Hector Castro

I increased observability across applications by integrating Datadog for log, metric, and trace aggregation. I also helped establish a process to prioritize and address technical debt alongside existing work streams. Finally, I forged relationships with external teams (e.g., Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, upstream and downstream consumers) to better negotiate cross-team dependencies.

I helped scale cloud-based lab operations software from a single instance, to multiple instances, each supporting distinct geographic locations. I also developed tooling to repeatably apply database schema changes across all lab software instances. Finally, I built Amazon Lambda-based processes to automate the aggregation of application data into a centralized data lake.

I instituted an organization-wide system for making architecturally significant decisions. I also iteratively improved the engineering hiring process by introducing an apprenticeship program, standardized application assessment, and on-site interview loop. Finally, I instituted an engineering growth ladder to improve clarity in our growing engineering organization.

I founded the organization’s first web application infrastructure team. I also assembled software delivery pipelines with reproducible development environments, immutable deployment artifacts, and infrastructure as code (IaC). Finally, I defined an incident response procedure to catalog production issues blamelessly.

I participated in technical pre-sales engagements with companies across the country. I also maintained the official Chef cookbooks for Riak and Riak CS. Finally, built tooling around Docker, Datomic, Omnibus, and Vagrant for the Riak ecosystem.