
Skills:
Townsend Analyticssenior software engineer
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engineer for a new options trading backoffice application for Austria
Skills: C, AIX, OS/2, APPC
Created back-office connection for an OS/2-based trading platform
for ÖTOB (Austrian options exchange) member banks.
C program was part DDE and part multithreaded DLL to APPC.
Designed and administered the DB/2 database.
Used the exchange's API to load the database.
Wrote the margin calculation and the option exercise algorithm that the banks applied to their accounts.
Upgraded an options quotation system for the DTB (German futures exchange) to accommodate options on futures and indices.
Performed this at a customer site in Frankfurt.
University of Chicagoprogrammer/analyst
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database engineer for a new financial research data product;
founding engineer for a new MIS department
Skills: C, Sybase, Ingres, Solaris, SunOS, Xelos
Founding staff for a new division-level MIS system in the Biological Sciences dean's office.
Developed reports and user interfaces in C.
Produced an online space utilization survey and reports for academic HR to account for salaries and track their history.
Performed DBA tasks and Solaris/PC/Mac network administration.
Wrote a C library for manipulating a NASDAQ research database
for the Center for Research in Security Prices in the business school.
Built upon that programs for error checking, report generation, and financial calculations;
as well as UNIX utilities that gave research staff direct access to the data.
Analyzed system and software performance using system activity reports and profiling tools.
education
University of Chicago: A.B. in physics and math, minor in chemistry and economics
University of California, Berkeley: credits in graduate math (topology), –
projects
Various software projects that I've worked on, typically on a pro bono basis.
Democracy Dollars
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Implementing a full-stack realization of a “democracy vouchers”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_voucher)
program for the City of Oakland, from someone else's Figma design.
Goal is to advance the project with more realistic user testing of designs.
sbt-sliquibase
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Project home: https://codeberg.org/PerformantData/sbt-sliquibase.
I had been kicking around a rough ersion of this idea for years,
but finally formalized it into a Maven Central project in 2026Q1.
Receives 2k+ downloads/month.