Open to opportunities

Richard Lee

@richardlee4

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Staff Software Engineer specializing in distributed systems, multi-cloud platforms.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek roles building scalable, secure multi-cloud platforms and developer tools where I can lead architecture, mentor teams, and modernize systems to improve reliability and developer velocity.

I am a Staff Software Engineer with 15+ years building distributed systems, developer platforms, and multi-cloud infrastructure across Snowflake, Shopify, and Atlassian. I specialize in modernizing legacy architectures into cloud-native, event-driven, and AI-powered platforms that improve performance, reliability, and developer velocity.

At Snowflake I led Snowpark for Python’s architecture and rollout, reduced model-deployment time by ~70%, and delivered multi-cloud, secure runtimes and CI/CD automation; previously I modernized Shopify’s Core commerce and Shop Pay services and advanced Atlassian’s Jira platform and integrations, mentoring engineers and driving architecture standards.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Staff Software Engineer

Current

Snowflake

Dec 2019 - Present (6 years)

Led architecture and rollout of Snowpark for Python, building a multi-cloud distributed execution runtime that reduced model-deployment time by ~70% and improved concurrency and throughput by over 40% for enterprise workloads.

Python C++Go Kubernetes Terraform OpenTelemetry GitHub Actions

Senior Software Engineer

Shopify

Feb 2015 - Nov 2019 (4 years 9 months)

Led modernization of Shopify Core commerce and Shop Pay services, refactoring monoliths into modular services and GCP/Kubernetes migrations that reduced transaction latency by ~30% and lowered fraud false-decline rates by ~20%.

GraphQL Kafka React TypeScript GCP Kubernetes Terraform Spark Airflow CI CD

Software Engineer

Atlassian

Aug 2009 - Jan 2015 (5 years 5 months)

Contributed to Jira core features and platform integrations, optimizing backend queries and APIs to cut page load times by ~30% and reduce build durations by ~20% through automation with CI/CD tooling.

Java Python REST APIs OAuth Bamboo CI CD JavaScript Performance Optimization Automation

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Washington

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science

2005 - 2009

Completed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with coursework in algorithms, systems, and software engineering; prepared for a career building scalable distributed systems and cloud platforms.