# Collin Howland

> Forward Deployed Engineer

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/collinhowland

Senior Software Engineer at Capital One with multiple years of full-time experience and 4 internships across multiple industries, tech stacks, and languages. Dedicated and passionate about learning new skills and diving head first into new projects. Software engineer at heart but experience with Machine Learning, AWS, and keeping code clean and readable.

## Work Experience
### Forward Deployed Engineer @ Chalk
Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area

### Senior Software Engineer @ Capital One
Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States
Designing and maintaining distributed and componentized tools for data scientists to build ML models at scale using Python, Dask, Kubeflow, and XGBoost.
- Achieved a 40% reduction in time on a 50% increase in data in a model fit pipeline by optimizing Dask configurations and usage
- Standardized repo and engineering practices to provide consistency between repos
- Incorporated (and documented incorporation strategies of) better environment manager into components while abiding by proprietary and strict CI/CD processes, accelerating local development by 100x in some cases

### Software Engineer @ Capital One
Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States
Designing and maintaining distributed and componentized tools for data scientists to build ML models at scale using Python, Dask, Kubeflow, and XGBoost.
- Reduced KFP (Kubeflow Pipelines) pipeline.yaml size by 13.7% for Capital One's largest Kubeflow pipeline, allowing engineers flexibility to develop new features without hitting the pipeline file limit size enforced by KFP.
- Created a reusable recursive feature eliminator Kubeflow component, unifying customers and streamlining support under a single component
- Parallelized a data migration workflow to increase transfer speed from months to days, enabling the decommissioning of an old expensive Kubernetes cluster, ultimately saving $50,000+

### Associate Software Engineer @ Capital One
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco, California, United States
Worked on the Data Lineage team using Scala, ZIO, and AWS services to manage how Capital One handles their data lineage.
- Implemented a "Write Once, Read Many" pattern with Scala 3 and ZIO 2 to remove a bottleneck in the lineage system
- Reduced monthly DynamoDB storage costs by ~55% through serverless deletion process while mitigating excessive strain on the rest of the system from CDC

### Programming Intern @ Flashbulb Games
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Copenhagen, Capital Region, Denmark
Implemented the collection and appropriate querying of data for the game Rubber Bandits. The results from this process helped and continue to guide the decisions of the company as to what features to develop next and how successful these subsequent features are. Additionally, I started development on a new minigame within the Crime Spree game mode that has been published to production.

### Teacher Assistant @ Washington University in St. Louis
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | St Louis, Missouri, United States
One of only three TA's supporting CSE 231S - Introduction to Parallel and Concurrent Programming

### Software Engineer Intern (Card Tech) @ Capital One
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• Built a full stack, mobile-responsive, web application from scratch in a team of 4 with React (TypeScript) and Node.js (TypeScript)
• Frequently presented our work to the greater division for technical and consumer-related feedback to continuously adapt and improve our product
• Deployed the application as separate Dockerized front end and back-end microservices with a CI/CD pipeline to an AWS ECS cluster

### Computer Science Tutor @ Washington University in St. Louis
Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Greater St. Louis Area
I help other students understand the fundamental concepts taught in various computer science courses offered at Washington University in St. Louis, including: 
• Intro to Computer Science
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Object-Oriented Software Development Laboratory
• Rapid Prototype Development and Creative Programming

### Software Engineer Intern (Commercial Tech) @ Capital One
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Virginia, United States
• Built production level code in React TypeScript and Flask using AWS resources
• Wrote unit tests for front-end React components and back-end Python logic
• Performed User Acceptance Testing and adjusted product based on feedback
• Worked as a member of the team
• Agile development
• The contributions of myself and my team are now helping Capital One save roughly $250k annually

### IT Web Intern @ Symetra
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Bellevue, Washington
• Contributed to the migration to a cloud-based intranet for over 1700 employees
• Assisted in the development of and updating Symetra's Web pages and services
• Compiled data to reveal areas of unnecessary expenditure, revealing possibilities to save over $50,000 a month
• Put together data-focused presentations to communicate valid ways to increase efficiency and further cut costs
• Worked remotely from school Fall 2019 in addition to tutoring

### Instructor @ i9 Sports
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Greater Seattle Area
• Taught kids how to play various sports with positive attitude lessons
• Organized volunteer parents to conduct specific drills to maximize the time the kids had to learn and play


## Education
### Bachelor of Science - BS in Computer Science
Washington University in St. Louis

### Eastside Catholic School


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/collin-howland

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Source: https://flows.cv/collinhowland
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/collinhowland/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-10