- What is your employment authorization status?
- Where are you located?
- Are you interested in relocating?
- How long have you been working remotely?
- Are you open to travel?
- Do you have experience mentoring or coaching other software engineers? What has been your experience? Why do you like mentoring or coaching other software engineers?
- What does a good company culture look like to you?
- Can you describe the projects you've worked on either in school or on your own? What was your role, and how did you handle challenges?
- Describe a front end based project that you've worked on in a professional setting, and some of the challenges you experienced working on it.
I am studying for a Level 8 Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology at Whitireia in Petone, Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand. My student visa ends on July 20, 2025.
With my student visa, I can work up to 20 hours per week as a part-time employee, fixed-term employee contractor, or casual employee contractor. I cannot work as an independent contractor or be self-employed.
After I finish my course, I can apply for a one-year post-study work visa. If I get it, I can work full-time for one year after my course ends.
I am looking for a job with an Accredited Employer that will help me stay in New Zealand long-term and work towards residency. I have 10 years of experience as a Software Engineer, a role listed on New Zealand's Green List of needed employees.
I'm a USA citizen, with passport and social security number. I do not need sponsorship to remain in the country or to work for a USA employer.
I'm a United Kingdom citizen, with current passport. I do not need sponsorship to remain in the United Kingdom or to work for a UK employer.
Wellington, New Zealand
Depends on the role, city, relocation compensation, and total compensation. 80/20 against relocating
I have been successfully delivering projects and achieving companies goals while working remotely for 8+ years
I prefer to be working at home in Wellington 240 out of 365 days of the year.
I am comfortable traveling as needed. I am comfortable recurring travel less than 1 week a month.
Do you have experience mentoring or coaching other software engineers? What has been your experience? Why do you like mentoring or coaching other software engineers?
Yes, I have experience mentoring and coaching other software engineers, including time coaching in both formal and informal settings. Coaching is a deeply ingrained facet in my career. It gives me great satisfaction to support the growth of fellow engineers, particularly as it lets me contribute to both an individual's development and broader progress within the industry. My mentoring philosophy combines a unique blend of training technical skills, fostering a socially responsible mindset, and growing an engineer's soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence and teamwork.
When I have worked as a Software Engineer, I know that my role includes a responsibility to mentor junior engineers. While at WorkTango, I was involved in the technology decision-making process and optimized third-party library selections, during which I encouraged guided participation from junior engineers all while supporting their contributions in our tech stack featuring ReactJS, GraphQL, and Ruby on Rails. This experience was deeply enriching as I saw firsthand the growing confidence and throughput of our team's engineers, demonstrating the truth behind my belief that effective mentorship has quantifiable outcomes.
At Hack Reactor, my contributions went beyond simply teaching code; I also took pride in the curriculum I helped create. This curriculum, imbued with the development principles of Agile, Mobile-first, and industry best practices, had impressive outcomes—a 90% graduation rate and a 75% job placement rate within three months of graduation. Similar efforts continued when I joined The Flatiron School. Here, I've grown my focus to incorporate web accessibility and inclusive design principles, key aspects I consider vital for any developer's toolbox. Hoping to make a more inclusive web for everyone starting from the ground up.
Outside of my work, I am actively involved as a community organizer and open-source contributor, both of which strengthen my mentorship philosophy. Software Engineers gain so much from participating in the community and I hope to show (not just tell) my mentees the value of being involved. I've been a speaker and organizer at various tech events and coding bootcamps. Whether it’s leading a panel discussion on ethics in tech or contributing to Code for America, these activities allow me to share my knowledge in a more communal, holistic manner, while also staying humble and learning from others.
To sum up, my passion for mentoring comes from various sources: to see measurable growth in individuals, to witness the impact of that growth in the community and industry at large, and to share a socially responsible approach to technology development. My proudest moments as a mentor are when I see a mentee solve a complex issue, secure a job, or contribute to social good in tech. It’s not just about the individual home runs; it’s about changing the game itself.
