# Michael Fields > Software Engineer at Slack Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/michaelfields Team-oriented software developer and leader experienced in building scalable web applications with great usability. I take pride in building software systems that are efficient, elegant, concise, and easy to maintain. I like to be involved in the business discussions and planning to ensure technical solutions make sense for the business and apply the latest technology in creative and effective ways. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Slack Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States I made many improvements to Slack's Workflow Builder no-code automation platform. I led the effort to improve the UI performance when editing very large workflows. The time to reorder workflow steps was reduced by 60%, the time to publish workflows was reduced by 65% and the delay per keystroke when editing Slack message content was reduced by 97%. I played a key role in launching Workflow Builder on Slack's FedRAMP-certified platform. I led the effort to display workflow date and time variables with customizable fully-localized formatting. I contributed to transitioning Workflow Builder from a separate windowed web app to be embedded within the main Slack client. I made significant contributions to adding support for workflow conditional branching logic. I led the effort to modernize Slack's frontend take-home exercise interview, incorporating internal and candidate feedback. ### Senior Software Engineer @ Twitter Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area Working on the web infrastructure team, I led the time-sensitive effort to annotate Twitter web with schema.org SEO microdata using a server-rendering strategy to comply with Google’s cut-over to mobile-first indexing. As part of this effort, I implemented video previews in search results, which resulted in a 336% increase in daily video views on Twitter video impressions and a 73.6% increase in daily referrals to Twitter from video. I proactively profiled and reduced the twitter.com local and CI build times by 20%, saving significant engineer time and CI infrastructure costs. I also spent significant time working on team focused on enhancing Twitter's web design system. Solutions leveraged JavaScript, Flow, React, React Native Web and webpack ### Staff Software Engineer @ Optimizely Jan 2017 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area For most of my time at Optimizely I worked on the frontend infrastructure team, with part of that time as the team lead. I led several initiatives including a monolith code-splitting implementation leveraging webpack and a large monolith React component conversion effort. I worked with a focused team on rolling out a micro-frontend strategy implementation. I also led a long-term monolith performance improvement effort that involved developing new ElasticSearch-based API capabilities as well as significant frontend refactoring. I played a key role in guiding the front-end monolith engineers to adopt more modern coding standards as well as more sustainable coding patterns. ### Senior Software Engineer @ GoPro Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Developed multiple greenfield web applications with a modern tech stack including node, hapi, react, redux, and ES6 javascript. Developed a single-sign-on login application that serves as the oauth2 authentication hub for many internal and external systems. Developed cloud media management, account management, and social sharing web applications as part of the GoPro Plus monthly subscription service. Developed core web app infrastructure components including a custom universal rendering system and reusable react components for media upload, analytics, and social sharing. Mentored other engineers in architecture approaches, problem solving, and best practices. Temporarily joined back-end team to develop several API endpoints in ruby/rails when back-end team resources were constrained. ### Technical Consultant (part-time) @ Community Data Roundtable Jan 2012 – Jan 2015 | Greater Pittsburgh Area As the only software development engineer for the first 2 years, worked closely with the client to design and deploy a responsive healthcare data collection and reporting web application with a focus on minimizing costs and delivering a great end-user experience. Technical solution leveraged ruby, rails, devise, slim templates, and bootstrap. Multi-tenancy achieved using postgres schemas. Incorporated data security design for HIPAA PHI compliance. Configured automated application deployments to digital ocean via cloud 66 server management. ### Engineering Manager @ ModCloth Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Greater Pittsburgh Area Worked with product managers on balancing the prioritization of engineering and product feature work. Pushed for setting standards and process improvements to improve the engineer's day-to-day experience working on a large high-churn shared code base. Actively pushed the engineering culture to be more proactive in updating and upgrading our technology stack. Led a large cross-team effort to upgrade the rails framework version of the company's e-commerce platform. ### Lead Software Engineer @ ModCloth Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Greater Pittsburgh Area I worked closely with product management and engineering leadership to build and enhance ModCloth's software infrastructure, primarily focused on a custom ruby/rails e-commerce web-application. Developed many new features on the e-commerce platform, mostly focused on the end-user checkout and product return experiences. Encouraged a highly collaborative team culture with lots of pair programming and group design sessions. ### Senior Software Engineer @ ModCloth Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | Greater Pittsburgh Area ### Senior Software Developer @ Precision Therapeutics Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 Designed and implemented many new features of a custom built in-house laboratory information management system (LIMS) built using Java/JSP, Hibernate, and Oracle 10g. Identified the need for and implemented a plate layout visualization component that became utilized across multiple web applications, and greatly reduced user errors. Identified the need for and performed a thorough Hibernate/DB tuning audit. Tuned hibernate configuration, DB table relationships, and inefficient hibernate client code. Redesigned how clinical technicians imported their MS Excel plate designs into the LIMS web application, resulting in significantly reduced errors and technical maintenance costs. Mentored peer developers in adopting good software process and development practices. Authored many complex native SQL queries for ad-hoc reports. • Solutions leveraged: Java, Struts, Tomcat, Hibernate, ANT, ruby, rails, JIRA, TeamCity, JSP, XML/XSL, HTML/CSS/Javascript, jQuery, YUI, Oracle ### Product Engineer @ CombineNet Jan 2005 – Jan 2009 Developed new features for several Java web applications and web services for transportation sourcing. Working closely with stakeholders, played a key role in defining the user experience for important user-interaction points. Developed multiple reusable DHTML user interface components. Leveraged MS Excel VBA macros to make the offline bidding process more like using a web application. Overhauled the ANT build on multiple projects for better performance and developer productivity. • Solutions leveraged: Java, Struts, JSP, Hibernate/HQL, jUnit, HTML/CSS/Javascript, Weblogic, Oracle ### Software Consultant @ ALTERthought Jan 2000 – Jan 2005 • Client engagement - Large Financial Organization: Performed a thorough security audit of a large online banking Java web application. Audited host unix operating system and application server for security vulnerabilities. Developed and executed a large set of security-related test requirements and test cases. • Client engagement - Anthem BCBS: Designed and implemented an EDI adapter application that gave the organization compliance with the new HIPAA healthcare standards. Java/Websphere solution was integrated with Sybase Paperfree EDI translator and IBM MQSeries (via JMS). • Client engagement - Advertising.com: Developed three business critical customer-facing web applications. Java/JBOSS clustered infrastructure designed for future scalability needs. Worked closely with client to ensure an optimal user experience. Realized the need for and designed key DHTML user-interface components for the most complex user interactions. • Solutions leveraged: Java, Struts, Hibernate, Spring, HTML/CSS/Javascript, JMS, JBOSS, ANT, jUnit, Agile ### Senior Software Engineer @ Anthem Jan 1999 – Jan 2000 | Richmond, Virginia Area ### Software Engineer @ Anthem Jan 1996 – Jan 1999 | Richmond, Virginia Area Developed multiple client-server and web applications as well as middleware integration components in C++ and Java. Authored the HTML web design for a large portion of a customer-facing web application. • Solutions leveraged: Java, C++, C++ STL, HTML, Javascript, MQSeries, AIX, Solaris, DB2, Oracle, SQL ## Education ### BS in Computer Engineering Virginia Tech ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/michaelfields1 - GitHub: https://github.com/quarklemotion - Portfolio: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1650383/quarklemotion --- Source: https://flows.cv/michaelfields JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/michaelfields/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12