Good programming lies at the heart of any software product. Good programming alone is not enough, though. Code must be scalable and maintainable. Software engineering is the practice of taking great code and turning it into a successful, scalable, and maintainable product.

I help teams up their software engineering game by focusing on the best practices and processes around writing code that make it more scalable and maintainable. These include writing tests, improving code reviews, creating a robust deploy process, continuous integration (CI), writing great specification documents, reviewing them, and writing more readable code.

I help founders, startups, and mature companies navigate technical projects requiring deep payments knowledge. I can be a sounding board to discuss payment rails around the world, regulatory compliance, risk evaluation methods, financial fraud, financial reporting, and integration challenges with banks, credit card networks, and payments processors.

I am passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion in computer science (CS) education and the tech world. I worked in tech for several years before I got my CS degree, and my degree is not from a top-50 CS school. I immigrated to the United States with my family in 2002, and have experienced firsthand what it means to be an outsider in an industry where who you know and where you studied plays an important role. As a volunteer CS instructor in a coding program in San Quentin State Prison in California, I saw how smart people who are capable of being good software engineers can be unjustly marginalized and excluded from employment opportunities because of their past mistakes.

This motivated me to work towards making tech companies more diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic and educational backgrounds, and any other factor that is currently used to distinguish the "in group" from the "out group". I've participated in several redesigns of hiring processes and promotion ladders.

I help companies design hiring and promotion processes that put diversity first without lowering the technical quality bar or compromising on candidate quality.