Jan 2025 – Present · 1 yr 4 mos · Remote

• https://www.skool.com/zero-to-principal-engineer-6805/about
• "Zero to Principal Engineer" is a comprehensive learning community designed to empower engineers at every level of their career journey. In today’s fast-paced tech industry, success requires more than just technical expertise; it demands a mastery of both hard and soft skills. Our program is tailored to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to excel and lead in any technical environment. Learn soft and hard skills like:
• ⦁ Source Control
• ⦁ QA and Release Management
• ⦁ Testing Without Tears
• ⦁ Effective Refactoring
• ⦁ Data Structures & Algorithms
• ⦁ Technical Project Management
• ⦁ Systems Design
• ⦁ DevOps/SRE
• ⦁ Conquering Legacy Systems
• ⦁ Technical Leadership
• ⦁ Becoming a Team Lead
• ⦁ How to Get a Promotion
• ⦁ Make the Most of 1:1s
• ⦁ How to Survive Office Politics (especially if you're Autistic like me)
• ⦁ Get out of Tutorial Hell & Engineer Real Software
• ⦁ Start from Zero and Work to Become a Principal Engineer
• Projects built with:
• ⦁ Python3
• ⦁ TypeScript
• ⦁ SQL
• ⦁ JVM Languages: Kotlin & Modern Java (Spring Boot)
• ⦁ React
• ⦁ .NET/C#/F#
• ⦁ Ruby
• ⦁ AWS
• ⦁ k8s
• ⦁ AI & ML

Jan 2024 – Dec 2025 · 1 yr 11 mos · Los Angeles, California, United States · Hybrid

• As a Principal Engineer (lateral to Sr. Engineering Manager) at Complex NTWRK, I combine my experience with software and systems architecture, plus hands-on engineering, to act as a force multiplier for the Engineering Team. Combining strategy and tactics, I help our Team Leads maximize their efficiency as leaders while continuously improving our platform as a whole. In my capacity as a Principal Engineer, I coach and mentor other Engineers at all levels of the organization to cultivate their happiness and productivity as we deliver innovative tech on tight deadlines. Drawing on my cloud computing experience as a former SRE Tech Lead, I help the DevOps team drive down cloud computing OpEx while working to continuously improve our InfoSec posture.
• Highlights:
• Reduced annual observability costs by ~$250k USD/year
• Supported the legacy NTWRK platform during the Complex NTWRK merger.
• Led an AI Working Group to identify, promote, and deploy opportunities for AI adoption.
• Initiated the Architecture Working Group which overhauled e-commerce availability: merch drops no longer require Engineers in the war room.
• With two other colleagues, I led the Mentorship Program (I mentored multiple ICs on their way to Engineer Manager).
• Spearheaded the Platform Engineering discipline combining DevOps, DevEx, QA, and InfoSec.
• Developed and delegated the InfoSec Working Group responsibility for measurable improvements week over week.
• Architected and engineered a modern EKS environment with Fargate profiles and Argo CD for ephemeral environments while mentoring others in the Architecture Working Group to up-skill.
• Led numerous successful Lunch and Learns to upskill the team's linear algebra, AI/ML, and vectorization skills to build AI applications more sophisticated than a simple OpenAI or Claude wrapper.
• And so much more!

Mar 2023 – Dec 2023 · 9 mos · Remote

• As a Founding Engineer, I help lay the foundation for our policies and practices while building our greenfield infrastructure with a firm eye on compliance while cultivating developer happiness. In addition to architecting and building our cloud infrastructure according to current best practices (AWS Control Tower), I am also hands-on as a Software Engineer functioning at the Sr. Principal level. I have complete autonomy over the SRE backlog and actively contribute to the SWE backlog, contributing features and peer reviewing the work of my colleagues.
• While at Ahara, I architected and built the in-app Eat / Recipe Recommendation engine with full personalization based on the model created by the Data Science team. I contributed to the Electronic Medical Record auditing capabilities and owned the integration with Elasticsearch (both the infrastructure and the in-app integration). I contributed to automated testing at all levels of the testing pyramid. While at Ahara, I wrote documentation and Requests for Comments (RFCs) to help document, design, and drive larger product engineering initiatives. I provided AWS Solutions Architecture and SRE support to the Data Science team. Additionally, I supported IT functions with the VP of Engineering (my direct manager).

