Where I've Worked & Where I've Been Covered:
Latest Posts:
RSS RSS link | See all posts See all posts linkTraining An AI Model To Create Backyard Sports Characters
A brief post on how I fine tuned my first ever text-to-image model on the characters from Backyard Sports
How to Add Puppeteer to an AWS Lambda Function
AWS isn't always straight forward. Here's a brief guide to adding a Lambda Layer with Puppeteer + Chromium to an AWS Lambda function execution environment
Reflecting on Buildspace Nights & Weekends | Season 5
42 Days - Start to Finish for the Final _buildspace season - In Short Pod - A Way to Curate & Create a Hyper-Personalized Podcast.
Build Something For Yourself
After 1,000+ one-on-one mentor sessions, I often repeated some advice. This post embodies the most repeated, piece of advice I'd give to students.
More About Me:
The past ~4 years, I've been working in the public sector at the VA thru the United States Digital Service. Most recently focused on advocating for and implementing a better Developer Experience - this included certifying shared services across the Enterprise (like design systems, single sign on, & APM tooling); creating an org-wide Internal Developer Platform (IDP) which catalogues >600 APIs, Technical Docs, Systems, etc. in a single source of truth; decreasing the time to onboard for Software Engineers to be days instead of months; and much more.
Prior to focusing on DevEx, I grew a team of federal engineers by ~66% while focusing on softer-managerial skills. Before managing, I had worked with a small & nimble team to overhaul how digital identity plays a role in the federal government - specifically around deprecating exiting credentials.
Before my time in public service, I had ~6 years primarily as a hands-on-keyboard full-stack software engineer developing SaaS products for small/mid startups. These companies (JazzHR & Ibotta) have either been acquired by a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) or listed on the NASDAQ. These two experiences have help me understand how to build and operate multi-disciplinary high-performing teams. Between Ibotta and the public sector, I had a brief stint in consulting working at large telecommunications companies creating Micro-Frontends & writing OAuth 2.0 from the spec.
Typically, the code I wrote was written in Javascript or PHP, but occasionally I dabbled with Go, Java, or anything else. I've always been passionate about contributing to Open Source Software, building excellent technical teams, and thinking about how to solve problems quickly while not losing sight of the longer-term implications.
Selected Side Projects w/ Code:
Website CO2 Emissions Tracker - February 2023
Astro • Node • Puppeteer • Tailwind • GitHub.com
Initially built in 72 hours, this project has been a fun way to track the CO2 emissions of government websites.
Toucan Trips - October 2023
Astro • Node • Supabase • AWS
This was a fun thing to build to ping an API on a cron job to alert me of any low-cost airfare deals.
Cabeça de Queijo - September 2023
Astro • AWS • i8n
Build a bi-lingual fan club website for the Green Bay Packers fans in Brazil. Figuring out how to grow the fan club and get more people involved.
Selected Side Projects W/Out Code:
Denver Internet Initiative (September 2020)
Community Organizing • Signature Collecting • Fundraising
Garnering 296,532 votes & passing with 82.05% `YES` - we organized the opt out of Senate Bill 152 in the City & County of Denver Colorado - allowing the City to, if they choose, offer telecommunications (internet, tv, etc) to their constituents.
Guinness World Record - Tallest Stack of Waffles (May 2018)
Bureaucracy • Waffles • Records
After nearly a year of reviewing the official rules for what constitutes a waffle, we were able to break the previous record for the tallest stack of waffles.