Alex Kira

About Alex

Experience

1. 

   LangChain · Full-time

   • Engineer

     Nov 2023 - Present · 1 yr 9 mos·San Francisco Bay Area·Current
2. 

   Ramp · Full-time

   • Principal Software Engineer

     May 2022 - Nov 2023 · 1 yr 7 mos
3. 

   Netflix

   • Senior Software Engineer

     Jul 2020 - May 2022 · 1 yr 11 mos

     * Engineer on the the big data orchestration team. The team built and managed Netflix's big data orchestration platform, Maestro, used by thousands of data scientists, data engineers, and ML engineers to power their workflows. * Rearchitect the data orchestration platform to a distributed and scalable system, Maestro, built on Spring Boot, Conductor and CockroachDB. * Lead subprojects with partners including the ML/Metaflow team and Titus compute. This included architecture, development, and alignment with the various partners. * Designed and implemented Jupyter Notebooks runtime for Maestro to enable scheduling of workflows within the notebooks environment. * Area-lead for the distributed systems design interview track. Overhauled the interview process for the data organization.

4. 

   Uber

   • Staff Engineer / Tech Lead

     Feb 2016 - Jul 2020 · 4 yrs 6 mos·San Francisco Bay Area

     * Team lead and founding engineer on the Data Workflow Management team. The team grew and managed the data orchestration platform at Uber which was used company-wide (3k+ users). * Re-architected the data orchestration platform into a multi-tenant, highly available, distributed system, capable of operating at Uber’s scale. * Led architecture alignment and oversight across teams for Uber's data org. * Enhanced engineering brand of the team: gave conference talks including Strata Data Conference, SF Big Analytics Meetup, also authored an Uber engineering blog on the team's work . * Engineering lead for data-wide programs for continuously improving reliability of data systems. Established reliability best practices across data teams, influenced/enabled teams to effectively adopt these, resulting in significantly improved infrastructure stability. * Drove technical direction and vision of the teams products, while working in a cross-functional manner with management, PMs, and stakeholders to set team's architecture, roadmap and OKRs. * Helped build the team through interviewing, referrals, as well as mentoring (mentored engineers both within and outside team). Slides: SF Big Analytics: Managing Uber's data workflows at scale Video Presentation: Managing Uber’s Data workflow at Scale Blog: Managing Uber's Data Workflows at Scale

5. 

   Telmate

   • Senior Engineer (Contract)

     Oct 2014 - Dec 2015 · 1 yr 3 mos

     * Implemented features and functionality for SpinalQ, a multithreaded JRuby application responsible for the company's ElasticSearch data ingestion pipeline. * Overhauled the company's ElasticSearch cluster for fault tolerance and performance through cluster configuration, query selection, monitoring, alerting, and replication setup. * Developed functionality for Command Center, a communication platform used by facility staff built on top of JRuby, Rails, and React.js. * Environment: JRuby / ElasticSearch / Rails / JavaScript / React.js / MySQL

6. 

   Apple

   • Senior Infra Engineer (Contract)

     Aug 2013 - Oct 2014 · 1 yr 3 mos

     * Devops for brand new automated server infrastructure for the Apple Online Store for mobile * Lead development of a zero downtime deployment tool along with a deployment / status dashboard using Ruby and Sinatra * Spearheaded infrastructure implementation for metrics, monitoring, and alerting services using Sensu and Graphite * Environment: Puppet, MCollective, Ruby, Go, AngularJS, Redis, Dashing, Sensu, Graphite

7. L

   LoLo

   • Founding Engineer / Advisor

     May 2013 - Sep 2014 · 1 yr 5 mos·Remote

     * Lead development of LoLo, a credit card linked loyalty site built to help local businesses retain and reward loyal customers. * Implemented integration with various third party services including Cardspring, SubtleData, Stripe Payments, Dropbox, and Facebook Connect * Sole developer of the LoLo iOS application and API backend to allow redemption and usage from iPhone. * Environment: Ruby, Rails, Elixir, Phoenix, MySQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Git, Stripe Payments, Cardspring API, Dropbox API, IOS, Facebook / Twitter APIs.

8. V

   Vitrue / Oracle

   • Senior Software Engineer (Contract)

     May 2012 - Mar 2013 · 11 mos·Remote

     Consulting and implementation services for Vitrue, a cloud-based social marketing company (acquired by Oracle). Provided research and consulting on concurrent development with actor based systems such as Akka. * Participated in development on a concurrent social media adapter for consuming Facebook data, written in JRuby and Akka. * Lead integration effort for Virtue's social commerce platform based on Spree Commerce and RoR. * Environment: Ruby, JRuby, Scala, Rails, Erlang, Sinatra, Akka, Spree Commerce, Backbone.js, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Redis, Social Media APIs (Facebook, Twitter).

9. P

   PromoterBee

   • Founding Engineer

     Jun 2007 - Apr 2012 · 4 yrs 11 mos·Greater Atlanta Area / Remote

     Early stage startup targeting the restaurant industry - offers a self managed suite of products aimed at publishing promotions and managing brand awareness. * Worked directly with founders to conceptualize new features, determine development effort, and select technology needed to implement a solution. * Led development on PromoterBee Biz, a full suite application targeting restaurants, which provides management of promotions, social media monitoring, couponing, and distribution to various social media outlets and sites. * Implemented the FindMeSpecials iPhone app, a native location-based iPhone App used to find nearby specials and redeem coupons, which made it to top 25 in travel on the App Store. * Led development on the PathCrosser iPhone App & REST API. Pathcrosser is a social entertainment app launched in SWSX 2011 that lets you discover common and new places based on places you have been. * Environment: Ruby / Rails, MySQL, Amazon AWS/EC2/S3, iPhone SDK, Objective C, JSON, GIT, Nginx, Passenger, Rspec, Capistrano, Chef, Stripe, Redis / Resque, Jenkins, CSS, jQuery, Ajax, Social Media APIs (Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter).

10. 

    Optimus Solutions

    • Senior Software Engineer

      Apr 2005 - Jun 2007 · 2 yrs 3 mos·Atlanta Metropolitan Area

      * Provided full life cycle development and consulting services to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a financial budgeting system used to track spending for the entire APHIS branch of USDA (project worth over 1.5 million in services). * Led and participated in client design meetings for requirement gathering and analysis. * Conducted stress tests and optimized system for performance. * Environment: Java, Spring, Hibernate, Struts, JUnit, DBUnit, Ruby, Oracle 10g Application Server, Oracle 9i Database, Ant, Ruby, CVS, Subversion.

11. 

    CheckFree

    • Software Developer

      Nov 2002 - Apr 2005 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      * Developed new features and functionality for Bank of America's industry-leading Online Bill Pay product. * Analyzed security vulnerabilities in the Bill Pay product and recommended potential solutions. * Environment: Java, AS/400, Solaris, JServ, JMS, EJB, Servlets, JSP, Web Services, XML, WebLogic 8.1, Linux, Oracle, DB2, Ant, SourceSafe, CVS.

12. 

    Air2Web

    • Software Engineer, Core Platform Group

      Aug 2000 - Aug 2002 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      * Developed new functionality for the Air2Web Mobile Internet Platform, a wireless development platform built using J2EE and XML technologies with a web services architecture. * Tuned performance and memory usage of the Mobile Internet Platform. * Environment: Java 1.3, J2EE, Servlets, JSP, XML, JMS, JDBC, WebLogic, Solaris, Oracle 8i, Ant, CVS

Education

1. 
   Georgia Institute of TechnologyMS, Computer Science1998 - 2000
2. 
   University of MiamiBS, Computer Science1995 - 1998

Skills