# James Verch

> Software Engineer, Ex-Amazon

Location: Oakland, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/jamesverch

I want to build things to help make people's lives easier.

I love the idea behind software engineering, where it's relatively easy to create something that can assist millions of people.

I have experience building and maintaining applications with:
JavaScript (ES6), Ruby on Rails, Git, Bash, React.js, Redux, Node.js, Express, Docker, Webpack, HTML5, CSS3, AWS (DynamoDB, S3, EC2, Elastic Load Balancer), Jest/Enzyme, Mocha/Chai, jQuery, MongoDB, SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Grunt, and Ubuntu.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Meta
Jan 2023 – Present | Burlingame, California, United States
Reality Labs Blame Finder Tool
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- Maintained and scaled platform for finding commits that caused breakages to End to End tests across all AR / VR / Wearables devices and platforms
- Used 8 programming languages and 35 tools to build solutions and increase platform coverage, bringing the success rate from 20% to 60% while scaling traffic by 18x
- Built and managed data pipelines to automatically highlight important issues and metrics

### Co-Founder @ SocialGPT
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023
GPT Prompt Discovery Tool - https://www.sgpt.app/
- Bootstrapped AI Text Generation application and devops, including automatic CI/CD, error monitoring, database backups, and user flow tracking with Mixpanel
- Utilized GraphQL and Postgres to serve React web application with Next.js on DigitalOcean
- Example Google boolean keyword generator for recruiters: https://www.sgpt.app/prompt/urAxsh

### Software Development Engineer (Goodreads.com) @ Amazon
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area
Goodreads.com Discovery and Community Team
- Built and maintained core features used by 10 million monthly active users spanning 11 microservices architecture and 3 technology stacks
- Routinely fixed issues spanning 11 CI/CD pipelines by upgrading packages, addressing vulnerabilities, analyzing monitoring metrics, and running load tests to ensure stability at high levels of traffic
- Performed bi-monthly on-call rotations, managing high and low severity ticketing for all services
- Consolidated and deprecated 2 microservices with low usage, reducing team’s operational overhead down to 9 microservices with minimal customer impact

### Software Engineering Fellow @ Hack Reactor
Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area
I'm responsible for providing technical and emotional support to a group of ~40 students. I monitor their progress, giving them extra support if they are falling behind. In addition, I try to help build their confidence and resilience in the face of challenges, to help them become happier and more productive in their professional careers.

### Back End Developer @ SoundScale (Project)
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Horizontally scaled back-end among AWS T2-Micro instances
- Stored data in PostgreSQL due to its optimizations on complex SQL queries, maximizing performance for data retrieval from 5 tables
- Performed stress tests and analyses with k6.io and NGINX Amplify, simulating high traffic load to identify performance bottlenecks
- Increased request per second (RPS) throughput by 600% with implementation of NGINX cache and PostgreSQL hot standby
- Reached 727 RPS with an average latency below 20 ms

### Front End Architect @ AJAT-Request (Project)
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Designed dynamically-rendering calendar from data stored in MySQL
- Utilized elegant data management on client side for code maintainability and scalability
- Implemented calendar logic to maintain full functionality without requiring complete data integrity
- Improved potential for horizontal scaling by using Docker to containerize component server

### Research Assistant @ Brown University
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018
- Designed and tested multiple preliminary versions of an fMRI research study, analyzing and visualizing results using Matlab
- Utilized conclusions drawn from data analysis to inform and implement changes to study design

### Research Assistant @ Brown University
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017
- Led two research studies utilizing Qualtrics and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to test community of knowledge effects on the cognition of 400+ participants
- Performed all aspects of study, including designing study material, recruiting participants, and analyzing result


## Education
### Bachelors of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience
Brown University
Jan 2013 – Jan 2018

### Computer Software Engineering
Hack Reactor
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/james-verch

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