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EVAN DORN

Software engineering leader, data scientist, hobbyist, and fabulous nerd

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BIO

Personal Profile

I'm outdoorsy, genderqueer, extroverted but shy, and an irrepressible nerd. My favorite activity is learning to do something I've never done before.  Whether professionally or as a hobbyist, I'm not interested in becoming perfect at one specialization and doing it the rest of my life: I'd rather keep building a larger toolbox. I'm fearless about diving into tasks and challenges I've never done before and learning along the way.  

Equality, social justice, ethics, and diversity are core passions of mine. One of my dreams is to work at a place that shares these ethics and is genuinely striving to make the world a better place.

I love dogs, woodworking, boardgames, DIY projects, karaoke, science fiction, gardening/landscaping and a million other pastimes. My family - both biological and chosen - are at the center of where I find meaning.

Home: About Me

MY EXPERIENCE

Background & Expertise

March 2018- January 2019

DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, PRODUCE PAY, INC.

Hired to build a new engineering team at a pivoting startup, I grew the department from 3 people to 15 in eight months. I established coding standards and engineering process, designed the platform architecture and domain model design, established hiring practices, mentored the team in software architecture & design best practices, and managed eight direct reports.  Key techs used: Ruby/Rails, ReactJS, Python, ElasticSearch, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Google Vision API, AWS, Heroku.

November 2016- March 2018

SENIOR SOFTWARE ARCHITECT, LOOT CRATE INC.

At Loot Crate, I oversaw the design of a company-wide API migration and a microservices migration of a monolith.  I did the design of many critical systems including a custom parameterized RBAC (role base authorization), an event-driven state transfer for our microservices architecture, extensive technical debt management & cleanup, and company-wide API design standardization.  When my supervisor (Director of Engineering) left, I also inherited his responsibilities and for several months managed a team of 10 that rebuilt our internal administration interface.  Key techs used: Ruby/Rails/Grape, ReactJS, Backbone, GCP, Google Pub/Sub, Protobufs, Heroku.

June 1996 - May 2016

FOUNDER AND CEO, LOGICAL REALITY DESIGN, INC.

LRD was a freelance web development venture that grew into a 12-person contracting firm.  We specialized in startup MVPs, working in squads to build as many as four startups in parallel.  I was personally lead programmer and team lead on over 20 different web startups.  Techs used: PHP, Ruby/Rails, AngularJS, AWS, Java, Heroku

May 2014 - August 2015

CTO, CO-FOUNDER, LEAD DEVELOPER - EQUIBID, INC

Equibid was originally a client of my other company. I was quickly promoted to CTO and Co-Founder of this disruptive real estate startup.  In addition to leading the design and architecture of the software, I wrote fundraising decks and gave the primary fundraising pitches.  Techs used: AngularJS, Ruby/Rails, PostgreSQL, AWS.

Home: Experience

EDUCATION

What I’ve Learned

PHD - CALTECH

In the interdisciplinary program "Computation and Neural Systems", I did original research investigating how universal mathematical princples underlying both chemistry and evolution guarantee that all living organisms will leave a detectable signature on their environment, and demonstrating how machine learning systems can be used to detect those signals even without any prior knowledge of the biochemistry of the organisms in question.

In short: I proved that it is possible to program a robot to search for life in the universe, even if we don't know what we're looking for. 

My thesis won the international Innovative ETD Award for best electronic dissertation. 

B.S., B.A. - SWARTHMORE COLLEGE

B.S. in Engineering, B.A. in Biology.  I studied the general principles of engineering and biology, with a heavy focus on neurobiology, computer/software engineering, electrical engineering, evolution,  neural networks, and machine learning.   My senior engineering project was a robotic arm using a flexible liquid-filled skeleton: moving with no rigid parts, similar to a soft-bodied animal with no rigid skeleton.

Awards & Membeships:  Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi 

Home: Education

MY SKILLS

TECH

In two decades of full-stack work, I've learned over 20 programming languages and shipped production code in ten.  I'm delighted to work on your most interesting challenges in:

  • Data science and machine learning

  • Applications design and systems architecture

  • API and data transport design

  • Authentication and authorization

  • Technical debt management

  • Ruby/Rails, JS/React, Python/Pandas, Elixir/Phoenix

  • Many other languages and tools

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LEADERSHIP

I can manage your teams, mentor your developers, build an engineering process, run sprints, interview developers and data scientists.  I excel at bridging communication gaps between the business-minded and tech-minded parts of an organization, and I love working to find consensus in challenging situations. I can help your junior engineers plan their career, and train them in the skills they need from architecture to personnel management.

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LET’S CONNECT

1040 N. Wilson Ave, Pasadena CA 91104

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