# Kevin Highwater

> Software Engineer at Tiny Startups

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

I like software development, early-stage (< 10 people) startups, fun environments and interesting problems.

I've been getting paid to write software for about 11 years now.  I've done JS from Backbone to Angular to React; I've architected entire rails backends and spoken at Rubyconf; I've even managed infrastructure.  I've tried management, but am excited to get back to an IC role.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Duckbill
Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco
Working on a cool project that I can't tell you about!  Python/Flask, React, Clickhouse, and assorted AWS/terraform infra stuff.

### Engineering Manager @ Daybreak Health
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | United States
I organized, grew, and managed the engineering team at Daybreak.  Eventually I was leading a mixed team of 8 software, salesforce, and data engineers.

### Front End Lead @ Daybreak Health
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023
As the first eng hire at this mental health startup, I created and architected the React/Typescript SPA frontend while also contributing significantly to the Rails backend and owning the ReactNative mobile app and recruiting + hiring several fullstack devs.

### Lead Product Engineer @ The Duckbill Group
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021
As the primary product owner and engineer on DuckTools, a suite of AWS cost management tools, I wrote everything from Terraform to React, with Ruby and Go in between.

### Software Engineer @ Brex
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area
On the Card Product team at this fintech startup, I built user-facing features and accounting integrations across the Typescript React frontend and Elixir microservice backend.

### Software Engineer @ Joyable
Jan 2014 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area
As a full stack developer using Ruby on Rails and Angular.js (later React), I helped this mental health startup grow from 5 to 40 people. I built many user-facing features, improved frontend performance, built payment + subscription systems, wrote internal tools, built most of the API, drove the transition to an SPA, managed/developed the Docker-based infrastructure, and hired/mentored other engineers.

### Software Engineer @ Threadflip
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | San Francisco
I do full-stack development with Rails and Coffeescript (/w backbone.js).

### Software Engineer @ Expensify
Jan 2011 – Jan 2013
I was an early developer at this SAAS Expense Reporting startup. I worked on both the PHP backend (bank integrations, a mechanical turk system, html receipt parsing, among other things) and the heavy JS frontend (tiered feature-sets, report permissions, dropbox integration).

### Web Developer @ Rochester Institute of Technology
Jan 2008 – Jan 2011
Web development for the RIT School of Film and Animation.

### Software Dev Co-op @ Parse3
Jan 2010 – Jan 2010
Taught myself C# and ASP on 2- and 5- person teams. Worked on the frontent and Sitecore-integrated backend for https://kumon.com.

### Applications Software Developer @ GE Energy
Jan 2008 – Jan 2009
I develop desktop applications to manage various SCADA radios produced by MDS (owned by GE).

### Desktop Support Representative @ Rochester Institute of Technology
Jan 2006 – Jan 2008
Tier 2 tech support for faculty, including phone-based and on-site support.


## Education
### BS in Software Engineering
Rochester Institute of Technology


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kevinhighwater
- Website: https://kevinkuchta.com

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Source: https://flows.cv/kevinhighwater
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/kevinhighwater/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-05