Kevin Brewer

SUMMARY

A software engineering tech lead with a demonstrated track record of shipping complex projects in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment. Experienced building infrastructure tooling, automating code quality/consistency, modernizing tech stacks, automating processes, and full stack development. Fosters culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, stimulating proactive communication, continual innovation, and impact. Proven aptitude for simplifying technical solutions to minimize points of failure and establish maintainable, extensible architecture.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

TypeScript, React, Redux, NextJS, TanStack Query, GraphQL, Material UI, Node, Express, Fastify, Nx, Splunk, Docker, Mongo, SQL, Bash, JavaScript

EXPERIENCE

Walmart, Carlsbad, California

Staff Software Engineer Tech Lead, 2021-2023

Owned customer journey from order placement through order fulfillment, serving 5M customers daily, including adding/editing/removing items, changing reservations for scheduled orders, updating payment methods, changing delivery address, designating alternate pickup person, and updating delivery instructions.
Led front-end team and implemented features resulting in $1.4 million increased GMV and 9 basis-points decreased cost-per-order due to reduced customer support calls. Projects included personalized substitutions, 1-click add-to-order, out-of-stock recommendations, and save-for-later.
Mentored teammates resulting in two promotions and one contractor converting to FTE.
Led monitoring and alerting effort to drive down API error rates below 0.4%. Implemented monitoring dashboards and alerts in Splunk and Graphana.
Owned content management repositories for both web and mobile. Wrote onboarding docs, established code-ownership model, CI checks, merge queue, and collaborator permissions.
Updated onboarding code labs and documentation to improve experience for new developers.
Ported custom babel plugins to Rust to facilitate upgrading to SWC and improve compilation speed 15x.
Developed tooling for internationalization, enabling multiple markets to onboard to monorepo.

Senior Software Engineer, 2019-2021

Advocated for and built hero carousel on app homepage, resulting in annual ad revenue of $50M.
Received 6 peer- and management-awarded badges including Impact Driver, Fire Fighter, and Collaborator.
Supported high-traffic events through preliminary stress tests and on-call war rooms.
Scoped new projects providing level-of-effort estimates, collaborated with product managers to define functional / non-functional requirements, authored technical architecture design docs, translated product requirements into JIRA stories with manageable sub-tasks.
Improved Departments Page load time 10% by lazy loading offscreen product-carousel items.
Implemented platform utility for setting feature flags in functional tests.
Created custom Nx generators to scaffold common patterns and save developer hours.
Migrated post-CI SonarQube code-quality checks to ESLint to preemptively catch issues in CI before merging.
Implemented priority-merge feature for GitHub merge bot.
Wrote browser extension to easily triage CI failures.

Freelance

Web Developer, 2017-2019

Designed, implemented, and maintained custom full-stack web apps for clients.
Consulted on design decisions, functional/non-functional requirements, timeline, and handoff logistics.
Negotiated compensation, documented/communicated progress, and ensured payment. Followed up with maintenance or enhancement requests.
Implemented Discord bot for Japanese language-learning application with interactive quizzes, leaderboard, and subscription tiers.
Implemented Twitter bot to administer interactive Japanese language-learning quizzes and advertise subscription offerings.
Improved loading speed and reliability of React SPAs by converting to Gatsby statically-rendered assets served via CDN.

THOUGHT STEM, San Diego, California

Software Instructor, 03/2017 - 11/2017

Developed JavaScript and Racket curricula for adult education program.
Taught JavaScript and Racket classes to 10-15 adult students.
Taught Minetest modding classes to 20-30 elementary-school students.

Mac Rentals, Inc., San Diego, California

Project Manager, 2013-2016

Provisioned server clusters for cloning client software images onto rental machines.
Achieved 10x increase in cloning speed through bash scripts, configuration, and architecture changes.
Decreased processing time for new inventory by 6x through automating spec verification and barcode creation.
Implemented prototype quoting software with Ember.js, allowing customers to place orders online, eliminating need for phone operators.
Negotiated change from hourly to salary compensation for all AV/IT Technicians, shifting incentive structure to reward efficiency.

Audio Visual Technician, 2010-2013

Translated audio/visual/computing requirements of event organizers to equipment list of rental gear, including backups, wiring, power requirements, and personnel.
Travelled onsite for equipment setup, operation, troubleshooting, and tear down.

appleJax/appleJax.github.io