I am currently using computational neuroscience and mathematics research to develop a biologically-inspired architecture framework in Unity (C#) to construct AI networks end-to-end that are capable of fluent understanding and navigation of spatiotemporal environments.

• Implemented a basic framework to define network layers as compute shaders and combine them into a single render pass in Unity's scriptable render pipeline system.
• Implemented a basic framework to define network layers as compute shaders and combine them into a single render pass in Unity's scriptable render pipeline system.
• Currently implementing network layers for motion detection to feed further optical flow and visual odometry layers.

An inaugural member of the newly-formed Build and Release Tools team, our team’s purview at the intersection of build and release engineering, platform engineering, and DevOps was maintaining and improving tooling and processes to assist developers in smoothly releasing software.

• Responsible for stewardship of our CI/CD (Buildkite) service and assisting developers in its utilization.
• Worked closely with CloudOps (i.e. the infrastructure team), often serving as a liaison between them and developer teams.
• Actively participated in discussions and advocacy to improve the developer experience and adherence to better practices.

Highlights

• Designed and implemented (Ruby) tooling for developers to document and analyze code ownership around a Ruby monolith monorepo, helping to gain insight into locating proper stakeholders and resolving potential conflicts. The tooling parsed multiple sources of truth to construct file and code object ownership trees, reconciled them into a single tree, then generated a canonical CODEOWNERS file for GitHub.
• Designed and implemented a (Node.js) service for generating PR review reports containing various recommendations such as which reviewers to request based upon ownership within the changeset. The service integrated with any configured GitHub repositories and published recommendation reports as comments on open pull requests.
• Made improvements to an internal (Python) deployment queue service — integrated across GitHub, Slack, and our CI/CD platform — that helped developers navigate the build/deployment process, both independently and collaboratively. The service handled deployment locking as well as feedback on pipeline progress, allowing developers to manage deployments mostly via a Slackbot with a minimum of additional panel-watching.
• Implemented unit and integration tests for the aforementioned projects in Chai / Mocha / Sinon.js, pytest, and RSpec.

I created an asset for the Unity Asset Store that provided a simulated muscle model.

• Researched biomechanics to implement a Hill-type muscle model in Unity for controlling physical character movements through muscle activation.
• Carefully studied muscle anatomy and motion to rig a humanoid model with 200+ individual modeled muscles based on real human skeletal muscles.
• Built several Unity editor components to aid in-editor muscle creation and testing.
• Utilized Doxygen to generate well-formatted comprehensive user and API documentation in HTML and PDF formats.
• Experimented with reinforcement learning and CMA-ES strategies to build a controller for humanoid locomotion.

I assisted a colleague by fixing an interactive Leaflet visualization with breaking performance issues for the Urban Renewal Impact.

Highlights

• Migrated the front-end from jQuery to Vue.js w/ Vuex to better manage the application's relatively complex state and interactivity.
• Redesigned the back-end Slim PHP API endpoints (and SQL queries) to leverage the PostgreSQL database to fetch and serve data in a much more targeted manner, relieving critical processing pressure from the client side.
• Eliminated large portions of inefficient and redundant code, resulting in a whopping net 190k+ lines removed.

I joined the Dallas Morning News as an inaugural member of their new in-house developer team, working primarily on a new knowledge graph system for local information and features that utilized it.

Highlights

• LocalGraf:
  • Built the core software for a local information knowledge graph system (Amazon Neptune, Elasticsearch) called LocalGraf.
  • Built an (Node.js) object-graph mapping (OGM) library that generated Gremlin queries (graph traversal language used by Amazon Neptune).
  • Wrote a (Node.js) preprocessor tool that dynamically regenerated the entire service GraphQL API using data models defined via GraphQL files. Using GraphQL for data modeling also empowered other (more front-end oriented) developers to submit schema modifications with minimal additional assistance.
  • Helped develop and maintain LocalGraf's administrative interface and AWS infrastructure.
  • Assisted in building React components, mostly centered around functionality that utilized LocalGraf.
• Performed ETL and data quality work for multiple feature projects utilizing LocalGraf such as the North Texas Giving Guide, annual Top 100 Workplaces, and School Guide
• Assisted in migrating dallasnews.com from a custom CMS to the Washington Post's (React-based) Arc Fusion platform (now Arc XP) for a site relaunch.

