Stew Mckinney :: Developer :: Consulting

I am a veteran engineer and hands-on engineering leader that builds both service-oriented and monolithic architectures that empower companies to deliver value to their customers. I've coded in Ruby, TypeScript, Python and Rust for over 19 years using frameworks like Rails, Django, and FastAPI, and I typically work at all levels in the stack. I build in the cloud as well; I have a strong knowledge of AWS solutions, and I prefer to build my infrastructure in code using Terraform or Pulumi. I've built CI/CD pipelines, automated and integrated systems, e-commerce platforms, and mobile applications. I love leading, mentoring, and developing ideas with teams. I've led teams as small as 3 as an Engineering Lead, and departments as large as 80 as a VP of Engineering.

I typically work remotely, but I am open to hybrid (at least one day WFH) options in the greater Philadelphia area.

Staff Platform Engineer

Trunk Tools
Remote (New York, NY)

August 2025 - June 2026 <

2/21 - 12/22 <

Built out the next-generation AI architecture for our document processing pipeline on Kubernetes using KEDA autoscaling
Cut costs of document processing by 50-80%
Managed the document processing cluster, including monitoring, deployment, testing and administration
Migrated infrastructure deployment process from a manual process to an automated process using Spacelift
Re-architected all Terraform stacks to use strict environment-based stacks and removed "general stacks" owned by more than one environment
Wrote OPA policies for Spacelift to customize deployment flows and send Slack notifications for approval and status, as well as release notes via script
Built reusable infrastructure components using Pulumi and Terraform such as Spacelift pipelines and KEDA jobs with complex deployment behavior
Created platform team roadmap, charter, and goals for 2025-2026, security and best practices, held postmortems, mentored developers, and held regular office hours

Principal Developer

Calibrate
Remote (New York, NY)

April 2023 - April 2025 <

2/21 - 12/22 <

Acted as a cross-domain subject expert and assisted all areas of the application platform, from the mobile application to the cloud infrastructure
Designed and built the main authentication system, a decentralized attribute-based access control and authentication platform using Auth0
Built reusable components in Pulumi to interact with the authentication system and set ABAC permissions for different routes
Deprecated old architecture and imported older components into Pulumi, achieving a near 100% Infrastructure as Code coverage rate
Rebuilt our CI pipeline on Buildkite in Dagger, to allow for composable pipelines that could be run anywhere
Built a dynamic CI configuration interface which allowed users to configure their CI runs, using Dagger and TypeScript
Created an isolated demo environment for the platform for the sales team, with its own deploy pipeline to manage a separate cadence, and mocked integrations
Built a tenant system for the platform, for the demo environment and other tenants, and integrated the tenant system with the mobile application
Migrated our administrative website from AWS Cognito to using Okta federation w/ Auth0 (and tied it to the general auth system)
Created automated systems that imported issues from our security solutions(s) on AWS to JIRA
Divided the head of security's responsibilities with the IT manager upon their departure, including overseeing the 2023/2024 SOC 2 certifications

Chief Architect

Calibrate
Remote (New York, NY)

January 2022 - April 2023 <

2/21 - 12/22 <

Designed and built a cloud native healthtech platform for Calibrate, using AWS and Kubernetes (EKS), built IaC-first using Pulumi
Built and managed a department of 8 people, which was split into three separate functions, platform, infrastructure, and QA
Discussed software choices with other leaders and oversaw all architecture decisions in the department
Planned, orchestrated, and oversaw a major rewrite of a prototype application from Django to Python with FastAPI and SQLAlchemy
Created a plan to manage external vendors during the transition, deprecating some and migrating others
Acted as main point of contact for all things related to engineering security within the Engineering department
Worked with the CTO to make sure the department could meet future objectives especially regarding future scale
Worked with the head of security to design and enforce controls for our SOC 2 Type I/II audits, and participated in interviews for those audits
Discussed policy with the head of security and other engineering management for our ISO 27001 certification.
Ensured that controls were automatically enforced where possible, following zero trust and minimum necessary guidelines for HIPAA compliance
Discussed contractual language with counsel to make sure that future engineering initiatives were provided for
Worked with the QA manager and team to design test strategies with shift-left and automated principles in mind
Built two services in Rust (Rocket/Diesel) to assist w/ product engineering efforts and built their custom OTEL instrumentation
Upgraded and improved our observation platform to enable end-to-end tracing from API Gateway to the container using OTEL
Built the CI/CD pipeline that enforced said controls and ran automated tests against PRs before and after merge
Wrote a toolchain (anglerfish) in TypeScript for engineering department, which handled daily basic tasks

