Holly Becker's Resumé

Experience

Backend developer for an external API and an integrations system, supported analytics work.
Owned three Python codebases: handled new features, troubleshooting, and releases with no downtime and no major bugs.
Championed database improvements:

Initiated conversion from ad-hoc commands to using Flyway to manage structure.
Stepped up to be primary reviewer of database changes.
Taught team about database indexes.
Led initiative to add indexes and foreign keys to the database, approved by management after missing index caused site outage.

Fixed bugs and performed security updates.
Expanded test coverage and test infrastructure.
Improved dev tooling.
Wrote a well-received bot that automatically updated ticket statuses based on merge request status, freeing devs and product from nagging for updates.

Researched, selected, and set up documentation solution for public API, and initiated notifying API users of breaking changes, including writing public changelog posts with upgrade path.
Encouraged and modelled asking questions and having technical discussions in public channels so everyone can see and learn from them in a remote environment.
Skills: Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, pytest, docker-compose, GitLab CI, git

Backend developer in two Ruby on Rails codebases using both MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, focusing on database performance.
Main contributor to authorization library update with no associated security issues and several security bugs fixed.
Investigated performance impacts of a major database change and implemented a solution, reducing memory usage by 30% and support requests related to web request timeouts.
Presented internally on technical topics, such as ongoing database changes, and git usage & best practices.
Did regular rotations on support escalations, focusing on fixing the root cause.
Improved developer experience by scripting development environment setup, fixing flakey tests & warnings, and writing technical documentation.
Encouraged and modelled asking questions and having technical discussions in public channels so everyone can see and learn from them.
Onboarded junior developers to our development process, answered questions, and paired.
Self-organized working on critical urgent projects during extended management turnover.
Skills: Ruby, Rails, rspec, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Docker, docker-compose, git

Backend software developer creating asynchronous APIs for frontend and mobile teams.
Wrote & expanded async Python 3 microservices as part of a project to switch from PHP monolith. Contributed to best practices and shared templates for microservices.
Led collaboration with other teams to confirm API design before starting implementation.
Clarified and expanded out-of-date developer documentation.
Team expert in Python & git, presented git tutorial and organized lunch & learns.
Skills: Python 3, aiohttp, Docker, docker-compose, git, py.test

Designed and implemented customer-driven features in a small team for an open source digital preservation tool in Python 2 and Django.
Advocated for technical and process improvements, including code review, automated testing, upgrading core frameworks and replacing deprecated dependencies.
Documented technical architecture, helped with user docs, and answered community questions.
Skills: Python 2, Django, git, py.test, HTML & CSS, AngularJS
GitHub

PyCascades Volunteer Chair (2023-2025) Organized and trained volunteers at regional Python conference for the Pacific Northwest.
Conference talks
- Can I Use That Code? (Conference talk, Slides) Overview of software licences, covering different categories of licences, details of common open-source licences, and how they interact in the same codebase.
- Intermediate Git Tutorial (Workshop, Slides) Workshop on using git with other people. Covered forking & pull requests on Github, git remotes, merging & rebasing. Co-created & co-presented.
- vcr.py (Lightning talk, Slides) An introduction to vcr.py, a python mocking library for HTTP requests that auto-generates fixtures from live data.
- Python Implementations (Lightning talk, Slides) An introduction to the different common implementations of Python: CPython, Pypy, Cython, Jython, IronPython.