I am a Software Engineer with 6 years of experience specializing in backend systems, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure. I'm passionate about building highly observable, scalable and reliable software solutions.
I have also spent more than 8 years in leadership at Furry Weekend Atlanta, one of the worlds largest furry cons, with a focus on communication, community building, organizational & event management, and artistic direction.
I’m currently open to remote or local opportunities in backend engineering, developer experience and advocacy, or communications management, particularly within tech-driven or event-focused organizations.
Engineering
October 2024 - Present
- Built and maintained scalable backend infrastructure supporting user provisioning and site security for enterprise-level commerce platforms that handle billions of monthly API requests.
- Developed and enhanced a Spring-based SDK, enabling third-party developers to integrate seamlessly with the Business Services Platform, reducing new project onboarding time.
- Migrated platform encryption from MD5 to AES-256 using Google Tink, achieving FedRAMP compliance and enhancing data security.
- Optimized CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, accelerating deployment frequency.
March 2022 - May 2024
- Engineered real-time matching and ranking services optimized for low-latency performance, improving job matching and user experience for millions of job seekers.
- Collaborated on developing a custom fail-out timer system that gracefully terminated requests exceeding time limits while still returning usable results.
- Enhanced service stability and throughput through targeted performance tuning, load testing, and observability improvements, ensuring adherence to strict SLAs.
- Leveraged Indeed’s internal analytics platform to design and build dashboards that monitored marketplace health and guided business and product decisions.
February 2019 - March 2022
- Developed and integrated backend features for the MyADP web application, creating tools and services that enabled partner teams to more easily build and extend platform functionality.
- Implemented and maintained core backend services and the MyADP API proxy, improving reliability, performance, and internal developer experience.
- Built and maintained full-stack products not owned by a business service such as manager task delegation, and 2 factor auth.
- Built and maintained the front-end tools used by ADP support teams to handle user and organization provisioning.
- Served as Scrum Master, collaborating with product owners to plan sprints, prioritize tasks, and ensure timely delivery of high-impact features.
Community
2022 - Present
Over the course of my tenure as a Director at FWA I have led the direction of the A/V, DJ, Graphics, Photography, Outreach, Social, Studio, Advertising, Marketing, Community, and Online Communities teams.
Due to the wide range of hats I've worn in this role, I've broken down my responsibilities into a few key areas:
- Oversee organization communication to both attendees and volunteer staff.
- Worked with the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau to expand outreach into Atlanta and develop marketing opportunities across the City of Atlanta, including at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
- Worked with furry community groups and community leaders to build furry community events inside and outside of FWA the event.
- Worked with and coached the executive leadership team on how to discuss major organizational changes to both our staff and attendees.
- Help guide the team that signs FWA's special performers to pick performers that will resonate with as much of our community as possible.
- Created and run "Club FWA", FWA's 3rd, smaller stage focused on providing space for community groups to put on their own shows and lineups.
- Worked with event and group leaders in our community to help facilitate spaces for them to engage with the community at our event.
- Created and run the "FWAREHOUSE", a warehouse rave in the FWA warehouse/office space that happens multiple times through the year with 150+ people in attendance.
- Responsible for the planning, writing, and execution of Opening and Closing ceremonies for 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
- Assisted in stage design for both FWA's Atrium and Club stages.
- Planned and implemented organization-wide short and long term goals for a 17,000+ attendee non-profit event that has raised over $350,000 for charity while I have been in this position.
- Established and developed multiple teams into independent departments that collaboratively create marketing content and engage with our community.
- Built FWA's internal registration analytics and tracking using PostgresSQL and Redash to get insight into registration trends and attendee statistics to assist fellow leadership in making decisions.
- Built, own, and maintain FWA's website furryweekend.com. Built on Astro, GitCMS, and Cloudflare Pages, with backend services running on Cloudflare Workers. This new version of furryweekend.com has been proven to be able to serve thousands of requests a second to users with load times staying under 2 seconds, while the old version would regularly crash on major announcements and releases.
- Created the marketing website for Club FWA.
- Crated multiple promotional websites for the FWAREHOUSE
- Created multiple ARG websites for both Club FWA and the FWAREHOUSE.
2017 - 2022
As the Studio Lead my responsibilities included overseeing the creation of narrative video content year-round for Furry Weekend Atlanta to market the event and promote the theme. At con I ran a team of 5+ volunteers to capture large events on photo and video.
During FWA's shutdown during COVID I was the production coordinator for Furry Weekend At-Home, the multi-day long streams we ran to raise money to ensure the event could continue.
- Producer on multiple narrative videos shot to explore FWA's yearly theme.
- Produced and led a team shooting critical video content for FWA's special guest shows.
- Photographer for FWA's special guest shows.
Furry Weekend At-Home were 2 multi-day livestream events produced in 2020 and 2021 to raise money for Furry Weekend Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person events were not possible.
Without the success of these events, Furry Weekend Atlanta would most likely not have survived COVID.
- Coordinated a team of 10+ volunteers both in-person and remote to produce a multi-day livestream event.
- Managed and planned production schedule, gear, and talent.
- Created sets for different segments of the show.
- Responsible for lighting and camera work for our live segments.
- Handled online communication and Twitch moderation.