# Maria-Ines Carrera > Staff Software Engineer at Seesaw Learning Location: Oakland, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/mariaines I'm a solver-type staff engineer with expertise across the stack. I love finding balanced solutions to complex problems, whether I'm developing technical strategy for business objectives, building systems as an IC, establishing tooling, patterns, & processes to empower teams, or serving as a technical advisor & mentor. I've worked on everything from infrastructure to dev ops to performant APIs to responsive frontends; from zero → one projects to scaling & migrating legacy systems. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer, Platform teams @ Seesaw Learning Jan 2022 – Present Shipping high-impact improvements to Seesaw's infrastructure, tooling, frameworks, and processes. I also spend a lot of time as a technical advisor for projects across the org. Some recent IC projects: • Defining and implementing Seesaw's data regionalization strategy • Regionalized our serverless infrastructure to launch Seesaw UK & AU, improving end-user performance with a 75% reduction in time-to-first-byte for UK & AU users. • Led a Frontend Modernization effort to get us to the next stage of our 5+ year journey migrating from AngularJS to React. • Shipped client performance observability tooling & processes. • Kickstarted a new Client Platform team to own Seesaw's 3 frontend platforms (iOS, Android, web). ### Technical Architect, Messaging Team @ Seesaw Learning Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 Shipped a new messaging product supporting 3M MAU sending 10M+ monthly messages, replacing the legacy product. New messaging increased engagement from monthly active teachers, up to 40% from 25%. • Technical lead for a team of 7 engineers rebuilding a core product surface area on new backend and frontend stacks. • Designed and implemented a new IAC serverless backend stack leveraging AWS Lambda, DynamoDB streams, and a graph data model exposed via GraphQL, including serverless GraphQL subscriptions over websockets. • Launched with several top feature requests and improvements including small group messaging, school-wide announcements, administrator controls and oversight, and automated message translations. • Migrated 7 years worth of existing messaging data into the new, much more flexible data model. ### Tech Lead / Software Engineer @ Seesaw Learning Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 Tech lead for various full-stack projects: • Created a new React frontend stack and in-place migration from a legacy AngularJS app • Shipped a rewrite of our Creative Tools on web using React and HTML5 Canvas / Fabric.js, which involved moving from a legacy frontend build system to webpack with ES6 support • Implemented serverless GraphQL subscriptions leveraging websockets, AWS ApiGateway, AWS Lambda • Launched a public version of the Seesaw Activity Library to drive organic traffic (SEO, edge caching, marketing integrations) • Overhauled several key rostering tasks in advance of the 2020 back-to-school season to enable a 10x traffic increase due to COVID • Shipped school-wide announcements, a top feature request • Drove an overhaul of the family connection experience ### Software Engineer @ Seesaw Learning Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area In my first 6 months, I contributed tons of full-stack and frontend feature work for Seesaw's new Activity Library, including search, sharing, and mobile responsiveness, while introducing best practices for accessible & responsive styling. ### Software Engineer @ Google Jan 2012 – Jan 2017 | Mountain View, CA Nearby APIs, Location & Context, Android, March 2015—August 2017: Android platform APIs for nearby device interactions. Launched Nearby Connections July 2017. Access Software/Platforms, Next 5B, March 2013—March 2015: Offline peer-to-peer sharing between Android devices. API design, implementation, cross-team collaboration with YouTube. Led and managed team of 4 engineers. Access Software/Platforms, Google.Org, August 2012—March 2013: Research & prototyping for bringing the internet to the developing world. Android and web development. Google For Nonprofits, Google.Org, August 2012—March 2013: Full-stack feature development in AppEngine (Python). Participated in mentorship & hiring throughout. ### Software Engineering Intern @ Google Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Mountain View, CA Engineering intern on the Google Voice team. Frontend features for Google Voice web app. Development in Java, Ruby on Rails. ### Software Engineering Intern @ Google Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 | New York City, NY Engineering intern on Local Business Center team within Geo/Maps. Web application design & implementation for an internal debugging tool. Development in Java, Python, HTML, Javascript. ## Education ### Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (Theory) Stanford University Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 ### Mathematics Oregon State University Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/maria1nes --- Source: https://flows.cv/mariaines JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/mariaines/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22