Brent Hamilton

The project was about the primary data source for all services to support the Strawhouse ecosystem. We had some interesting scaling challenges compounded by the need to keep the API easy to use and general enough for all of our use cases.

To support the growing number of services relying on this data, without implementing bespoke endpoints, we built an interactive dynamic API to generate itself from a combination of configuration and the schema definition of our app boot database. This approach allowed the schema to change and the users, such as other in-house engineers, to decide what data they need from the API itself, like what GraphQL offers today.

My role in this project was end-to-end ownership. As the person maintaining the initial business data API, this project enabled me to move quickly and work on different business needs without getting bogged down in support and maintenance.

This project centered around building different sales pitch angles for a given pitch and testing them on segmented user bases. The source of traffic grouped the users, and we passed the Ad-ID along from various advertising partners. While we couldn't de-anonymize anyone, we knew they belonged to a particular cohort and could predict which pitch they would respond to based on previous results.

Based on the user's information when clicking on an ad, we predicted which angle they'll respond best to and serve that in a sales funnel, a landing page, or an eCommerce store product page. The goal was to place the best copy in front of a given user.

I collaborated with the CTO on this product for initial design considerations, but I was the sole contributor to the codebase.