# Cesar Garza

> Principal Software Engineer that loves building quality software and leveling up engineers along the way.

Location: United States, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/cesargarza

Principal Software Engineer with 15 years of experience in full-stack software development, including 12 specializing in Ruby on Rails and scalable backend systems.

Passionate about clean architecture, pragmatic refactoring, and maintainable design, balancing ideal solutions with real-world constraints.

Believes great engineering leadership starts with empathy and communication, mentoring engineers to build confidence and technical excellence — especially those from diverse backgrounds.

Led large-scale data-retention, event-driven, and microservice initiatives supporting tens of millions of records and multiple teams.

Previously known professionally as Cesar Palafox Garza

## Work Experience
### Principal Software Engineer @ Kantata
Jan 2022 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Defined and implemented a PostgreSQL/Rails partitioning strategy that enabled long-term data retention and significantly improved query performance for high-volume change events.
- Architected a cross-microservice authentication system, establishing consistent authorization patterns and shared security standards.
- Led design and delivery of a new microservice product’s MVP, accelerating time-to-market through pragmatic tradeoffs and mentorship of newer engineers.
- Introduced observability and debugging tools that reduced time-to-resolution across critical paths and improved developer confidence in production.
- Partnered with Engineering Managers and PMs to define technical roadmaps, break down complex projects, and identify high-impact opportunities.
- Mentored and coached engineers through structured 1:1s and code reviews, helping level up technical expertise and confidence across diverse backgrounds.
- Co-led the company’s coaching program “Amplifiers” and created the “Cookie-Jar” peer-learning space to foster cross-team knowledge sharing.
- Drove adoption of key developer productivity tools (GitHub Copilot, Warp Terminal) and contributed to the organization’s prompt-engineering practices.
- Collaborated with other Principals to define architectural standards, technical processes, and best practices across the engineering org.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Kantata
Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Architected and delivered an end-to-end Audit Logging system, including event APIs, UI access, and scalable long-term data storage via PostgreSQL partitioning.
- Maintained and migrated the CDC pipeline from an internal Go service to Zendesk Maxwell, improving reliability and maintainability, and later optimizing long-term storage via PostgreSQL sideloading.
- Implemented infrastructure and observability tooling (Terraform, alerting, SLOs, recovery plans) for production readiness.
- Led a small cross-functional team to define, build, and launch the feature with minimal Product oversight.
- Resolved multiple high-impact performance issues and optimized query bottlenecks across the monolith.
- Drove mentorship and DEI initiatives, including the Engineer Growth Framework, Amplifiers coaching program, and org-wide inclusion efforts.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Apple
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Maintained and extended internal Ruby on Rails tools and gems supporting multiple engineering teams.
- Advanced architectural standards and code quality through reviews and internal libraries.
- Implemented secure file-system management using in-house frameworks.

### Team Lead / Full-stack Developer @ Waggl, Inc
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019
- Upgraded Rails monolith (3 → 5 +), improving stability and maintainability while reducing legacy debt.
- Introduced React into the existing app, paving the migration path from Backbone. Lead learning group
- Led cross-functional feature team, tracking progress and communicating status to stakeholders.
- Refactored legacy code and improved test coverage, enhancing deployment confidence.
- Implemented Netflix’s fast_jsonapi serializer to standardize and accelerate API responses.
- Redesigned data export pipeline, parallelizing Excel generation to replace manual CSV tasks.

### Full-Stack Developer @ Edfinity
Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Zapopan,Jalisco
- Built and maintained full-stack features in Rails and React, balancing backend scalability with frontend UX.
- Created JMeter-based performance testing for key workflows, leading to ~30 % app-wide speed improvement.
- Collaborated with Product and Design to deliver user-centric enhancements.

### Software Developer @ The Hybrid Group
Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Zapopan, Jalisco
- Development of internal tools web and client applications.
- Modernized Rails by migrating from v2 to v3.
- Solely led full-stack development, requirement gathering and testing of a Rails 4 real estate web application, leveraging Foundation for styling, and leveraging technologies like Sendgrid and Google Charts API

### Software Developer @ Software Allies
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Guadalajara, Jalisco
- Development of core functionality on a Ruby on Rails app.
- Development of predesign documents, as requirement gathering, and to help scope the features. Needed to be non-technical enough for Designer to user in mock-ups
- Implemented an in-app notification system.

### Web Developer @ IBM
Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | El Salto, Jalisco
Implemented an algorithm on ant that took the information from the builds ran and saved them to a sqlite DB.

Displayed the read-only info on the web with PHP, worked with the implementation of several queries for retrieving information from it.

Modified some ant scripts to make sure the information needed for the app was present.

### Software Developer (Intern) @ Sistemas Digitales en Telefonía
Jan 2010 – Jan 2011
Managed to reduce back-end services deployment time by 70%.
Implemented a software package within 6 months that represented 25% of the department’s income.
Defined the architecture of the team’s second software package.


## Education
### Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Computer Software Engineering
ITESO Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara
Jan 2008 – Jan 2012


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/cesarpgarza
- GitHub: https://github.com/cpalafox

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Source: https://flows.cv/cesargarza
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/cesargarza/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22