Where I Am

Currently in Austin, TX, and am looking for work!

Unfortunately, due to layoffs, I was recently terminated from my position as full-stack software engineer at Alegion after two years. Alegion is a software startup based in Austin TX that’s going exciting things in the data labeling space for machine learning. I had a great two years there, and grew my frontend skills greatly as I contributed to a several complex React codebases. I was challenged everyday to stretch my technical abilities to test, refactor, and write clean code. I also had the chance to work in Python and Java Spring to contribute across the entire tech stack. I will miss my team there.

Before Alegion, I worked as a full-stack software engineer and consultant at Pivotal (4+ years), I took part in 10+ software projects using extreme programming methodology. Each day, I continued the long-term conversation with client engineers about how best to produce and deliver high-quality software. I spent 90%+ of each workday pair-programming with client engineers to implement program features using test-driven development. During my time there, I worked with a wide range of clients in different industries including: Ford, All-Nippon Airways, Japan Railways, Yahoo! Japan, Fujitsu, Audi, and Indeed. The main technologies I used were: React, Java Spring, iOS, Android, Flutter, and Angular.

How I Got Here

I was born, raised, and educated in Texas. I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in December 2012 with bachelor’s degrees in computer science and Japanese language. I began the Japanese language degree after taking a semester of Japanese and realizing that I truly enjoyed studying and filling my life with the language. Thanks to the UT Japanese program and a self-study methodology laid out by Katsumoto of AJATT.com, I acquired enough Japanese by senior year to interview at Japanese companies. A couple months before graduation, I received an offer from a Japanese telecom company in Tokyo and booked a one-way ticket to fly to Japan in March of 2013.

Soon after arriving, I began joining meetups put on by the Tokyo iOS development community. I was fascinated by the process of making mobile apps, and knew it was the exact thing I wanted to do full-time (an impossibility where I worked then). Weeks passed, and I began spending most Sundays writing code with a mentor who guided me as I worked on features for an app he was developing. It was a stellar way to learn a technology: hands-on work, reading, and conversation over Starbucks tea and cookies. This relationship and experience was hugely supportive for me as I developed a skill and faced the challenges of finding my first software job.

Without any formal development experience, it was very difficult to be a competitive candidate. After failing many interviews at medium-sized companies, I set my sights on startups. A popular platform called Wantedly greatly aided my search, and I eventually found a music-software startup called nana. Nana had been seeking to hire at that time, and granted me a junior iOS developer position upon the reception of their next round of funding. Thankfully they received that monetary help a few months later, and I began work on their music collaboration app. It was a very fulfilling job and allowed for tons of learning, Japanese practice, and fun. I greatly enjoyed work at nana.

A little over a year later, Pivotal, an American software company, had acquired a space in Roppongi and was hiring engineers for their new Pivotal Labs operation there. I was stoked when I received news that I was accepted for an interview. The interviews demonstrated to me that this place was different. They wrote all production code using test-driven development, pair-programmed, pushed to master branch, and had CI/CD set up to test and deploy automatically. It was quality software shipped rapidly, and I couldn’t say no when Pivotal got back to me with an offer.

The job at Pivotal was a huge catalyst for my growth as an engineer. During the first year, I was mostly pair-programming with senior pivots (Pivotal employees), giving me hours of exposure to their thought processes, knowledge, and attention. The pivots there to start the office from San Fransisco were excellent technical teachers, and, perhaps more importantly, exemplified the Pivotal culture. The Pivotal culture is conducive to outstanding teamwork by fostering shared ownership of the entire codebase and encouraging mutual respect for each other. At Pivotal I learned how to contribute towards bettering the team, development process, business outcome, and product outcome.