My work in technology has focused on solving problems, collaborating with high performing teams, building on actionable feedback, and delivering impactful incremental solutions. There’s a lot happening in that statement, let me break it down into key factors I look for.
Mindful growth - Technology falters on this difficult precipice of needing to move quickly without burning out. Mindful growth is a balancing act with the clear understanding of the drivers of the business, sustainable people practices, and industry best practices. I look for teams that value investment in their peers, seeing it as a way to drive the business forward. I check in with my connections about what work is like and how well a company retains talent. I hope to have conversations that are cognizant of the tradeoffs for decisions and reflective on ways to improve.
Empathetic communication - I recently read this great article by Cate Huston, Engineering manager at Automattic, about communication. (https://qz.com/work/1587170/the-five-types-of-communication-problems-that-destroy-company-morale/) Empathetic communication shows up to me in careful code reviews that hope to educate while also ensure the company’s codebase improves. It’s part of speaking together rather than over each other in time-constrained meetings. Even going so far as to revolve around text-based discussions where context and tone are hopefully provided alongside information.
Methodical action - For a business to be sustainable it has to make money. Across my time in startups and as an engineer, I do my best not to forget that. For this reason, I appreciate companies that take action to integrate ongoing feedback relating to both quantitative and qualitative data. In the same vein, I want a transparent understanding of the metrics behind the goals of my work. This allows me to be innovative while comprehending how my work contributes to the performance of the organization.
These factors of company culture have come from a decade as an employee with 8 of those years embedded in high velocity technology companies. I am confident these factors build sustainably successful companies that attract, grow, and retain the types of teammates I want to collaborate with.
Can you describe the projects you've worked on either in school or on your own? What was your role, and how did you handle challenges?
One of my most impactful projects was at Condé Nast, where I built a reusable paywall architecture for Vanity Fair, Wired, and The New Yorker. I was responsible for end-to-end testing, leveraging Puppeteer to ensure consistent behavior across brands and improve SEO. My role expanded to developing React components for the paywall, working closely with cross-functional teams to ensure brand-specific needs were met while maintaining a core architecture. A key challenge was ensuring the paywall’s SEO performance; by optimizing the page load and minimizing script interference, I contributed to a 100% increase in subscription revenue for Vanity Fair and Wired.
Describe a front end based project that you've worked on in a professional setting, and some of the challenges you experienced working on it.
At Condé Nast, I spearheaded the development of a brand-agnostic paywall architecture along with a suite of components for over 26 media brands. This project was particularly crucial for the company's monetization strategy, aiming to drive a substantial increase in monthly subscriptions.
Challenges:
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Multiple Brand Integration: One of the primary challenges was ensuring that the paywall system seamlessly integrated with over 26 distinct media brands, each with its unique design and user experience paradigms.
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Integration with Google Ad Platform for our Marketing team: Integrating with Google Ad Platform posed complexities as we had to ensure ads displayed correctly behind and in front of the paywall. We also had to capture accurate metrics on ad engagements for users who were and weren't subscribers, leading to segmentation in analytics.
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Unified experience on Google AMP: Ensuring the paywall components and user flow were consistent on Google AMP pages was challenging due to AMP's constraints on JavaScript and custom components. We developed a streamlined version of our paywall for AMP, ensuring it was both compliant and provided a seamless user experience.
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End-to-End Testing: Ensuring the reliability of the paywall was paramount. I authored a technology blog post on End-to-End Testing the Condé Nast Paywalls to share our approach to testing, which included tools like Puppeteer.
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Customizable rules to trigger Paywall components: We developed a flexible rule engine allowing brands to customize when and how the paywall was triggered, based on user behavior, content type, or other criteria. Implementing this while ensuring optimal site performance and user experience was a technical hurdle.
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Cross-Platform Compatibility: Given the variety of devices and platforms on which readers accessed the content, ensuring the paywall worked flawlessly across all of them was a challenge.
The result of our efforts was a significant growth in monetization, achieving a year-over-year increase of over 100% in monthly subscriptions for Vanity Fair and Wired. The project underscored the importance of iterative development, user-centric design, and robust testing in creating a successful paywall system.