envelope-o map-marker briefcase cloud mobile keyboard-o code code-fork graduation-cap

Jeff Chen

 Experience

VestaStaff Software Engineer / Engineering Manager

Nov 2021 - present

  • Built foundational infrastructure and platform layer for Vesta's product

  • Shipped a variety of full-stack product features supporting Vesta's first production customers

  • Led team of engineers building out Vesta's core product and public API

Ladder LifeEngineering Director

Feb 2019 - Nov 2021

  • Managed a group of engineers across Ladder: mentored and set career goals, gave continuous feedback, ran performance reviews, and advocated to leadership on their behalf

  • Set technical direction on one of Ladder's product teams by writing tech specs, scoping projects, and reviewing code

  • Ran Ladder's SWE recruiting program: sourced and interviewed candidates, made hiring decisions, and closed offers. Grew engineering team by 50% in 2021

Ladder LifeHead of Security and Infrastructure

May 2018 - Nov 2021

  • Responsible for overall security posture, including risk management, employee training, and proactive and reactive responses to possible threats

  • Directed infrastructure roadmap, including performance, metrics & alerting, and stability

  • Collaborated with legal to build a comprehensive infosec program complying with life insurance regulations in all 50 states

  • Negotiated contracts and managed relationships with IT and engineering third parties

Ladder LifeSoftware Engineer

Nov 2017 - May 2018

  • Enabled real-time metrics by reducing ETL latency from 24 hours to under 10 seconds

  • Designed new CI/CD workflow to speed up developer productivity and reduce deployment risk

  • Set up autoscaling infrastructure to handle traffic spikes of up to 20x baseline

Blend LabsSoftware Engineer

Jul 2016 - Nov 2017

  • Enabled third-party "App Store" by supporting external data stores in the data model

  • Directly impacted customer signing by developing several API endpoints and by improving platform performance by over 50%

  • Dramatically increased release and developer velocity by automating regression tests and enforcing API contracts across microservices

National Security AgencyStokes Scholar

Jun 2012 - Apr 2016

  • Implemented Linux IMA in Android devices using the embedded TrustZone secure environment for trusted boots

  • Developed CNE operations tool for collection of computer-to-computer communications

  • Wrote utilities for lightweight heuristic-based malware detection

Carnegie Mellon UniversityB.S. Computer Science

Aug 2012 - May 2016