JJ BEHRENS
— Patrick Tufts, co-founder of 24 Hr. Diner
Overview - I am not currently open to work. I'm a full-stack software engineer with a love for application security. I'm a Python expert, but I code in a ton of languages, and I love learning new ones. As an enthusiastic and friendly extrovert, I also enjoy onboarding, training, and mentoring. I care about clean code and making people feel supported. I'm primarily interested in hands-on roles either near San Francisco or remote.
Education - I have a BA (with honors) in math with a concentration in CS from St. Mary's College of California. I won the Br. Alfred Brousseau award for "outstanding scholarship as a mathematics major."
Online version - This resume looks way better online at jjinux.dev.
Skill Set - On a scale of one to five, five being the most familiar, I am familiar with the following technologies:
- Python: 5
- JavaScript: 4
- Kotlin: 3
- Dart: 5
- Scala: 3
- Go (golang): 3
- Java: 3
- Ruby: 4
- C: 3
- C++: 2
- Erlang: 2
- Haskell: 2
- Objective-C: 2
- Perl: 3
- PHP: 5
- Scheme: 2
- Shell scripting (sed, awk, sh, make): 3
- TypeScript: 3
- x86 Assembler: 2
Operating Systems:
- FreeBSD: 4
- Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.): 4
- macOS: 4
Cloud Development:
- Ansible: 2
- AWS: 3
- Docker: 3
- GCP: 3
- Kubernetes: 3
- Terraform: 3
- AngularJS: 3
- CSS: 3
- Django: 4
- HTML: 4
- jQuery: 4
- Less: 3
- Play Framework: 3
- Rails: 4
- React: 4
- Spring (Spring Boot): 2
- Webpack: 4
- XML (SAX, DOM, XPath, etc.): 3
GUI Programming:
- AWT and Swing: 4
- GTK and GNOME (C, PyGTK): 4
- QT and KDE: 4
- SDL and PyGame: 4
- Tk (Perl, Ruby, Python): 4
Mobile Development:
- Android: 2
- iOS: 2
Databases:
- MySQL: 3
- PostgreSQL: 2
- Agile software development (XP, Scrum, Kanban): 4
- Application security (AppSec, Kali, Burp Suite, Metasploit, OWASP, etc.): 4
- Asynchronous network programming (stackless Python, gevent, Twisted, Node.js, etc.): 4
- Functional programming: 3
- Internationalization (I18N), localization (L10N), Unicode, UTF-8, etc.: 3
- Machine learning: 2
- System design, microservices, distributed systems, cloud computing: 3
Employment History Excerpts:
- 10/2023 to current - Getlabs (a healthcare startup)
- Staff Engineer. Worked on various InfoSec, AppSec, SRE, infrastructure, platform, and IT initiatives as part of a very small engineering team supporting a much larger team of mobile phlebotomists. Used GCP, Terraform, TypeScript, Vanta, etc.
- 3/2023 to 7/2023 - Curai Health (a healthcare startup)
- Senior Software Engineer, Platform & Infrastructure. Designed, developed, and fully migrated to a new API keys system for microservices to communicate across VPCs. Closed multiple pentest vulnerabilities and did various other AppSec cleanup work. Overhauled a bunch of documentation and put together onboarding materials. Used Python (FastAPI and Flask), JavaScript (React), Terraform, and AWS.
- 10/2022 to 3/2023 - Carbon Health (a healthcare startup)
- Senior Staff Platform Engineer. Built a gRPC API in hardcore, functional Scala. Improved the development environment setup in bash using asdf. Overhauled a ton of the documentation.
- 10/2015 to 6/2022 - Udemy (through the IPO)
-
Q2 2020 - Q2 2022 (and throughout as a contributor)
Architect on the AppSec and Fraud Team- Fixed a huge percentage of the vulnerabilities reported via HackerOne or pentesting assessments. Trained the rest of the company on AppSec topics via talks and blog posts. Overhauled and fixed our approach to XSS in user-generated content on the frontend. Was responsible for the Virus Scanner service which we used to scan user-uploaded content. Participated in various compliance efforts such as SOX and SOC 2.
Q1 2019 - Q2 2020 (and throughout as a contributor)
Architect for the Microservices Platform- My two co-workers and I built the microservices platform for Udemy using AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), Python, Kotlin, gRPC, Spring Boot, Terraform, Ansible, make, etc. After the first year, we had 11 services running in our prod cluster. Led the choice of technologies, did consensus building, developed strategies for moving the monolith to microservices, wrote example services, and wrote most of the documentation for the platform.
Q4 2015 - Q4 2018 (and throughout as a contributor)
Architect (promoted from Principal Software Engineer) on Team F- Worked on "frontend, frameworks, fast, and frickin' awesome things". Led the migration from require.js to Webpack on my own. My team as a whole led the successful migration from AngularJS 1.X to React, MobX, and modern JavaScript. On the backend, we used Python, Django, and MySQL. I also built the core of the isomorphic rendering engine.
- Wrote most of the developer documentation for web developers and onboarded most of the engineers who worked on the web app. Both of these things made me well-beloved among my co-workers.
