Principal Software Architect — beck@j38.uk

  • Currently building adaptive testing engines in R and Rust — sub-50ms item selection using Item Response Theory, shadow-testing, and MIP solvers.
  • Last four companies either were acquired or 10x'd.
  • Lifelong interest in languages — programming (Pascal onward) and ancient (Latin, Greek).
  • Promotes the practice of XP, esp. pair programming and Test Driven Development.

Work

Principal Software Architect — Classic Learning Test

Dec 2020 – Present

  • Served as sole systems developer (SRE, backend, frontend) through major growth phase; now principal engineer/architect for team of 10.
  • Primary code reviewer and architect of shared frameworks and patterns within CLT apps.
  • Replaced PHP monolith with modern Node + React (both TypeScript).
  • Mentored and guided junior developers through pair programming and thoughtful code review.
  • Expertise gained in E2E Load Testing, AWS (Lambda, RDS tuning, Kubernetes on EKS and autoscaling), TypeScript, OpenAPI Codegen, React, and Tailwind.
  • Currently building adaptive testing (CAT) engines in R and Rust using IRT data with shadow-testing and MIP solvers for constraint-based optimization, targeting sub-50ms item selection at scale.
  • Domain knowledge gained in psychometric adaptive testing and UX for students.

Senior Software Developer — Carbon Five (acquired by West Monroe)

Sep 2018 – Dec 2020

  • Attune Insurance (NYC startup) — Worked with mid-size team on a portal for insurance agents to get quotes and purchase policies in minutes. Also integrated with Intuit/Quickbooks app store. TypeScript, Angular, NodeJS, Postgres, Docker, Terraform, AWS + Azure.
  • First National Bank of Omaha — Tech lead for a new banking app for Android which launched in early 2020. Kotlin, RxKotlin, Android, Google Play Store.
  • Base Camp Health (Chattanooga startup) — Tech lead on a COVID-19 survey app used daily by students/staff at schools. Scaled to 20,000+ users in less than three months. TypeScript, React, NodeJS, Postgres, Docker.

Frontend Developer — Skuid (acquired by Nintex)

Dec 2016 – Sep 2018

  • Worked closely with designers and PM on a new custom component and design system in frontend (JavaScript) for Skuid's core product, a web app to build web apps on top of custom data sources (specializing in Salesforce).

DevOps Engineer -> Full Stack Dev — OpenTable (Quickcue acquired by OpenTable)

Oct 2012 – Nov 2016

  • Sole DevOps engineer for startup Quickcue — an iPad app for restaurants offering waitlist management and SMS to diners. Administered CI, config management with Ansible, automated testing, cloud infrastructure (Rackspace), Postgres databases, and monitoring/alerting. Emphasis on scalability and disaster recovery.
  • Post-acquisition, converted Quickcue infrastructure to AWS + OpenTable services. Developed a backend scheduler in Clojure for reservation reminders via email/sms/voice. Refactored a Node/Angular web app to a new product. Both projects in production with 5,000+ restaurants in active use. Docker, Node, Angular, React, Redux, GraphQL.

Teaching Fellow — Catholic University of America

Jun 2011 – May 2016

  • Created first ever online course in Latin for the department and taught it in the CUA School of Canon Law.
  • Taught textbook and reading courses in Greek & Latin.

DevOps Engineer — Medium Inc.

Mar 2004 – Jun 2011

  • Managed client DNS, email, and web hosting on bare metal Linux (Slackware). Handled full server administration — networking, firewalls, VPN, databases (MySQL), and monitoring. Programming in Bash, PHP, C, and JavaScript.

Education

Skills

TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Angular, Rust, R, Clojure, Kotlin, SQL (Postgres, MySQL), GraphQL, Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), Terraform, AWS (Lambda, RDS, EKS), NixOS/Linux, Ansible, OpenAPI, Tailwind