Aaron Jones, Distributed Systems Developer in San Francisco, CA, United States
Aaron Jones

Distributed Systems Developer in San Francisco, CA, United States

Member since January 30, 2020
Aaron is no stranger to the fast-paced, high-impact startup environment and has been making a living as a full-stack generalist in the Bay Area for more than 12 years. His recent focus has been on back-end distributed systems. Aaron is inspired and excited to help businesses grow and scale their technology.
Aaron is now available for hire

Portfolio

  • Calm
    Kubernetes, Docker, JavaScript, Go
  • Unity Technologies
    Kubernetes, Docker, MongoDB, NATS, Apache Kafka, Cassandra, Node.js...
  • Playstudios
    Unity, Node.js, JavaScript, C#

Experience

Location

San Francisco, CA, United States

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

ITerm, Slack, Visual Studio Code, Kubernetes, Docker

The most amazing...

...thing I've accomplished was leading a team through hyper growth in multiple business vectors while simultaneously addressing multiple compliance liabilities.

Employment

  • Director of Engineering

    2018 - 2020
    Calm
    • Designed and led the transition from Node.js monolith to Go microservices on Kubernetes.
    • Spearheaded the GDPR compliance remediation across back-end systems.
    • Oversaw multiple B2B integration designs and implementations, many outside US.
    • Developed a new internal process to address evolving needs of the growing business.
    • Wrote numerous new cross-platform features for the Calm applications.
    Technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, JavaScript, Go
  • Senior Software Engineer | Lead Engineer

    2016 - 2018
    Unity Technologies
    • Led the development of a high-frequency advertising yield maximization platform (24,000 RPS).
    • Oversaw the development of a new machine learning backed ad unit with a connected dashboard to update and manage creatives.
    • Played a key role on the hiring panel for the addition of more than 40 engineers.
    Technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, MongoDB, NATS, Apache Kafka, Cassandra, Node.js, JavaScript, Go
  • Mobile Architect | Lead Engineer

    2013 - 2016
    Playstudios
    • Architected a C# front-end platform to facilitate the rapid development of new features by other client teams.
    • Served as the lead client developer on the myVEGAS mobile slot game.
    • Expanded the mobile team from two to more than 20 including training and mentorship.
    Technologies: Unity, Node.js, JavaScript, C#
  • Founder | Chief Architect

    2012 - 2013
    PlayGearz
    • Developed a cross-platform physics game called Yumby Smash (reached #7 in the action/arcade category).
    • Built a cross-platform 3D word puzzle game called Yumby Words.
    • Constructed the cloud infrastructure to host game servers (supports tiered access and elastic scaling).
    • Created in-house analytics, experiment, administration, and user authentication systems.
    Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), MySQL, Node.js, JavaScript, Unity, C#
  • Lead Mobile Engineer

    2011 - 2012
    Zynga
    • Architected an HTML5 framework to help rapidly develop new games.
    • Developed multiple games that directly connected to and supported multiple of Zynga's most popular titles.
    • Operated in a full-stack capacity, developing user experience elements all the way to the database storage.
    Technologies: Java, Objective-C, HTML5, PHP, Node.js, JavaScript
  • Founder

    2009 - 2011
    Shattered Axis Technologies
    • Developed an iPhone application that aggregated drink specials from dense bar areas such as 6th street in Austin, Texas.
    • Built a portal for business owners to manage their presence on the platform.
    • Partnered with multiple bar management companies to provide value to the customers and drive higher engagement for the businesses.
    Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), MySQL, JavaScript, Objective-C

Experience

  • Monolith to Microservices

    At Calm, I architected and led the transition from a Node.js monolith deployed on bare EC2 instances to containerized Go services running in Kubernetes. I developed the CI/CD workflow as well as many of the base libraries that were critical to the success of the transition.

  • GDPR Compliance
    https://www.calm.com/

    At Calm, the growth of the company facilitated the need to become GDPR compliant.

    I designed and led the implementation spanning all areas of our storage and infrastructure to meet the given requirements. I partnered with the legal team to create a "data map" providing clear guidance to the updates that must be carried out.

  • Radiant

    A hyper-local experience platform utilizing a hybrid of GPS and iBeacon information to pinpoint a user's location and use machine learning to deliver promotions and opportunities to the user.

    For this, I negotiated an agreement with the largest casino operator on the Las Vegas strip to install hundreds of iBeacons throughout their properties. I personally developed the application in its entirety including the Objective-C library and plugin, a website to manage content and view user heatmaps, and a Node.js back end.

    For the data store, I worked with the Bay Area company MemSQL to utilize a lightning-fast fully in-memory SQL database.

  • Ad Yield Maximization Platform
    https://unity.com/solutions/unity-ads

    A Go-based service that communicated with multiple ad creative providers to source ad creatives. It blended the value of the creative with conversion probability (linear regression) to deliver the highest value creative to the user. This service is still the primary revenue generator for the company.

  • IAP Promotions
    https://unity.com/solutions/mobile-business/monetize-your-game/IAP

    A full-stack product allowing customers to design creatives that would appear in a mobile application driving the user to make an in-app-purchase. This was hooked into the ad yield maximization platform to ensure the application developer displaying the ads received the maximal revenue possible.

    The stack was as follows: front end (React), API layer (Go), database (Cassandra), and all deployed on Kubernetes.

  • myVEGAS Slots
    https://www.playstudios.com/#/myvegas-slots

    A Unity engine, C# mobile game.

    For this project, I worked as the front-end architect and project lead for all of the visual elements and components that were assembled into custom games through simple configurations. In this role, I built two parallel teams to utilize these components facilitating rapid development and iteration.

  • Yumby Smash
    http://www.yumby.com/

    A C# mobile game developed in Unity Game Engine.

    I was a founder of the company and the primary developer for this game. It was featured by Google multiple times and was downloaded over 1 million times. This game contained many complex implementations around time manipulation, object destruction, and animations.

  • Mafia Wars Shakedown
    https://www.facebook.com/Zynga.Mobile.Mafia/

    An HTML5 game connected to a PHP back end.

    I worked as a full-stack developer on this game for Zynga. The game was the first attempt for Zynga to utilize HTML5 for cross-platform gaming. The frameworks that were created were later used to accelerate the development of multiple successful games.

Skills

  • Languages

    Go, JavaScript, SQL, Objective-C, PHP, HTML5, Java, C#
  • Frameworks

    Express.js, Unity
  • Platforms

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, Visual Studio Code
  • Storage

    Redis, PostgreSQL, NoSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra
  • Other

    Distributed Systems, NATS
  • Libraries/APIs

    Node.js
  • Tools

    Slack, ITerm

Education

  • Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science
    2005 - 2010
    The University of Texas at Austin - Austin, TX, USA

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