Sep 2021 – Mar 2023 · 1 yr 6 mos

• SRE Tech Lead and original member of the Architecture Guild. As a Principal Engineer on the SRE Team, my focus was architecting and implementing infrastructure and process improvements across the entire organization while being a key contributor to strategic initiatives driven by the requirements developed by Sr. Leadership. As a Principal Engineer, I co-authored the Engineering Growth Framework and the SRE Growth Framework to provide more objective criteria for career advancement. As a Principal Engineer, I also helped mentor other SREs and SWEs while collaborating with technical and non-technical teams. While working as a Principal Engineer, I was one of the original members of the Architecture Guild that standardized engineering norms and best practices across the entire organization while collaborating with other Principal Engineers, Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, Directors, and individual contributors.

Apr 2020 – Sep 2021 · 1 yr 5 mos

• Built and developed the DevOps Team and helped guide the transition to a DevOps Team. As the Tech Lead on the DevOps Team, I drove the architecture for our cloud hosting platform with a strong emphasis on Kubernetes. My strategy as the Lead DevOps Engineer and then SRE Tech Lead was to keep our systems highly available, scalable, and reliable while minimizing friction for the Software Engineering teams. In addition, I guided the requirements for the SRE backlog while staying hands-on with the team.

Jun 2019 – Apr 2020 · 10 mos

• Endpoint is a mobile-first Title and Escrow company, built from the ground up to deliver a radically improved closing experience for real estate agents and their buyers and sellers. Through its digital platform, Endpoint keeps everyone effortlessly and securely in the know throughout the transaction, while streamlining the process to make closing simple, fast and transparent
• For more information, visit:
• https://getendpoint.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/endpointclosing/
• https://www.twitter.com/endpointclosing

Feb 2019 – May 2019 · 3 mos · Greater Los Angeles Area

• As a Sr. DevOps Engineer, I fully automated headless Jenkins, automated the instrumentation and monitoring of large scale database operations, and helped support one of the world's best Kubernetes infrastructures outside of Google.

Oct 2017 – Feb 2019 · 1 yr 4 mos · Glendale, CA

• Implementation and maintenance of distributed systems, with a focus on the JVM, integrating and managing IP rights for Disney’s catalog for Disney+ and all servicing:
• Used Spring & Kotlin to integrate numerous existing legacy enterprise systems serving the daily operations of Disney's post-theatrical distribution pipelines and workflows.
• Used Spring & Kotlin to extract, transform, and load newly integrated data into a brand enterprise application containing billions of data points; all according to complex business rules designed to replace and ease existing enterprise workflows.
• Used Spring & Java to create an enterprise-facing message distribution app reliably and gracefully serving millions of enterprise messages every month.
• Used Spring & Java to implement upstream and downstream integrations by utilizing enterprise design patterns to create a coherent data model that we can easily reason about and parse before delivering to downstream customers based on business rules.
• Helped review and implementing an ever-evolving architecture with engineering team lead.
• Helped onboard and mentor other developers and team members.
• Participated in near-daily code reviews of team mates' code.

Oct 2016 – Oct 2017 · 1 yr

• Sr. Software and Site Reliability Engineer utilizing the following technologies in my day to day work:
• AWS
• Kubernetes
• Django
• Go
• Jenkins / Groovy
• Traefik
• Consul
• Salt
• Python 3.x
• PostgreSQL / MySQL
• I am responsibility for designing and automating our Kubernetes clusters in dev, qa, staging, production environments.
• Helped consolidated a sprawling micro-services catalog built using diverse languages and frameworks into a comprehensive architecture standardized on Django REST Framework, all on top of Kubernetes, and resulting in a drastic decrease in monthly OpEx while greatly improving site reliability, customer satisfaction, and developer happiness.
• Using Go, I architected and designed a custom application proxy in Go to be the ingress and egress point for our new API version. All services are mounted at URIs served by our API router (similar in design to Traefik). This API gateway comfortably supports many millions of events per instance per month.
• Responsible for automated deployments of our software through Jenkins and the Groovy job DSL.
• Site Reliability Engineering to guarantee service availability and reliability under load.

