# Santanna Ramirez

> Ex-Googler, typescript nerd.

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/santanna

Find the heart-centered work that you will pursue endlessly.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ YouTube
Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | Mountain View, California, United States
Worked on monetization features for content creators in YouTube Studio. Collaborated with product managers, UX designers, and cross-team engineering stakeholders to design, implement, and ship updates across the full development lifecycle.

Key Contributions:
- Built and shipped creator monetization features in YouTube Studio web and mobile platforms, developing TypeScript-based web and mobile frontends integrated with C++ backend services.
- Authored technical 1-pagers and design proposals, aligning internal owners and stakeholders to drive feature development across complex legacy systems and large-scale user data environments.
- Owned UX regression testing and automated screenshot validation to verify UI consistency across web, Android, and iOS platforms and multiple screen sizes, required for production releases.
- Regularly worked across multiple engineering domains including web, mobile (Android/iOS) surfaces, and mobile native codebases.
- Implemented disciplined technical prioritization and backlog management, identifying and cataloging technical debt to maintain development velocity while delivering production features.
- Leveraged LLM-assisted workflows to accelerate design documentation, research technical domains, and improve development efficiency.
- Designed and shipped improvements to the onboarding workflow for a monetization feature, simplifying the Terms of Service signature capture process across both web and mobile YouTube Studio platforms.

Technologies and Core Competencies:
- Frontend : TypeScript, C++, web & mobile frontends, protos
- Backend : C++ services, mobile API integrations
- UX & Quality : cross-platform UX validation, automated regression and screenshot testing
- Product Engineering : system design, rapid prototyping, feature launch processes
- Engineering Operations : technical roadmapping, prioritization, tech debt management

### Software Engineer @ Google
Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco, California, United States
Developed internal platforms and tools supporting engineering productivity and experimental AI initiatives within Google Search. Shipped frontend features used by internal engineers and LLM evaluation teams, contributing to systems that supported Google Search feature development and emerging generative AI workflows in Search.

Key Contributions:
- Built frontend features for an internal CI/CD platform used by Search engineers, consolidating Search services and internal functional testing frameworks into a unified web interface to improve engineering velocity and developer experience.
- Delivered personalization UI improvements to a platform with significant daily internal usage - reducing engineering hours spent on the platform, enabling engineers across Search teams to more efficiently run tests, monitor builds, and interact with internal services.
- Contributed to engineering infrastructure used in the development of next-generation Search features, including workstreams related to emerging generative AI initiatives.
- Built and maintained a web-based evaluation tool used by 100+ “golden set” raters to review outputs and create training datasets for experimental large language model systems used in Search.
- Rapidly shipped UI updates to support new data ingestion formats and evolving evaluation workflows, enabling faster iteration on LLM training and evaluation pipelines.

Technologies and Core Competencies:
- Frontend: Angular
- Backend: Golang
- Data & APIs: Protobufs, Service APIs
- Systems: Internal developer platforms, LLM evaluation tooling, CI/CD interfaces
- Engineering Practices: Rapid iteration, cross-team collaboration, internal platform development

### Software Engineer @ Better.com
Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | New York City Metropolitan Area
As a Software Engineer at Better.com, I shipped new features to an event-driven system that would keep users informed about their loan origination journey. My team was the backend for customer support teams in the Better.com platform. We were designing and iterating the communication features with support leads that would clarify changing business strategies, inform users of potential roadblocks in a particular user journey, remind users of loan application time constraints, etc., which was all critical information for users. Our features positively impacted conversion metrics and the Better.com customer experience. 

Professional Growth
- Collaborated with project managers, design leads, data analysts, and QA specialists to coordinate releases and perform live A/B tests (LaunchDarkly)
- Documented technical design specifications to meet business requirements and get buy-in from key stakeholders (Confluence, RFC/ERD)
- Learned about event-driven architecture and designing features and APIs around that new paradigm

Technical Experience
- Owned an email and sms message producer library that compiled user metadata and Better.com support content for users leveraging responsive template libraries (python, Mandrill, MJML, jinja, HTML, CSS, Litmus)
- Maintained and updated a shared async job queue service with a proprietary backend to trigger email/sms communications to users, improving customer UX and automating manual processes for support staff (NodeJS, Mocha/Jest, Typescript)
- Owned QA for user-facing issues in the event-driven system, diagnosed bugs in staging and production environments, proactively solved issues before customers were impacted (LogDNA, Rollbar)
- Rapidly designed and shipped UI/UX updates to Better.com (React, NextJS, Typescript, Apollo GraphQL, Storybook, CSS, Jest, React Testing Library, Webpack, LaunchDarkly)

