# Martin Leslie > Senior Backend Software Engineer Location: Pacific Grove, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/martinleslie Backend software engineer, not afraid to take on new challenges by digging in wherever I need to. I have a desire to do things right and to improve the businesses and systems I work in. Can complete a project from design to implementation to production support and have experience with backend, frontend and data science. Experience mentoring software engineers and leading projects with other engineers in my team and across many teams ## Work Experience ### Senior Software Engineer @ Corbalt Jan 2024 – Present Building better software infrastructure for government ### Software Development Engineer II @ Amazon Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | Sunnyvale, California, United States - Worked in the Classification and Policy Platform (CPP) organization which classifies the billions of items in the Amazon catalog. Worked within multiple teams in CPP, mainly the Governance team which was tasked with improving the overall system as seen by users and owning classification authoring. - Designed and implemented a new onboarding process, which reduced the onboarding time to CPP for a new internal Amazon team from 6 months to as little as two weeks. Created a Java on AWS Lambda backend which could interface with the different teams’ systems within CPP. Worked with 8 different teams within CPP to finalize requirements and help them with interfacing with the onboarding system. Directed work done by two engineers for 3 months plus, as well as shorter term efforts by four more engineers. - Learned React and UI programming to build out the onboarding UI. - Was the senior-most engineer on a new team, provided technical advice on databases and architecture, and quickly became an expert on Amazon-internal tooling. Drove process improvements to reduce issue backlog. - In the Anomaly Detection team, implemented an algorithm (designed by an applied scientist) in Scala Spark that used image similarity to find possible misclassifications. ### Software Engineer, Data Team @ Yummly (A subsidiary of Whirlpool Corporation) Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Use Scala, Clojure, Python, Postgres, Elasticsearch, Redshift, BigQuery on AWS (CloudFormation, ECS, EC2, DynamoDB, RDS, Batch, Step Functions, S3, Lambdas) and Google Cloud (BigQuery) to build, maintain and operate software for Yummly's data team. Some highlights: - Built the backend for a new feature (Virtual Pantry) including designing APIs, validation, Postgres schemas and queries, monitoring. Used TypeLevel Scala libraries (Cats, Doobie, Circe). - Connected the data team's monorepo to the development deployment system used elsewhere in the company. - Modernized legacy Scala code deployment, code style, libraries. Became a resource on this code and successfully added new features. ### Senior Data Scientist / Algorithm Engineer @ Virtual Power Systems Jan 2014 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Implemented machine learning algorithms for power prediction in datacenters. Developed new algorithms for power control in data centers. Led three-member data science and algorithms team. Implemented algorithms and data pipelines in actor-based distributed system built on Scala and ElasticSearch. ### Research Consultant @ Streamscale Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 Designed, prototyped and documented new methods for error-correcting codes using probabilistic and algebraic methods. Assisted with patent preparation. ### Consultant @ Shmoop Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 I wrote lessons and questions for high school mathematics and aligned them to common core standards. ### Technical Expert @ The University of Arizona Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 I worked on a mathematical model of the optimality of cellular differentiation in the Michod Lab, part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Arizona. This led to two journal publications. ### PhD Student/Teaching Assistant @ The University of Arizona Jan 2007 – Jan 2013 Coursework and research in error correcting codes, information theory, quantum computation, data compression, probabilistic inference. Sole instructor for undergraduate courses and teaching assistant for graduate classes, with above average feedback in all courses taught in final four years. ### Support Analyst @ Digital Instinct Jan 2007 – Jan 2007 Tech support over phone and email. Testing, documentation and training. ## Education ### Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Mathematics University of Arizona Jan 2007 – Jan 2013 ### Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Mathematics The University of Queensland Jan 2003 – Jan 2006 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/martinlesliephd - GitHub: https://github.com/drmartinleslie --- Source: https://flows.cv/martinleslie JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/martinleslie/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22