I’m happiest in a place that respects
kindness, enthusiasm, and individuality,
doing many kinds of work,
(mostly writing internet software,
but also design, writing, & leadership),
serving a clear and inspiring goal
that creates more value for others than ourselves.
VRChat
Senior Software Engineer / DevOps, March 2018 – present
Cloud, server programming, database, backend, and frontend for a popular virtual reality social platform. Focus areas include authentication, security, search, cloud service cost optimization, distributed workloads, and pipelines for processing and delivering millions of user-submitted creations. Node.js, Python, AWS, C#
Square
Software Development Contractor, July 2019 – March 2020
Solved some of their unique security needs for iOS development, with an updated version of the open source isign library I had created several years earlier. All work open source. Managed one subcontractor.
Bench Accounting
Senior Software Engineer, March 2017 – March 2018
Web applications and microservices, written in Scala and Java, deployed on Amazon Web Services. Modernized the frontend stack from CoffeeScript to standard JavaScript. Led Internal Tools team for a few months. Made many improvements to hiring process. Started Diversity & Inclusion initiative in engineering,
Sauce Labs, Real Device Cloud
Senior Software Engineer, December 2014 – March 2017
Our team created a cloud of real Android and iOS devices, made available for customers to run tests on. Many deep dives into obscure areas of mobile operating systems. Bespoke cloud engineering, on company-owned hardware, mostly with Python microservices.
Created and open sourced: isign, a reimplementation of Apple’s signing protocol, that works on Linux.
Solo projects / Contractor
April 2012 – December 2014
Mobile app project, GeoMind, displayed interesting locations inferred from the density of geotagged photos. Amazon Web Services, Node.JS and PostGIS. Part-time work at a seed investment firm.
Wikimedia Foundation
Software Engineer, December 2009 – January 2012
The Wikimedia Foundation is the organization behind Wikipedia. I primarily worked on their collection of millions of images and videos, creating usable, modern, web-based interfaces to contribute and manage content. Mentored other paid and community developers, including Google Summer of Code 2011, and winning team for Wikipedia SF Hackathon in January 2012. Left amicably to pursue personal projects and reset visa status.
Created the library banana-i18n (originally jQuery.i18n), to localize frontends in hundreds of languages. This has been adopted across all Wikipedia and related sites.
Yahoo (Upcoming.org, Flickr)
Senior Software Engineer, December 2006 – April 2009
Integrated Upcoming.org’s event listings into Yahoo Search, redesigned event and geographic data models, modernized frontend, wrote asset management and deploy system, and mentored new hires. Improved Flickr’s payment systems and FlickrMail. Received Excellence and Hack Day Awards in 2008.
Software Engineer, September 2005 – October 2006
Internationalization for Google Checkout, a Java-based commerce and payments system. Contributed to frontend, data store, order processing, taxation policy, and Merchant API. Created login flow for Google Accounts that allowed secure entry of payment info.
Other experience
- Ardent Heavy Industries, a Bay Area art collective, 2007 – 2012
- Font designer, A Handbook of the Cherokee Verb: A Preliminary Study, Cherokee National Historical Society, 2002
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Communication Studies, Spring 2000
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
Languages
English, French