Abram Clark - Portfolio

Backend Senior Software Engineer

April 2017 – Jan 2025

Developing scalable and reliable API services with Python, MySQL, Rust, Ruby, Kafka, and many other tools.

Led the design and implementation of an in-house address verification system that replaced a slow, unreliable, and expensive external API call. The final service was implemented in Rust, runs 50x faster and has had no service level outages, and resulted in large annual savings.
Designed and implemented multiple extractions from an overloaded monolith and DB. They were completed on time with no break in service or changes in API behavior. This included rigorous testing and careful migrations.
Participated in design and implementation of the back end for new API products: carbon offsets, insurance purchases, and analytics tools for customers. The last also powers a web based analytics tool, and continues to perform well for real-time queries as we grow.
Teach architecture, schema design, and language concepts to junior developers.
Improvements to developer experience, build scripts, and CI/CD system. Used industry standard tools and practices: TDD, CI/CD, VMs, AWS, Github.

System Architect / Virtual CTO Consultant

Dec 2021 – Feb 2022

Senior Consultant for a private equity funding platform.

Handled live database migration from overburdened Airtable MVP to PostgreSQL with zero downtime.
Designed and implemented schema for handling the intricacies of a 2 sided bidding market and the enterprise needs of financial compliance.
Consulted with the web development team to correctly implement the most complex and critical data model code. Specifically ensuring:
- Accuracy and security of financial transactions
- Overall data security, transparency, and correctness
- Correctly handling the many interrelated many-to-many relationships in an immutable DB that also needed to track updates to many models
Used Django, Docker, TDD, and Github.

Cofounder, CTO

August 2009 – 2016

Conceived of and created a social media creativity platform.

Responsibilities: UX design, architecture, the majority of programming, hiring technical team, management, and some business development.
Developed full stack using Python, MongoDB, JavaScript, AWS, GCP, Git, and Google Analytics. The core of this was a sophisticated web based drag and drop design tool, coupled with a social frame that handled tagging, feeds, and comments.
Managed and grew the platform to tens of thousands of users (analytics shows 115 countries as well).