I joined the Center for Open Data Enterprise as a solo developer to build the UN SDG National Reporting Initiative website, a platform aimed at helping national organizations share knowledge on UN Sustainable Development Goals reporting.

Highlights

• UN SDG National Reporting Initiative website:
  • Helped drive the design process in cooperation with Threespot, creating multiple quick website prototypes throughout the process to guide decision-making.
  • Implemented the website using a JAMstack solution (Jekyll, Bourbon's Neat Sass grid, Vue.js w/ Vuex, Express.js, Sequelize, PostgreSQL) deployed via Netlify and AWS, with the back-end admin panel for staff CRUD interactions delegated to Forest Admin.
  • Implemented full-text search entirely in PostgreSQL to prevent the overhead of managing Elasticsearch.
• Overhauled the Open Data Impact Map website (JS, PHP, ArcGIS), which included redesigning relational schema, bugfixing, code refactoring, and infrastructure updates, resulting in the elimination of ~20k lines of code.
• Implemented a complete redesign for a relaunch of CODE’s (Webflow) website and continued providing maintenance support.

At the DNC, I created and migrated automation pipelines across multiple tools, services, and environments (Jenkins, Ansible, Chef, Packer, Terraform) to rapidly migrate existing applications and systems across AWS environments.

Highlights

I joined Sunlight Labs during its hectic final year, inheriting a rapidly evolving situation and a range of responsibilities due to large staff turnover.

Highlights

• Maintained the Open States open source project. This involved maintaining the Django website and API; MongoDB database; a Docker-based fleet of unique web scrapers (Python) for all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico; and daily data quality across all of the ingested data. The web scrapers required frequent maintenance due to publishing inconsistencies and system changes from official state sources, with commensurate amounts of data quality work.
• Managed open source community contributions to Open States, providing status updates, guidance, and PR reviews.
• Helped address continued support requests and infrastructure maintenance demands for Sunlight's other existing projects and tools, both internal and external.
• Worked to improve automation of several pipelines to better leverage limited capacity.
• Provided technical assistance to other teams, from guidance to infrastructure setup for project prototypes.

At CauseLabs I handled a range of responsibilities for both internal and client projects, and served as primary developer on client projects for the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (DTFA).

Highlights

• Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption client projects:
  • Performed a complete redesign and reimplementation of the DTFA organization's website (self-hosted WordPress), which involved implementing the new front-end design (Foundation), migrating all of the WordPress plugins, and carefully cleaning up and migrating all of the underlying MySQL data.
  • Implemented a newly designed WordPress site for the DTFA Kickball campaign.
  • Managed the AWS infrastructure and performance profiling/optimization for the DTFA websites.
• Built an (AngularJS) admin panel for Moneythink to interface with the Parse application database and allow instructors to manage their students' education modules.
• Built a WordPress CRM platform to allow for managing missionary donation profiles in a centralized and unified manner, integrating multiple plugins with canonical fundraising data from Blackbaud's eTapestry SOAP API (horrible).
• Responsible for implementing a variety of other client work across multiple frameworks including bugfixes, feature requests, service integrations, and ETL pipelines.
• Managed server administration, AWS infrastructure administration, and Jenkins build pipelines for both internal and client properties.

At Javelin, I migrated and optimized ETL pipelines for a PostgreSQL-backed data warehouse.

• Analyzed and optimized PostgreSQL query performance.
• Migrated and consolidated ETL pipelines into a Pentaho Data Integration system, reducing maintenance complexity and improving processing performance.
• Wrote ETL task monitoring tools (Perl, PHP) that integrated into a custom in-house ETL task monitoring dashboard.

At ACDET, I worked on a web interface for their differential diagnosis (DDX) education platform.

Highlights

• Built an admin interface (Perl, Catalyst, Template Toolkit) to allow clients to manage learning modules and students.

I joined the Texas A&M-Commerce Sam Rayburn Student Center as part of a small student team formed to meet growing web development needs that were not being adequately met by the campus IT department.

Highlights

• Helped maintain the (PHP) campus event scheduling calendar system.
• Adapted an open-source online ATS (applicant tracking system) to migrate the student center from paper to digital job applications.
• Designed, implemented, and deployed a (PHP) website for a student leadership program for accepting and managing program applications.
• Deployed and maintained the student center's application databases and servers in cooperation with campus IT.
• Introduced Git for version control into our team's development workflow.