The Difference is A Passion for Excellence
Hello I'm Steven! I'm a software engineer with over 15 years of professional, hands-on experience in full-stack Web application development, cloud infrastructure, and frontend technologies. A proven track-record of driving project success via pragmatic Agile leadership paired with a commitment to technical excellence.
Skills and Proficiencies
I strive to be a well-rounded engineer, and I'm constantly learning new skills and technologies. Here are some of the skills I've acquired over the years.
Cloud Infrastructure
Extensive experience with cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Azure for deploying and managing scalable applications and infrastructure.
Frontend / Web Applications
Expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and React for building accessible, responsive applications and constructing pixel-perfect UIs from Figma designs. Extensive experience with libraries like Next.js (including App Router), Tailwind CSS, and Styled Components.
Code Architecture & Patterns
Highly proficient in TypeScript to enhance code reliability. Well-versed in SOLID principles, functional programming, and other design patterns. Deep understanding of mono-repository management and tooling like PNPM and Turborepo.
Backend / APIs / Web Services
Experienced in writing reliable and secure Node.js Web services, WebSocket servers, and worker queues. Skilled in implementing both RESTful APIs and type-safe GraphQL APIs. Highly knowledgeable in SQL (MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL) and ORMs like Prisma.js.
DevOps & Infrastructure
Proficient in development of CI/CD pipelines using BitBucket, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and CircleCI, reducing deployment times by as much as 80%. Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform and AWS CDK.
Project Management / Agile
Certified ScrumMaster with expertise in boosting developer productivity and maximizing value for stakeholders. Can lead sprint ceremonies effectively and efficiently, resulting in productive and predictable engineering cycles.
Certified ScrumMaster via Scrum Alliance
Professional Work Experience
Synchrony Financial
Technical Lead
January 2025Current
- Decreased feature delivery times by 40% and improved team health by establishing and leading the adoption of Agile best practices, including strict Definitions of Ready and story decomposition techniques.
- Worked closely with the Product Owner and Scrum master to ensure story requirements were clear, actionable, and testable prior to backlog refinement sessions.
- Maintained effective and collaborative relationships with Tech Leadership from other teams to facilitate knowledge transfer sessions and swift clarification and resolution of dependencies or issues between teams.
- Mentored developers around challenges, code quality and other technical excellence standards and expectations, and shared my knowledge to help guide their own professional growth.
- Contributed to Community of Practice projects to advance engineering organization-wide goals in technical excellence and collaboration.
General Electric (GE Vernova)
Senior React Developer
March 2024January 2025
- Built and maintained accessible, responsive UI components for a SaaS application used by power grid operators to view and simulate real-time data.
- Utilized a modern tech stack, including Node.js, Vite, TypeScript, React, and Tailwind CSS, to build a performant, scalable and elegant frontend application.
- Wrote detailed and effective component unit tests using Vitest, React Testing Library, and Playwright for functional testing.
- Architected a cloud provider agnostic pipeline for deployment of the Web application infrastructure in the customer's own cloud environment.
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Lead Engineer
July 2023March 2024
- Spearheaded a three-person development team to build a unified platform that enabled seamless, multi-cloud resource provisioning (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud) through a single web interface.
- Orchestrated all scrum ceremonies (standups, backlog refinement, sprint planning) and utilized key metrics to track and improve team velocity against project goals.
- Collaborated directly with stakeholders to translate business needs into detailed technical requirements, actionable Jira tickets, and a strategically prioritized product backlog.
- Mentored junior developers on frontend best practices (HTML, CSS, React), elevating the team's skills to produce a more performant and user-friendly application.
- Drove significant improvements to the codebase and developer workflow by enhancing accessibility, automating repetitive tasks, and implementing modern tooling (ESLint, TypeScript, Playwright).
Jaguar Land Rover
Senior Engineer
January 2023July 2023
- Acted as sole engineer, embedded in the Design/UX Research organization, building a Web application for designers to embed and test prototypes from tools like Figma.
- Designed and built a highly scalable, full-stack application and backend services using PNPM for mono-repository tooling, Turborepo for task orchestration, and Kubernetes for container orchestration.
- Implemented a novel solution that extended the functionality of prototyping tools, going far beyond the expectations of the product team.
- Eliminated the need for two full-time roles by designing and automating the prototype import and processing workflow.
National Basketball Association (NBA)
Senior Software Engineer
April 2022January 2023
- Engineered and maintained core Data APIs using Node.js to deliver real-time game data and player statistics for NBA.com and televised broadcasts.
- Improved request latency and performance by up to 80% by implementing a new GraphQL API service to replace a legacy REST API.
- Created a GraphQL API client library used by frontend teams for simple, type-safe data consumption.
Nike
Senior Software Engineer III
August 2018April 2022
- Built a Machine Learning-driven chat application on the Twilio platform using JavaScript/TypeScript and React.js to support and engage high-value customers.
- Leveraged "CSS-in-JS" libraries to construct responsive, pixel-perfect UI components from Figma designs.
- Collaborated with backend and mobile teams to design efficient, scalable solutions, define API contracts, and prioritize sprint work.
- Maintained highly-effective relationships with the Product Owner to refine and prioritize the product backlog and validate business hypotheses via A/B experiments.
Nike
Lead Engineer
May 2015August 2018
- Led a three-person team to redesign and migrate the Nike customer support sites from the Oracle CX platform to a single AWS cloud-hosted React application.
- Directed the complex migration of 48 legacy PHP codebases to a modern Node.js mono-repository with full source control and CI/CD pipelines.
- Collaborated closely with the Product Owner to create and refine stories, manage inter-team dependencies, and mentor junior engineers.
- Architected and implemented scalable data warehousing solutions using Snowflake, consolidating multiple data sources and optimizing query performance for real-time analytics.
Oracle
Demo Site Architect
April 2011May 2015
- Architected and built Oracle Service Cloud CRM solutions for product demonstrations according to requirements provided by the sales team.
- Utilized the Oracle Service Cloud platform to deliver complete, end-to-end CRM solutions to demonstrate core product functionality.
- Used HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP/CodeIgniter to construct Customer Portal sites that were tailored specifically for each prospective sales lead.