MIKE HALL Staff Software Engineer Chicago, IL Email: mike@just3ws.com Phone: (847) 877-3825 Website: https://www.just3ws.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/just3ws/ GitHub: https://github.com/just3ws ================================================================================ SUMMARY ================================================================================ Staff software engineer who stabilizes revenue-critical platforms, reduces systemic risk, and makes complex systems understandable enough for teams to change safely. Strongest in platform architecture, legacy modernization, observability, incident leadership, and cross-team execution across Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL systems. Known for turning production ambiguity into clear operating models, durable remediation plans, and safer delivery. ================================================================================ CORE SKILLS ================================================================================ Platform Architecture, Distributed Systems & Async Processing, AI-Augmented Engineering & SDLC, Technical Strategy, Legacy Modernization, Reliability Engineering, Incident Leadership, Observability Strategy, Cross-Team Technical Leadership, Risk Reduction, Platform Enablement, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq & Redis, LLM Orchestration (Claude, Gemini, Codex), OpenTelemetry ================================================================================ EXPERIENCE ================================================================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, STAFF ENGINEER OneMain Financial | Remote January 2021 - February 2026 Owned lane-level architecture, production stability, and systemic risk for a revenue-critical customer acquisition platform in a highly regulated financial environment. Key Outcomes: * Re-architected fragmented engineering ownership into a single accountable operating model by reconstructing end-to-end execution flows, eliminating assumption-driven debugging and enabling reliable change planning across disconnected teams. * Founded and operationalized the ACQ Enablement team to separate platform risk from product delivery, enabling sustained progress on systemic stability without degrading customer-facing velocity. * Converted incident response into a repeatable system of record by establishing trace-driven diagnosis and correction loops, ensuring every major failure resulted in measurable improvements to monitoring and cross-system integration. * Led enterprise adoption of OpenTelemetry, standardizing observability across engineering and cybersecurity to shift teams from intuition-based debugging to shared, trace-based reasoning. * Modernized legacy Rails platform components under continuous production load by re-architecting multi-step workflows and state handling, eliminating data integrity failure modes while maintaining uninterrupted revenue funnel operation. * Established systemic risk management as an explicit engineering responsibility, identifying cross-system failure modes to move the organization from reactive response to proactive reliability engineering. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SENIOR BACKEND DEVELOPER SK Holdings, Inc. | Chicago, IL January 2019 - December 2020 Stabilized and modernized a shared Rails platform supporting multiple digital properties, millions of users, and high-volume data flows. Key Outcomes: * Modernized and upgraded core Ruby and Rails stacks across multiple applications, reducing technical debt and improving long-term maintainability. * Expanded operational visibility by introducing centralized logging and monitoring, working with providers to establish actionable insight into system capacity. * Designed and built robust data pipelines synchronizing millions of records to enable reliable high-volume operations and new business initiatives. * Led data-layer remediation by replacing expensive dynamic queries with Materialized Views, materially reducing load on reporting and analytics workloads. * Migrated session and cache workloads from MySQL to Redis to isolate transactional databases and improve response times under peak traffic. * Optimized CI pipelines by reordering and parallelizing test execution, materially reducing feedback cycle time and improving throughput. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER BenchPrep | Chicago, IL March 2017 - February 2018 Improved correctness, performance, and security for enterprise assessment workflows where calculation accuracy and response integrity were business-critical. Key Outcomes: * Diagnosed and eliminated assessment calculation errors by analyzing and optimizing critical PostgreSQL queries, improving accuracy and reducing response times for certification assessments. * Implemented JWT-based response verification to prevent tampering and enforce once-only processing, strengthening trust in submitted platform outcomes. * Designed and built a secure cross-origin communication API for embedded client applications, establishing explicit trust boundaries and safe integration patterns for enterprise clients. * Reduced operational risk by identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks affecting high-concurrency assessment workflows. * Improved delivery reliability by introducing lightweight team practices that clarified acceptance criteria and reduced rework. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Senior Software Developer | ActiveCampaign | September 2018 - December 2018 | Chicago, IL Improved testability, performance, and change safety inside a tightly coupled CRM core. * Senior Software Developer | ReachLocal | March 2015 - November 2016 | Remote De-risked a large legacy rewrite by proposing an incremental modernization strategy built around API boundaries. * CTO | KloboMedia | March 2014 - September 2016 | Remote Built and delivered a social media analytics platform as technical co-founder and CTO. * Core Team Lead | Coderwall | January 2014 - December 2014 | Remote Relaunched the platform as open source and modernized background jobs and data storage to reduce cost and improve maintainability. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EARLIER EXPERIENCE 1999 - 2014 Built enterprise systems, startup platforms, and revenue-critical fulfillment services across consulting, product, and operational environments. * TicketsNow - Designed and delivered a real-time inventory locking and order fulfillment service that generated more than $2 million in annual revenue. * Groupon and Obtiva - Led onboarding, mentoring, and engineering enablement work while delivering backend systems in high-growth and consultancy environments. * BrightStar, Motorola, BP, and earlier enterprise roles - Built integration and operational systems across large organizations with a foundation in .NET, SQL, and production support. ================================================================================