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) and CTO 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

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