Experience

Over the last 15+ years, I have been building full-stack web applications, fault-tolerant backends and large-scale distributed systems serving millions of users per month. Besides my full-time roles, I have also worked on a freelance basis - consulting independently, shipping products and reviewing codebases.

I began my career as a freelance software developer and I had a good run on Upwork before I decided to move to long-term, full-time roles. During my freelance years I built full-stack web applications taking care of backend, front end, database and often the deployment and server management as well. I started with PHP, learning CodeIgniter, Symfony and eventually Laravel. I also worked with WordPress from time to time. Then came Python with all its magic and a batteries-included philosophy. Django and Django REST framework were my go-to choices for building RESTful APIs. On the front end, I often used React to build SPAs.

I have had several full-time roles throughout my career, but so far the longest chapter has been at Local Staffing LLC. I have built large-scale messaging platforms sending email and SMS alerts to millions of users per month, high-volume, high-throughput data pipelines for custom analytics, an internal job aggregation platform and a series of microservices supporting these services. I started with Python and over the span of the next 10+ years, I adopted Node.js and eventually Go. These days, all my new backend work involves Go.

Beyond hands-on development, I have also contributed to the system design and architecture of projects led by other team members, and worked with the DevOps team to plan infrastructure changes and optimize resource usage across the board.