So you came here to find out a little more about me huh? I am currently a software engineer at Google in beautiful Boulder, Colorado… but if you are really interested in my boring story…

I wasn’t always a computer geek… For the longest time I actually wanted to be an artist. It really wasn’t until my senior year of highschool that I really discovered computers and programming. I know, I am a late bloomer of a geek (my co-workers are constantly reminding me). It was clear to me that I could not pick just one… art… or programming. When I went to Texas A&M I majored in Computer Science with a focus on Visualization Arts. (And a minor in Art History) I actually wanted to work at Pixar.

I started dabbling in web development and I immediately fell in love with the way I could use the creative side of my brain and the technical side at the same time. (Or at least alternate between the two often).

After graduation I had to find a job since I was getting married in 2 weeks.  I actually took a job at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Ft. Worth, Texas.  This was about as far away from web development as you could get.  I worked very low level… we are talking binary here, yes, the lowest level you can get before fiddling with transistors.  It was fun because I was doing a lot of R&D.  If you read my posts on Stark Industries you will understand why I left Lockheed Martin.  If you didn’t catch that… yes Stark Industries = Lockheed Martin…

After a year at Lockheed, I moved to Denver to work at a startup called ControlPath.  I could not imagine a better place to work.  We had a lot of creative freedom at ControlPath which is absolutely wonderful.  I got to do a huge variety of things…  My job titles include:  Java Developer, Javascript Developer, Web Designer, Graphic Designer, Linux Systems Administrator, SEO “Expert”, MySQL Guru, and Performance Nazi. It was a lot of fun to wear so many hats.

ControlPath was eventually acquired by Trustwave. Our team was never really happy at Trustware and eventually we all moved on to work at Qualys. Our team had the privilege of being able to do develop, from scratch, the next-gen platform for web applications. Developing anything from the ground up is a fantastic experience that not many developers get. While I did a lot of UI work at Qualys over the years, my passion eventually evolved to center around building scalable systems. I think I really enjoy a good challenge— and nothing is more challenging than scaling distributed systems. I think this is what eventually led me to cross paths with Google…

After 4 years at Qualys I think I began to get antsy. I wanted something more. I wasn’t really learning anything new and opportunities just weren’t there. Then, I was contacted by a recruiter at Google. Eventually I accepted a job in the Boulder office on the Google Drive team. And here we are at the present day!