Resume

About

Forward-deployed Tech Lead and builder with 7+ years shipping production systems inside regulated government environments. I code the connective tissue between legacy mainframes (COBOL, IBM MQ, DB2) and modern cloud-native architectures — currently rebuilding New Jersey's unemployment payments system end-to-end. Proposed, prototyped, and shipped custom multi-agent AI workflows that cut requirements discovery and data modeling from weeks to days. I do my best work in the room with the client: navigating security perimeters, untangling data-readiness blockers, standing up validation against legacy systems, and instilling production practices that outlast my engagement.

Experience

Tech Lead, Payments — NJ Unemployment Insurance

Apr 2025 – Present
Nava • Remote
  • Architected a Temporal-orchestrated monetary determination workflow running shadow-mode against LOOPS (COBOL mainframe), logging comparisons to build an accuracy validation pipeline (analogous to evaluation pipelines for agentic systems) for cutover validation.
  • Designed the connective tissue between three legacy data systems (IBM MQ, Oracle RCC, DB2) and a modern Postgres claims schema, navigating multi-writer database constraints.
  • Shipped an end-to-end payments engine that automates claims eligibility verification, benefit calculations, weekly certification flows, and banking disbursements using NACHA formats and secure MOVEit file transfers.
  • Drove engineering strategy for legacy-constrained payments: defined cutover criteria, tiered approvals, and reliability targets for graduating from compare-mode to authoritative.
  • Built a multi-agent AI developer knowledge system that routes questions, spawns Claude Haiku subagents, and auto-discovers documentation — shipped as a one-script install.
  • Led stakeholder navigation across compliance, business accuracy, and leadership divisions as an embedded contractor navigating security/compliance and building trust.

Data Engineer — NJ Unemployment Insurance

Apr 2024 – Apr 2025
Nava • Remote
  • Built AWS Glue ETL pipelines to extract and transform data from legacy DB2 mainframes to PostgreSQL, enabling the new system to ingest and compare against historical LOOPS payment data.
  • Architected a scalable data migration framework using Temporal workflows, enabling safe, decoupled data transformation outside production deployment windows.
  • Designed key areas of the claims data model, including the historical tracking pattern (effective_end_date) used for monetary determinations, payment calculations, and overpayment adjustments.

Engineering Team Lead — NJ Unemployment Insurance

Jun 2023 – Apr 2024
Nava • Remote
  • Led the technical team for NJ's modernized claimant portal — a Next.js application replacing a legacy SSI system — through its production launch serving thousands of claimants.
  • Automated release workflows with GitHub Actions, enabling 75+ successful releases with minimal manual intervention and establishing deployment reliability norms.
  • Built Splunk dashboards for production monitoring, enabling proactive incident resolution and giving NJ stakeholders real-time visibility into system health.
  • Mentored engineers, ran code reviews, and established engineering operations practices across a growing cross-functional team.

Software Engineer — MA Paid Family & Medical Leave

Aug 2021 – Jun 2023
Nava • Remote
  • Led design and implementation of the Appeals process end-to-end, supporting 19,000+ appeals in 2023 and 68,000+ since launch — a federally mandated benefits system with strict compliance requirements.
  • Built RESTful APIs, event-driven architectures, and CI/CD pipelines; supported production releases and on-call rotations.
  • Conducted technical feasibility studies and authored technical documentation for cross-functional stakeholder review.

Full-Stack Engineer

Jul 2020 – Aug 2021
Deloitte • Lake Mary, FL
  • Built the IRS Child Tax Credit portal within a 3-month timeframe, implementing secure authentication flows and complex eligibility calculations.
  • Engineered a microservices architecture for ArmyIgnitED.com that reduced education benefit processing time from over 2 months to under 2 weeks.
  • Designed role-based access control systems, automated testing pipelines, and legacy data migration utilities.

Full-Stack Engineer

May 2019 – Jul 2020
Accenture • Tampa, FL
  • Built React/Node.js applications with GraphQL APIs and real-time analytics dashboards for enterprise clients.
  • Established code quality standards and developer documentation that improved onboarding efficiency.

Web Developer

Aug 2017 – Jul 2018
Tompkins Financial • Ithaca, NY
  • Engineered automated systems and responsive interfaces for banking applications; led a bank-wide automation initiative that reduced manual processing across multiple departments.