# Michael Quinlan > Complex Software and Systems; C++, Golang, Distributed Systems, Resilience Testing Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/michaelquinlan Throughout my career, I've contributed significantly to the organizations of which I've been a member. My background in both basic and applied sciences has been successfully employed to build highly reliable data and transaction processing systems. My focus on real world validation and intellectual curiosity fosters a productive environment for innovation. ## Work Experience ### Principal Engineer @ Wells Fargo Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States ### Chief Software Architect @ Ziteo Medical, Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 Building a revolutionary robotic imaging system that can detect cancer years earlier than currently possible, when it can be cured. ### Software Lead @ Ziteo Medical, Inc. Jan 2014 – Jan 2021 ### Lead Cybersecurity Engineer @ Visa Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Leveraging Intel SGX to keep data private and secure. ### Lead Software Engineer @ Visa Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Senior Staff Software Engineer @ Visa Jan 2015 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area I joined Visa as an early developer on the Open VisaNet team. We're building the next generation of Visa's core transaction processing systems. These systems are designed to deploy and operate on commodity hardware at any scale while maintaining the high-availability, security and consistency expected of a world class financial institution. Working on aggressive time-lines, I contributed to the first production deployment in the following ways: • Developed Chaos Testing Framework, that runs in our nightly CI environment to validate system CAP characteristics • Deployment and tuning of Apache Kafka infrastructure • Developed real-time to batch processing transition engine, delivering financial data with exactly-once semantics Since our successful pilot, I've taken on significant design and leadership responsibilities. I'm developing streaming, eventually-consistent data processing protocols. I'm mentoring and guiding junior developers while helping to grow our team from 15-50+. I also present designs to senior leadership and engage both with external consultants and vendors to validate their technical solutions. Keywords: Erlang, Golang, Chaos Testing, Apache Kafka, Distributed Systems, DevOps ### Big Data Software Engineer @ Verizon Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 Verizon offered me the opportunity to transition from the academic to corporate world. I joined a team tasked with creating a mobile advertising analytics platform using open source, big data tools that leverage clickstream, location and demographics data. The drive and passion of our analytics team for solving problems at scale led to significant open source contributions. • Developed and maintained a Spark Streaming ETL application processing 6 TB daily • Integrated ETL application with Apache Kafka for event driven triggering • Wrote libraries and applications supporting scalable and sustainable data processing • Configured production systems and debugged issues • On-call support for production deployments Since leaving this role, I was happy to learn that my intellectual contributions resulted in a migration of the platform from a batch focused processing engine to one which ingests and processes data in near-real time. Keywords: Scala, Java, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Data Engineering, DevOps ### Postdoctoral Fellow @ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 | Berkeley, CA I joined a team of applied nuclear physicists working to improve and validate various gamma-ray imaging systems mounted on mobile systems. We worked to improve imaging performance by including contextual information with sensor fusion techniques. The resulting principles were applied to the design of advanced systems better able to detect and locate nuclear threats (dirty bombs, etc.) in the real world. This experience crystalized methods for quantitative validation of solutions from various inverse problems when applied in the real world. I also gained an appreciation for commercialization strategies, as a technical advisor to a Federal Government agency. Keywords: C++, data curation, alternative statistical populations, large data-sets and parallel (MPI) numerical simulations ### Graduate Student @ University of Rochester Jan 2005 – Jan 2011 | Rochester, New York Area I was lucky to own the analysis of a nuclear physics experiment conducted at a world class accelerator facility while working under two titans in the nuclear physics community. Using multi-dimensional correlation analysis techniques, I explored earthly analogs of cosmic objects like neutron stars. My contributions to science improved understanding of complex fermionic systems, which have applications ranging from energy to quantum computation. I developed a deep appreciation for statistical methods both in modeling and defensible inference. Studying objects no one has seen and that behave differently than those we can see prepared me to tackle the engineering problems listed above with confidence and clarity. Keywords: C++, ROOT, heavy-ion reaction dynamics, experimental nuclear physics, numerical modeling, statistical physics, large data-sets, neutron and charged particle interactions with matter. ## Education ### Ph.D. in Chemistry (Nuclear Science) University of Rochester ### B.S. in Chemistry University of Rochester ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/michael-quinlan --- Source: https://flows.cv/michaelquinlan JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/michaelquinlan/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12