# Ben Pernick > Software Engineer at Epsilon Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/benpernick As a software engineer every day is a new challenge and an opportunity to learn and contribute fresh solutions. My current strength areas include React, Node-based servers, and SQL databases; and I am constantly updating and expanding my skillset in keeping with a constantly growing industry. I love thinking about complex problems across the stack, and working with teams to solve real-world problems. To see more about my skills and projects, feel free to check out my github! https://github.com/bpernick ## Work Experience ### Software Engineer @ Epsilon Jan 2024 – Present | Chicago, Illinois, United States ### Software Engineer @ FloQast Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 ### Back End Developer @ TeleVet Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area ### Open Source Developer @ Personal Projects Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | ReactJS Contribution Study and apply knowledge of React codebase, including Fiber reconciliation algorithm in order to fix bugs and participate in discussions regarding new features. https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/19684 https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/19753 https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/19851 ### Assistant Software Engineering Instructor @ Galvanize Inc Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Austin, Texas, United States Software Engineering Immersive Resident - Staffed company-wide software engineering help desk where I was tasked with guiding students through the debugging process and modeling problem solving best practices. - Gave solution lectures and led problem solving workshops. - Held office hours to help students with a variety of technical skills ranging from algorithms specific technologies like React or SQL. - Created lesson plans, teaching materials, and solution slides. - Collaborated with Program Lead, other instructors and Career Services to make sure all students are on-track for success in the program and after graduation. ### Full Stack Engineer @ Personal Projects Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Hack Reactor Backend Optimization - Inherited a legacy codebase for an online store application and was tasked with scaling the backend to handle large data size and high traffic. - I started by seeding 10 million primary entries into a postgres database in order to model the data size that might be found in a production application. - Used postman to test server responses and indexed relevant primary and foreign keys to allow for faster query times. - Load-tested application with artillery.io. - Optimized to allow for high RPS (requests per second) by improving database connections and load balancing for high availability. - Researched how to improve efficiency of server-to-database connections. I used pooling and experimented with max pool sizes, settling on max = 100. - Load balanced read requests by creating a read-only (synchronous streaming) replica of the database, and used an nginx load balancer to route traffic. - Deployed to AWS using raw EC2 (T2 micro) for the servers and RDS for the databases. ### Software Engineer @ Personal Projects Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Hack Reactor Real-time multiplayer game - Built a turn-based multiplayer game based on the popular board game Telestrations (a drawing adaptation of Telephone). Research: - Built a todo app using graphQL and Typescript as an introduction to these technologies. - Built a simple drawing canvas to understand how to render user-drawn pictures onto the screen. - Investigated apollo server’s websocket protocol for graphql subscriptions and implemented my own front-end graphql subscription client using fetch. Implementation: - Created a full-stack whiteboard representation of the game flow, focusing on the types of requests that would be made to the server and the types of data that would be stored. - Created a database schema and a graphql schema to handle requests. Decided which requests should be socket-based (subscriptions) and which should be http-based (queries). - Built database queries and graphQL resolvers. Used apollo server’s graphql-express to run the graphql server. - Tested API manually with graphql playground. - Built UI with React and typescript, using canvas-based bitmapping to allow users to draw on the screen. - Forwent heavy graphql client libraries in favor of using simple fetch requests for mutations and my own fetch-based websocket client for subscription requests. - Used scss for visually attractive styling. ### Software Engineer @ Personal Projects Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Hack Reactor Wevent - Built a searchable, calendar-based app for posting and attending community events. Deployed site: http://weventofficial.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk.com/ - Collaborated with 7 other engineers using agile workflow to deliver the app to client specifications. - Main responsibilities were managing git workflow, creating backend routes and queries, and deploying with Docker. - Full team created a whiteboard diagram with a rough visual layout of each page and the data needs of each component. - Created a SQL database schema to serve the needs of the frontend, focused on the relationship between users and events. - Made data contract with relevant front end team member for each particular component and implemented the query and endpoint to deliver and accept data in the proper shape. - Debugged problems that arose in testing focused on but not limited to the backend api. - Styled frontend components using SasS. - Deployed the application using EBS/Docker for the server and RDS mysql for the database. ## Education ### Full-stack engineering Hack Reactor Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 ### Bachelor's degree in Music University of Miami Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ben-pernick-59176a27 - GitHub: https://github.com/bpernick --- Source: https://flows.cv/benpernick JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/benpernick/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-29