# Dan Sulfaro

> Sr. Software Engineer at Centigrade

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

A lover of languages both human and computer.

## Work Experience
### Sr. Software Engineer @ Centigrade
Jan 2023 – Present | Palo Alto, California, United States
- implemented AI Search feature across project documents and multiple DB models
    - integrated AWS Kendra to index and search documents for user query
    - integrated embeddings and vector search into DB tables to allow search across DB tables
    - reduced AI Search latency from initial 30s to ~5s using Logfire to pinpoint bottlenecks

### Software Engineer @ Quizlet
Jan 2020 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area
Worked on a suite of fullstack projects including:
- database migration of billions of flashcard records from MySQL to microservice backed by Google Spanner (PHP, Kotlin, Java)
- added improvements to Checkpoint game microservice (node.js, websockets, redis, react/redux)
- increased usage of premium study features with Test-To-Learn as Tech Lead (react/redux, Kotlin, Hack)
- added improvements and bug fixes to unstable Achievements Service (Kotlin, Firestore)

Have experience with Sprint and Kanban styles as well as experience with JIRA, Rollbar, CircleCI, ArgoCD, Github.

### Software Engineer @ Lyft
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area
Backend Engineer on Driver Excellence
- Tech Lead for Feedback Home - a feature that summarizes driver performance in-app. Lead to a ~7% reduction in driver suspensions and lower support costs
- Pushed against management to prioritize stability work over roadmap work -> over the course of 2 months, I reduced the number of pages plaguing our oncall by 60% and fixed a feature that saved Lyft 40k rides weekly
- Lead of New Year's Eve readiness work -> coordinated a team of 4 engineers to divide and conquer stability work needed for the busiest night of the year for Lyft -> lead to an error-free NYE for our team

Backend Engineer on Pricing
- Sole backend engineer on data visualization tool for Lyft data scientists leading multiple through product cycle (requirements gathering -> spec'ing -> feature implementation)
- Built custom data pipeline to move data from S3 into AWS RDS - optimized pipeline by streaming files line-by-line and batching writes bringing migration time down from ~30 minutes to ~5 minutes.
- Took ownership over previously owner-less Helium service (the backend for many data vis tools). Since then, test coverage in the service has increased 15% because of my tests alone, and I was the first one to put stats and alarms on the service.

### JumpStart Instructor + Tutor @ App Academy
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area
Teach a pod of 10-20 soon-to-be engineers the fundamentals of programming and monitor their performance to recommend them for the full curriculum.

### Software Developer / Research Assistant @ University of Michigan - Spanish Linguistics
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
- Self-taught PRAAT scripting language over holiday break to more quickly analyze speaker data. I was brought onto two additional projects because of it
- Worked overtime after computer malfunction to recover lost data -- recovered ~80% of data
- Was called one of the most versatile and useful assistants by researcher

### Program Assistant @ University of Michigan - CGIS
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Ferrara, Italy
- Successfully translated for students seeking medical attention and bike repair
- Led weekly movie viewings of Italian films and discussion


## Education
### Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Computer Science and Romance Languages
University of Michigan
Jan 2011 – Jan 2016


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dan-sulfaro-26a8b1b4

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Source: https://flows.cv/dansulfaro
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/dansulfaro/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-23