Vice President, Software Development

CapitalRX
Remote (New York, NY)

February 2021 - December 2021 <

2/21 - 12/22 <

Oversaw the rapid growth of the department as the hiring manager for 20 developers and 8 QA Engineers, which saw the overall Engineering team scale to 70 from 27 in the space of a few months.
Partnered with the CTO of CapitalRX to expand the tech leadership team by promoting from within and hiring outside of the company.
Worked with the SVP of Product to establish a system of metrics (KPIs) to measure team progress and ensure steady progress to hit important deadlines and milestones.
Oversaw the growth of the department from 2 scrum teams to 10, working with the Director of Agile and product leadership to balance resources to meet needs.
Coached and directly managed 23 Engineers, including 2 Engineering Managers.
Initiated continuing education through a series of Chapter Meetings with the Director of Agile and engineering leadership.
Collaborated with the new Senior Director of Engineering to deliver a de-identification framework to fully test highly data-driven behavior.
Spearheaded and organized a cross-team effort to develop a microfrontend framework, to enable fully independent teams.
Supervised the growth and development of the QA department, to group of 14 Engineers and a Director of QA.
Established standards with the CTO and engineering leadership for service migration, and new microservice development.
Worked with the Director of QA to formalize processes and set new process standards within the QA department to meet growing needs, using a "shift left" mentality.
Made critical changes to automation strategy to deal with scaling issues, including introducing smoke tests and parallelizing full runs.
Set work standards and processes for the Engineering and QA departments.
Developed a reputation as a soft problem solver and technical expert, working to address critical issues as they arose.

Senior Director, Software Engineering

CapitalRX
Remote (New York, NY)

March 2020 - February 2021 <

3/20 - 2/21 <

Worked with the CTO of CapitalRX to lead a team of 27 developers in delivering a pharmacy claims adjudication service, JUDI, the first launched in 25 years.
Coached, managed and worked alongside 14 Engineers during the development of JUDI.
Worked with SVP of Product to develop an Agile pilot program, which led to a successful adaptation of Scrum methodologies using JIRA.
Worked with the CTO to build out subdepartments where we found gaps, including QA, DevOps and IT.
Hired developers, Scrum Masters, and QA engineers to meet our launch goals for the year.
Wrote an integration test pipeline using CypressJS and CodeBuild.
Developed several core packages to facilitate automated testing in CypressJS and Pytest, using Python, Node.js and AWS Lambda.
Built core tooling for the dev experience, including automatic code linters and a seeding framework, written in Python, Node.js and TypeScript.
Built out a QA department and set up QA processes, including bug triage and testing requirements.
Worked with both vendors and clients on critical integrations for launch.

CTO

SBM Consulting (Contract w/Olleyes)
New York, NY

August 2018 - November 2019 <

8/18 - 11/19 <

Worked with the founder of Olleyes to correct issues in a prototype medical device, a FOVE VR headset that performs visual tests, readying it for FDA class 1 medical device trials.
Audited a single-tenant Django application and re-wrote it to support multiple users, accounts, offices, devices, managers, employees, and patients.
Abstracted away platform-specific dependencies of different VR platforms behind interfaces using Unity and Zenject, and created a new product using that architecture on the Pico 4K (Android).
Leveraged UniRx (RxNET for Unity) and Unidux (Redux for Unity) to create a state-driven architecture that separated the data and network layer from the UI layer.
Ported an Electron application to a web-native Angular application, which included the addition of new API endpoints.
Extended the Angular application to include real-time test monitoring with secure WebSockets and Django Channels.
Deployed the new application to the AWS platform using ECS on Docker Compose.
Worked closely with vendors to establish technical specifications and debug hardware issues.