Career

Crammd

My current position is lead software engineer at Crammd. We are a small team, so in addition to making large scale engineering and architecture decisions, I work closely with management and the content team to keep us moving towards a successful launch. I also spend a lot of time writing and reviewing code.

Working at a small startup with very few people requires a rather ruthless approach to engineering. In the classroom there are a lot of toy problems where the technical challenge and learning opportunities are the primary concern, but real world software decisions have material impact on the viability and effectiveness of a business.

At Crammd, we have focused on creating a tech stack and platform architecture that allows development to happen quickly and smoothly. We use a lot of off the shelf solutions to do the heavy lifting in areas where we don't need anything unique (like authentication, database management, and hosting/deployment) which allows us to focus developer time on the core features that set us apart and bring value to customers.

NerdLoom

Before Crammd, I worked with another fantastic team to create sales call tracking software for the athletic ticket sales office at the University of Maine. The project was more of a traditional software engineering contract job, and with a big corporate client the project was heavy on design and documentation.

I did a lot of development work on the platform itself, including implementing state flows across multiple pages and data ingestion and visualization. However, I was also heavily involved with the requirements engineering process and acted as a liaison between the engineers, project managers, and clients on the project. I got very comfortable handling both the technical and non-technical communications needed to keep the project on track and on time.

MuniGrant

Prior to working with the NerdLoom team, I had a contract with another small startup that provides grant writing services to municipalities. This was more of a pure engineering role, where I built out a custom database webapp for keeping track of state and federal grants. With a tight initial deadline and platform restrictions I had a lot of fun creating a solution that met the requirements within the constraints I had.

The biggest challenge I faced was integrating authentication for new app with the existing Wix website and accounts. The solution needed to be secure, and we wanted to avoid requiring the user to sign in multiple times. To solve the issue I created a custom session key system to pass verified logins from Wix to the database app via backend API calls when a user passed through from the Wix site to the database. This solution not only allowed secure login with the user's Wix account, but also made the experience much smoother for the end customer.