About Me

I was born and raised in the Chicago area, growing up on a steady diet of polish sausage and lousy Bears quarterbacks. Since graduating with a degree in computer science from Northwestern University, I have been pursuing a career in software development. I'm currently part of the Member Experience team at Bread Financial, where I work on the React apps supporting their buy now, pay later platform.

I consider myself a generalist full stack engineer that is comfortable working with frontend client code, backend systems, and any other part of the tech stack. One of my favorite aspects of software engineering is that there is always more to learn, and I enjoy picking up new languages and frameworks for work or even just for fun. I am always striving to improve at my craft, and pride myself in the quality, thoroughness, and maintainability of the code that I write. I work best in a highly collaborative team environment, where I can be both an individual contributor and a mentor/force-multiplier for the other team members.

Outside of programming, I enjoy jamming on my guitar, playing tabletop games with friends, and following White Sox baseball. I live with my wife in the southside Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport, where we spend our time playing with our dog Biscuit and volunteering at local nonprofits like Project Onward.

Work History

Bread Financial

Senior Software Engineer - (October 2022 - Present)
Software Engineer II - (November 2020 - October 2022)

  • As a senior software engineer on the Member Experience team, lead development of a consumer-facing React application responsible for nine figures of annual loan originations.
  • Collaborated with internal stakeholders in product, design, and customer service to extend the functionality of a loan servicing application within Bread's financing platform.
  • Implemented scope-based access control using Okta's React SDK in order to give specific authorized individuals the ability to take restricted actions upon loans.
  • Automated deployment of React applications by writing a python script to configure LaunchDarkly feature flags via REST API requests.
  • Lead a working group that created an online training course covering Bread's frontend tech stack, architecture, and infrastructure in order to help better onboard new engineers.
  • Designed and implemented the public REST API interface for a Go microservice that handles loan payments and autopay enrollment.
  • Lead a cross-team effort to improve Bread's engineer interview experience by creating new questions to assess a candidate's frontend coding and system design ability in a fair and unbiased manner.
  • Audited mobile application code written by a third party contracting company and consolidated the findings into a presentation for the senior leadership team.
  • Won first place in Bread's "Shark Tank" competition by pitching a feature prototype to senior executive leadership.

BMW Technology Corporation

Software Engineer (Contractor) - (July 2019 - Oct 2020)

  • Improved the reliability of REST APIs via proactive monitoring, contributing to a 112% increase in mobile app appointment bookings at BMW and MINI dealerships worldwide.
  • Built C#/.NET Core microservices to facilitate dealership payment events using Azure Event Hubs for Kafka.
  • Created a NestJS/NodeJS composite service as a backend for frontend (BFF) for the My BMW mobile application, orchestrating multiple microservices into a single appointment booking API for the client.
  • Implemented a reusable Flutter widget that supports multiple types of dealership appointment scheduling in the My BMW app.
  • Constructed Jenkins CI/CD pipelines using custom Docker images and Azure infrastructure managed by Terraform.
  • Collaborated with other teams to make contributions across the organization, including to a shared Angular component library and the iOS/Android app codebases.

Inspire11

Consultant (Frontend Engineer) - (January 2019 - July 2019)

  • Provided expertise in React for a fintech company as the primary frontend engineer of a remote agile team.
  • Integrated a React single page application with the LaunchDarkly Javascript SDK using Context API and HOC's, allowing for easy feature flag management.
  • Implemented an in-app demo mode that allowed users to run through workflows simulating a loan financing application.
  • Improved performance by using Apollo GraphQL's React library to manage API response caching.

VelocityEHS

Software Engineer II - (November 2015 - December 2018)

  • Designed, implemented, and deployed an Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) SaaS application as part of a comprehensive multi-year rewrite of a core product.
  • Implemented a greenfield React frontend for the web application in TypeScript.
  • Leveraged React code used for the web application and the Electron framework to build a fully-featured Windows desktop application.
  • Rewrote the existing C#/.NET data access layer, services, and APIs using the SOLID principles of object oriented programming.

Azavar Technology

Web Developer - (June 2013 - November 2015)

  • Built .NET web applications for a clients across a variety of industries.
  • Provided role based access control for users and integrated with 3rd party APIs and content management systems.
  • Utilized Bootstrap to provide a modern responsive layout on the frontend.
  • Hosted client applications on AWS EC2 instances running Windows server.

Chicago Architecture Center

Web Intern - (May 2012 - June 2013)

  • Aided in maintaining the various websites controlled by the organization.
  • Helped design new pages and improve existing web infrastructure.

Education

Georgia Tech

M.S. in Computer Science - Present
Classes:

  • CS 6035: Introduction to Information Security
  • CS 6250: Computer Networks
  • CS 6310: Software Architecture and Design
  • CS 6400: Database Systems Concepts and Design
  • CS 6750: Human-Computer Interaction
  • CS 7637: Knowledge-Based AI - Cognitive Systems

Northwestern University

B.S. in Computer Science - Class of 2013

Community Service

Board Member

Project Onward (2022 - Present)

Eagle Scout

Boy Scouts of America (2009)

Media