- 5/2013 to 7/2015 - Twitter (through the IPO)
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Q1 2015 - Q3 2015 (and previously as a 20% contributor)
Staff Education Engineer for Twitter University- Developed and/or taught many classes for Twitter University with a focus on core software engineering subjects. My favorite was a class called Best Practices for Software Engineers which was required for all new engineers at Twitter. Eventually, took over running Flight School Basics, the new hire orientation for engineers.
Q2 2013 - Q4 2014 (and afterward as a 20% contributor)
Staff Software Engineer on the Capacity team in Infrastructure and Operations- Developed a custom supply chain management system to manage the flow of incoming servers. This was used to create the Allocation Plan, Master Production Schedule, Rack Plan, etc. Used Python, Django, MySQL, Linux, JavaScript, jQuery, and Apache Mesos.
- 5/2011 to 4/2013 - Google
-
Q2 2013 - Q2 2013 (and previously as a 20% contributor)
Senior Developer Advocate for Dart within Chrome Developer Relations- Gave talks about Dart around the world. Wrote lots of open source code. Produced lots of videos about Dart, even in Spanish. Wrote a "famous" blog post.
Q2 2011 - Q2 2012 (and afterward as a 20% contributor)
Senior Developer Advocate for YouTube APIs- Gave talks about YouTube's APIs around the world. Wrote code samples in Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java (for Android). Produced lots of videos. Wrote lots of blog posts. Met with lots of high-end partners in person to get them to integrate with new YouTube APIs.
For more details, see my Google page.
- 6/2009 to 10/2010 - Fandor (a small indie film startup before Netflix took over the world)
- Software Architect. Built fandor.com. Used Ruby, Rails, ActionScript, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, the Flash Media Server (FMS), Wowza, and BDD. Integrated with Boxee, Limelight, Facebook, and Roku. Made open-source contributions to LongTail Video (JW Player, a Flash video player).
- 3/2008 to 6/2009 - 24 Hr. Diner (a three-person startup)
- Senior Software Engineer. Architected and built a general-purpose recommendation system similar to Amazon's system using Linux, nginx, MySQL, and Python.
- 8/2006 to 5/2007 - Foxmarks Inc. (a startup by Mitch Kapor)
- Senior Software Engineer. Built foxmarks.com (the corporate website), login.foxmarks.com (the account management application), and my.foxmarks.com (used to view your bookmarks online) using Linux, MySQL, Python, Pylons, and Genshi.
- 1/2004 to 8/2006 - IronPort Systems (a startup acquired by Cisco)
-
UI Platform Engineer within the Architecture and Platform Engineering Group. Architected the user interface to configure the email gateway appliance, including centralized management and localization to eight languages. Built a web server named Glass that could run under stackless Python with coroutines. Was responsible for the common look-and-feel of IronPort applications across the company.
My web application framework, Aquarium, was officially adopted across the entire organization and was in use at Cisco even a decade later. It was also mentioned in the book Oracle and Open Source.
- 8/2001 to 12/2003 - NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratory
- Software Engineer. Worked (sometimes in a team, usually alone) on a wide range of research and development projects using: Perl, Ruby, C, C++, sh, Jython, Tk, QT, KDE, Swing, Zope, Mason, mod_perl, IPv6, HTTP, SSL, XML-RPC, Linux, FreeBSD, XML, PGP, Apache, PostgreSQL, client/server programming, multi-threaded programming, peer-to-peer programming, and I18N. My work in the IPv6 working group was acknowledged in two RFCs.
- 6/1999 to 9/2000 - Clear Ink (a consultancy)
- Web Engineer 2. Worked on multiple e-commerce sites using PHP, MySQL, Solaris, and NT. Helped develop an e-commerce framework named Freetrade which was used by e-commerce sites even a decade later.
- 1/1998 to 4/1998 - Sun Microsystems
- Resolution Coordinator Intern. Provided technical support over the phone to other members of Sun Microsystems using Solaris.
Articles:
- Concurrency and Python
- Developer Diaries: The Pull on Python Programmers
- Translating C to English Using Haskell
- Everything Your Professor Failed to Tell You About Functional Programming
- The Inverse Extension Design Pattern
- Prototyping Interpreters using Python Lex-Yacc
Technical Editing:
- Learning Scala
- Play Framework Essentials
- Dart: Up and Running
- Expert Python Programming
- Python for Unix and Linux System Administration
- Treading on Python Volume 1
- Core Python Programming
- Core PHP Programming
Other Achievements:
- I maintain a fairly popular technical blog.
- I've given a lot of talks.
- I was acknowledged in RFC 3974 and RFC 4193 .
- I was the moderator of BayPiggies (the Bay Area Python Interest Group) for 3 years.
Certifications and Significant Online Courses:
- Certified Cloud Digital Leader - Google Cloud (GCP)
- Practical Ethical Hacking - Udemy
- Machine Learning - Stanford
- Functional Programming Principles in Scala - École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Here is some sample code written in Python, Ruby, Dart, Go, etc.
Here is my GitHub account.