# Alec Flett > Software Engineer, Drop-in CoFounder, and all around helpful technologist Location: Berkeley, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/alecflett I am a jack-of-all-trades, specializing in data visualization, user interface, and application-level architecture for the web. I like working on highly interactive, end-user/consumer-level software. I can do anything from the top to the bottom of the stack. I most enjoy front end work, and I'm experienced and proficient in TypeScript/ESNext, React, D3, etc. I really like dynamic languages like Python and JS, but I also have extensive Go, C, and C++ experience.. and even a little Java though I hate admitting it. I have light experience with AWS and GCP, generally leaning towards serverless solutions. I prefer solving "big picture" problems, whether it's improving caching strategies for improved site performance, finding ways to make engineering teams collaborate better, or measuring and improving user engagement. I like to get my hands dirty writing lots of code. I also have some light experience dabbling with Arduino/ESPxxx and various sensors, 3D modelling/printing, lighting, mapping, etc. I am NOT interested in: - tools, operations, or release engineering jobs - anything south of San Francisco - anything involving large amounts of Java, or Perl - "classic" enterprise software, e.g. CRMs and the like Specialties: Open source software, data visualization, user interface technical design, dynamic languages, performance optimization. ## Work Experience ### Founding Engineer @ tambo ai Jan 2025 – Present ### Principal Engineer @ The General Partnership Jan 2021 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area I help startups start up. I work with zero-to-one companies that are funded by The GP to bootstrap their engineering organizations and products. This includes building prototypes / proof-of-concepts / MVPs while validating our work with early customers. I also help founders build their first engineering team by finding just the right combination of people and technical skills to build their product. I dive deep into new industries to learn the unique challenges of launching products in a new space, whether that is Public Health, Crypto, or AI. I understand the various challenges that a founder faces as they build their company, and I do whatever is necessary to help. ### Software Engineer @ Libretto Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 ### Founding Engineer @ AQUA Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 Built and incubated Aqua inside The General Partnership. It started as an initial proof-of-concept of a marketplace for NFT-based game tokens. My work from zero to one included building a data ingestion pipeline from blockchains like Immutable to load into a database and search engine, and building the UI for a faceted search with a designer. In order to spin out Aqua into its own company, I then helped hire the CTO and a strong founding engineering team, and established development practices to turn the POC into a robust consumer site. Worked with product managers, data scientists, and CTO to explore new markets. ### Founding Engineer @ PHC Global Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 Worked with founders to explore markets by building prototypes and trying to find product market fit. Built mini-products around bio-security such as tracking COVID infections within an organization, manage sequencing of genes from COVID samples, visualizing infection rates over time, etc. Helped hire the initial founding team and worked with data scientists to help communicate insights from available data with various data visualizations. ### Founding Engineer @ UrbanFootprint Jan 2015 – Jan 2021 | Berkeley, California, United States UrbanFootprint's core product is a single-page web application for exploring and editing data-centric maps in order to plan for future real-world development. I had the dual role of Technical Lead of the core planning application, as well as the lead engineer of the frontend. As a technical lead, I focused on application architecture and developer experience - making sure we were developing the right product in the best possible way, while keeping the team happy and productive. Technology includes Postgres/PostGIS, Python with SQLAlchemy, Redis, and more. As the lead frontend engineer, I got down and dirty with the code - implementing new features and continuously improving our architecture, and keeping us up to date with the latest browser capabilities. Technology included React, Redux, Redux-Observable (RXJS), MapboxGL, TypeScript, D3, and more. ### Senior Software Engineer @ Google Jan 2010 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area Metaweb was acquired by Google in July 2010. 2014-2015: Frontend Engineer, Google Consumer Surveys I worked across the stack a market research survey product. (https:// www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/) The stack was Python, JavaScript, and Go, on AppEngine. In additional to architectural guidance, work included a UI rewrite for a redesign using Polymer, refactoring backend for faster, distributed testing, refactoring the backend to use NumPy for numeric calculations, and working on a Go server to manage latency issues between US data centers and Australian customers. 2014 Technical Lead, Chrome Service Worker On a team of 5, I provided technical leadership for the first implementation of ServiceWorker (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/ Service_Worker_API) Development was in C++ and included working with an early informal group which included Mozilla, to develop the API that has since been standardized in the W3C. 2012 - 2014: Engineer, Chrome IndexedDB With a team of three, improved the performance and resource usage of IndexedDB, a non-relational, asynchronous database built into the browser (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_API) 2010 - 2012: Engineer and Technical Lead, Knowledge Graph Storage With a team of three, developed a distributed data store for storing the Freebase graph on Google infrastructure, which eventually became Google's Knowledge Graph. Designed and developed a number of MapReduce pipelines, in Java using what is now called Google Dataflow (https:// cloud.google.com/dataflow/) ### Senior Software Engineer @ Metaweb Technologies, Inc. Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco Bay Area - ground up design and development (6 months) and ongoing maintenance (3+ years) of an Python-based application server for all public API calls for freebase.com. - rearchitecture and development of an asynchronous Python/Pylons+Twisted- based high-performance application server for freebase.com user interface, including day to day coordination with product management, designers, QA. - instituted and coordinated engineering-driven unit/functional test infrastructure with coordinated continuous build system (using buildbot, nose, etc) - responsible for design and details of major performance and scalability improvements to site, managing changes across all parts of the architecture including application servers, cache, database, inter-component architecture. - bootstrapping of several internal projects including site traffic analysis using Hadoop cluster ### Senior Software Engineer @ Open Source Applications Foundation Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | San Francisco, California, United States Front end application engineer working on the Chandler open source PIM. - developed calendar user interface using wxPython - improved performance of many aspects of the product, including startup, responsiveness, memory usage - helped to redesign UI Component framework for performance and improved developer experience ### Technical Writer/Developer @ Macromedia, Inc. Jan 2004 – Jan 2004 | San Francisco Contractor. Technical writing of APIs and Developer Guide for (now canceled) Macromedia Central, a predecessor to Adobe Air. Wrote over 150 pages of documentation and developed 4 sample programs for the platform. ### Principal Software Engineer @ Netscape Communications Jan 1996 – Jan 2003 | Mountain View, California, United States Front end development of Netscape Browser and Mail products from versions 3.0 through 7.1 and original Mozilla browser from inception through version 1.7. (before transition to Firefox) Worked across Windows, Macintosh, and Unix platforms with front end toolkits including MFC and Motif. Helped develop the XUL framework for the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird products. ## Education ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Math/Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University ### Teaching Credential (incomplete) in High School/Secondary Diplomas and Certificates San Francisco State University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alecf - GitHub: https://github.com/alecf --- Source: https://flows.cv/alecflett JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alecflett/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12