# Max Tilford

> Software Engineer

Location: Santa Cruz, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/maxtilford

I am a full-stack engineer who is passionate about solving customer problems. I love digging into features and figuring out what the true problem is and solving it in the best way for everyone.

I'm naturally curious, and have deep-dived into a wide array of technologies and tools, and I love sharing that knowledge and learning new things from others.

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ Instinct Science
Jan 2023 – Present

### Staff Software Engineer @ firstup.io
Jan 2020 – Jan 2023

### Lead Software Engineer @ Great Coach
Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Remote (Santa Cruz, CA)
Great Coach provides tools for youth sports organizations to help them improve relationships and communication with the sporting participants and their parents, as well as keep their coaches and practices up to date with certifications and legal requirements.

My responsibilities encompass everything on the tech side, plus some parts of project management:

- Working with our product-focused team members on defining features and scheduling work.
- Maintaining our build pipeline and deployment environment health
- Feature design, documentation, UX mockups, planning, tasking, implementation, testing
- Database Administration, ETL
- Dev backlog maintenance
- Reviewing code with junior devs, providing feedback and mentorship

### Senior Software Engineer @ West Unified Communications Services
Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | Scotts Valley, California
I worked at West as a contractor, as an employee, and again as a contractor, for a total of 4 years.

Initially I worked on the team maintaining the school administrator interface, used to send calls, emails, smses, and push notifications to parents, as well as the web app used by parents to receive messages. I worked in PHP, JS, Angular, and Java.

After joining West as a full-time employee I took on the lead role for our team building the InfoCenter App, in which parents can message with teachers, report absences, and receive broadcasts from the school.

The app is built in Angular backed with several Java APIs. I worked closely with the product team and the engineering team to figure out what we were going to build, how, and how fast. I worked on every piece of the stack.

Towards the end of my time with West I began working other parts of the Communicate product, which is a high-volume notification delivery system that delivers via email, voice, and SMS, and push.

### Lead Developer @ Rally Me
Jan 2012 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area
I'm working with RallyMe, a crowdfunding platform for athletes. We launched the initial product (in Ruby on Rails) in October 2012. It's success is growing and feature development is continuing to support business goals.

### Lead developer @ Hail Networks
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016
Hail is a web product aimed at coaches/managers of youth and adult sports, to help them track their athletes as their careers progress.

### Developer @ All Together Now
Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Bay Area
I worked with All Together Now (a web project management tool), improving their Ruby on Rails and Javascript (Backbone.js) web application.

### Lead Developer @ CommonPlace
Jan 2009 – Jan 2011
I did just about everything. CommonPlace is an online bulletin board/social network for neighborhoods. It's built on Ruby on Rails, along with a healthy helping of Javascript (using Backbone.js).

### Developer @ Pushudo
Jan 2008 – Jan 2009
I worked with Pushudo on maintenance and feature development for their web app.


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/max-tilford-32129760

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Source: https://flows.cv/maxtilford
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/maxtilford/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01