Hello World
My name is Raphael and below me is Ursa.
We are both intelligent, hard-working beings with a desire for validation.
More importantly, we both have a love for adventure and an eagerness to learn.
Whether that be by the water,
OR AT WORK.
Work Experience
Zonar Systems, Inc.
Software Development Engineer II
Seattle, Washington
November 2023 - March 2025
Electronic Verified Inspection Report Services Infrastructure Team
- Increased traffic 417x by transforming, enriching, and ingesting messages from the legacy monolith into modern cloud microservices, thereby unlocking the modern web app for legacy customers.
- Migrated a synchronous Flask API to an asynchronous FastAPI, upgrading from Python 3.8 to 3.11 along the way for better maintainability and performance.
- Optimized SQL queries, reducing execution times by 96%, enhancing performance and user experience.
- Developed an Apache Beam pipeline in Kotlin to stream and route Pub/Sub messages, reducing data latency.
Zonar Systems, Inc.
Software Development Engineer I
Seattle, Washington
June 2022 - November 2023
Electronic Verified Inspection Report Services Infrastructure Team
- Performed DevOps on a variety of microservices including Python Flask and Tornado APIs deployed on a Kubernetes cluster in Google Cloud. Participated in week-long on-call rotations.
- Designed and implemented a distributed system that ingests telematics data to trigger alerts and notifications, thereby providing actionable insight and unlocking sales to existing telematics customers.
- Led the backend development for Canadian localization, ensuring API internationalization and product compliance with Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators regulations.
- Diagnosed and resolved critical configuration issues in a legacy C++ codebase, preserving $6M ARR.
Level Data, Inc.
Software Integration Engineer
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Febuary 2019 - December 2020
- Met with customers and provided technical expertise to business analysts to develop requirements.
- Implemented integrations for Microsoft Active Directory and Google Workspace connector services.
- Modernized on-premises Active Directory management software in Python, reducing VB6 codebase by 83%.
Kalamazoo College C.S. Department
Teaching Assistant
Kalamazoo, Michigan
January 2016 - June 2018
- Assisted with Python and Java coursework on data structures and algorithms, mentoring students and grading assignments.
- Hosted weekly office hours, simplifying complex topics for beginners while improving communication skills.
Whittaker Associates Inc.
Research Analyst Intern
Holland, Michigan
June 2013 - December 2014
- Researched bleeding edge industries and generated leads within those industries of companies which were most likely to expand or relocate. The final version of one such report ended up on Gov. Rick Perry's desk.
- Completed the CUNY Master's in Data Science bridge course during which I was first introduced to MySQL, Python, and R in an analytical context. This first taste inspired me to pursue a degree in Computer Science.
Education
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo College
2018 / Bachelor of Arts / Double Major in Mathematics and Computer Science
Senior Thesis: Building an App in Eighty Days
Relevant Coursework:
Computer Science: Data Structures; Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms; Principles of Programming Languages; Computer Organization; Mobile Computing
Mathematics: Probability; Statistics; Discrete Mathematics; Linear Algebra; Abstract Algebra
Organizations:
Two years as the head layout editor (and effective copy editor) of The Index, Kalamazoo College's student run newspaper. Formatted the layout of all six pages of the newspaper and consistently met weekly publication deadlines.
Projects
2025
w/images - Django Web Application
Built a feature-rich photo gallery platform with user authentication and social features using Django framework.
- Authentication & Profiles: Custom user auth system with social login support (Google, Facebook), user profiles, and account settings.
- Social Activity Feed: Activity tracking for likes, comments, and interactions using an action stream model.
- Photo Gallery: Optimized image uploading, thumbnail generation, and Redis-backed caching for fast delivery.
- Responsive & Themed UI: Clean, mobile-friendly UI with dark mode toggle and accessible layout.
- DevOps: Dockerized deployment with Gunicorn, Nginx, PostgreSQL, and Redis; CI/CD with GitHub Actions.
2025
w/blog - Django Web Application
Developed a full-featured blog platform using the Django framework, designed to support dynamic and scalable content management.
- Content Tagging: Implemented a flexible tagging system that allowed posts to be categorized and filtered using user-defined tags, improving content discoverability and engagement.
- Full-Text Search with PostgreSQL: Integrated PostgreSQL’s full-text search capabilities to enable efficient and accurate search functionality across blog posts, including ranking and highlighting of search results.
- RSS Feed Generation: Built a dynamic RSS feed generator to syndicate content, automatically updating with new blog posts and supporting filtering by tag or category.
- Admin and Author Workflows: Leveraged Django’s admin interface for content moderation and editorial workflows, enhancing usability for non-technical content creators.
- Clean, Responsive UI: Developed a responsive front-end using HTML, CSS, and Django templates, ensuring a smooth reading experience across devices.
2022
WARN Headhunter - Python Application
This Python application scrapes and parses the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications of all available states.
- The notifications are originally stored in HTML, XLS, and PDF formats and parsed by the BeautifulSoup4, Pandas, and Tabula frameworks, respectively.
- The resulting parsed notifications are stored in a Google Spreadsheet and populated with D.U.N.S. and NAICS codes.
- Combined, this allows workers within targeted industries to be found via LinkedIn and recruited 60 days before they are laid-off.
2021
Tri-Cities Artist Incubator (DEFUNCT) - Website
Co-founded a fab-lab and co-working space focused on artistic endeavors.
- Met with client to develop requirement specifications.
- Designed, built, and hosted company website according to specifications.
- Set up Google Workspace (including groups, aliases, and shared drives.)
- Built the co-working space's scheduling system with Google Calendar integration.