Jul 2016 – Oct 2016 · 3 mos

• Software and Site Reliability Engineer utilizing the following technologies in my day to day work:
• PEP8 Python
• Flask, Django, Django REST Framework
• Go, Gin
• Traefik, Consul, etcd
• Terraform, Salt
• Docker, Kubernetes, Vagrant
• AWS, boto
• MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ
• Confluence, Jira
• Slack
• Ubuntu, CoreOS
• Jenkins
• Git, GitHub

Jan 2015 – Jul 2016 · 1 yr 6 mos · Greenville, North Carolina Area

• .NET Web Development
• Systems Architecture Design and Development
• Design and Development of Online Game Systems for the Regulated Gaming Industry
• Web Services Design and Development
• Infrastructure Design
• Infrastructure Automation with PowerShell / Desired State Configuration
• Test-Driven Development
• SQL Server / Database Development
• Microsoft Azure

Jul 2014 – Jan 2015 · 6 mos · Greenville, North Carolina Area

• .NET Web Development
• Systems Architecture Design and Development
• Design and Development of Online Game Systems for the Regulated Gaming Industry
• Web Services Design and Development
• Infrastructure Design
• Infrastructure Automation with PowerShell / Desired State Configuration
• Test-Driven Development
• SQL Server / Database Development
• Microsoft Azure

Dec 2014 – Present · 11 yrs 5 mos · Los Angeles Metropolitan Area · Remote

• Founded Wizard Beard Studio (aka The Wizard & The Wyrd, LLC), focusing on publishing complete games without microtransactions or paid DLC.
• Provided software development and architecture services to game studios, enhancing code maintainability and performance.
• Implemented architecture best practices to improve game development processes and reduce technical debt.
• Creating advanced, open source game systems and educational content.
• Mentoring Software Engineers at all levels of their careers.

Jan 2013 – Jul 2014 · 1 yr 6 mos

• As the I/S Director, I manage all Development and Operations teams at Evolve, Inc. in addition to developing in-house business intelligence software to help business leadership gain deep insight into the rich data sources of our organization and business units.
• Systems Architecture Development
• Business Intelligence Analysis
• IT/IS Project Management
• Systems Integration
• Managing a Team of Front End and Back End Developers
• Working Directly with Business Leadership to Reduce Operating Expenses
• Talent Recruitment for Technical Staff
• Custom Software Design Development for Line of Business Software
• Data Modeling and Data Warehousing
• InfoSec / Application and Network Security Auditing
• Infrastructure Automation with Puppet Enterprise to Reduce OpEx/CapEx
• In my role as a consultant to our clientele, I often perform maintenance and original software engineering work with the following languages, tools, and platforms:
• Ruby, Ruby on Rails
• PHP, Concrete5
• C#, .NET, MVC 3/4/5
• MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL

Feb 2012 – Jan 2013 · 11 mos

• Sr. Systems and Network Administrator specializing in enterprise virtualization with VMware vSphere.
• Tier III Support directly to Sr. and Jr. Developers.
• Network Security Management and Auditing.
• Linux and Windows Server Builds, Configurations, Maintenance, and Automation.
• New Business Initiatives.
• Project Management.

May 2011 – Sep 2011 · 4 mos · Pittsburgh, PA

• Building and Deploying Citrix XenServer 5.6 Hosts.
• Building and Deploying CentOS Linux Virtual Machines optimized for the Magento eCommerce Platform.
• Enterprise Backups.
• Firewall and Security Device Configurations.
• Router and Switch Configurations.
• Creation and Maintenance of Internal Documentation and Standard Operating Procedures.
• Network Mapping and Analysis

Nov 2009 – Jan 2012 · 2 yrs 2 mos

Aug 2008 – Mar 2009 · 7 mos · Greater Pittsburgh Area

• Administered Siebel CRM for local Account Executives.
• Responsible for demonstrating proprietary logistics software to potential and new clients.
• Provided administration support to proprietary logistics and transportation management software.
• Assisted clients with their everyday transportation management software needs.

Mar 2005 – Jun 2005 · 3 mos

• Created and maintained content for the Gateway in-house knowledge bases.
• Drafted and revised Standard Operating Procedures to improve the turnaround on customer issue
• resolution which increased the team's efficiency by ~30%.
• Provided direct Tier II support to 100 Tier I Desktop Support Analysts and 60 Tier II Support Technicians.
• working to resolve all manner of Windows XP desktop and system hardware related issues according to the
• scope of the Gateway Desktop Warranty.

Dec 2004 – Mar 2005 · 3 mos

• Excelled at supporting over 200 applications for Windows based desktop environments.
• One of only 60 Technicians providing Tier I, II, & III premium support for the Gateway enterprise.
• Operated on a team with an all-inclusive scope of support allowing me to utilize my technical expertise to
• assist consumers with all software and hardware issues outside the confnes of their desktop warranty.

Sep 2004 – Nov 2004 · 2 mos

• Performed Tier I support for all Gateway models, desktops, and portables.
• Assisted customers with installation of all versions of Windows, including Media Center, and installing OEM
• software, drivers, and utilities included in their software bundles.
• Provided telephone assistance with hardware replacement and software troubleshooting within the warranty scope of support.