### Senior UI Engineer @ Mason
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Seattle
As the Senior UI engineer for the Mason platform, I worked directly with executives, product designers, and backend engineers to architect and implement new platform features. I was the technical lead on the web frontend React/Redux architecture that communicated with the Mason platform through a simple REST API. I also ended up advocating for a rebuild of a documentation/FAQ site for Mason using Next.js, which was powerful enough to enable some automations in our engineering workstreams.

Professional Growth
- Analyzed and iterated on product feedback and directives from internal stakeholders
- Organized and documented updates and release notes for Mason Platform
- Prioritized sprint commitments and milestones

Technical Experience
- Shipped self-documenting code to the Mason Web platform (React + Typescript + Sass)
- Leveraged local state managers in React to handle data streaming (Redux, React hooks)
- Owned the functional and unit testing for the Mason Web platform (Karma, enzyme, jest, redux-saga-test-plan)
- Rearchitected and implemented a documentation site for the Mason Platform (Next.js)
- Monitored and implemented cross browser support of modern JS and CSS features (Browserstack)

### Lead Software Engineer @ Bill4Time
Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Bellevue, WA
As a lead software engineer at Bill4Time, I managed a team of full stack software engineers that were responsible for shipping new features to the Bill4Time Web application. I engaged with my team through active code reviews and pair programming. I promoted platform stability by maintaining and improving our deployment systems and even migrated an entire codebase from javascript to typescript. As a lead, I also advocated for the development team's needs and provided technical insight when I collaborated with my peers in product and support teams.

Professional Growth
- First time being a lead and representing my peers in product and support meetings
- Contributed technical insight in product reviews and design sessions
- Promoted consistent design patterns and software engineering practices
- Evaluated and integrated 3rd party APIs and widgets into the Bill4Time product

Technical Experience
- Gained experience with more web technologies (MVC, Typescript, Handlebars, Sass, ES6+, C#, VB.NET)
- Maintained and improved engineering build tools (Grunt, Gulp)
- Updated live API services in a Server Side web application (Nodejs, express, SSR)
- Maintained and improved third party payment integrations (Stripe, Lawpay)
- Added third party document storage integration (Box)
- Oversaw routine deployments (CI/CD, Bamboo)
- SQL and No-SQL data stores (SQL Server, MongoDB)

### Web Application Developer @ Starbucks
Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Seattle, WA
I worked in the Business Intelligence (BI) department at Starbucks as an Application Developer. BI coordinated with outside orgs, such as Finance and Product Development, to design and build a suite of web applications that suited the needs of the business. My team owned a tool that supported the teams managing the global real estate portfolio for Starbucks. I was working on UI/UX improvements and bug fixes for this tool from inception to launch, and it was a great learning experience.

I was also a passionate community builder at Starbucks. I attended recruitment fairs at my alma mater, helped organize a bi-annual tech conference for Starbucks Technology employees, and spent time mentoring and teaching developers at Starbucks of all skill levels about technologies like Angular, Git, and RESTful APIs.

Professional Growth
- Helped with rapid prototyping and UX design sessions (Adobe CS)
- Organized events for 1,000+ internal employees (Starbucks Innovation Expo)
- Participated in recruiting events and a mentorship program for new college grads

Technical Experience
- Built internal single page applications for outside orgs (Angular 2+, Vue.js)
- Built interactive and responsive web apps (HTML5, CSS3)
- Architected and built Restful API services (Node.js, express)
- SQL data stores and maintenance (SQL Server, SSIS)

### Java Programming Tutor @ University of Washington
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Seattle, WA
During my studies, I worked at the UW Instructional Center, tutoring Java programming courses (CSE 142, 143).


## Education
### B.S. in Informatics
University of Washington
Jan 2011 – Jan 2015

### Associate of Arts (AA)
Green River College
Jan 2009 – Jan 2011


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sj-ramirez

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Source: https://flows.cv/santanna
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/santanna/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22