# Sara Wong > Senior Backend Engineer | Backend Team Lead, Backend Engineer Location: Kirkland, Washington, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/sarawong Took a hiatus to grow and nurture a little one. Now looking forward to my next chapter in life building more systems I can take pride in. Leading software engineering at KINETIC, my focus was on developing robust APIs and maintaining Kubernetes clusters. My expertise in serverless data reprocessing pipelines, in Go and Typescript, enabled our team to scale terabytes of data processing. Previously at Statespace, my role as a Team Lead involved architecting a video conversion pipeline utilizing AWS services. This effort heavily utilized cloud infrastructure but also emphasized my commitment to delivering scalable, secure solutions that support the dynamic needs of the business. ## Work Experience ### Software Team Lead - Senior Backend Engineer @ KINETIC Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Remote - Engineered a serverless data pipeline processing terabytes of data through Rust and Go programs built with AI models and algorithms, improving algorithm testing efficiency from 5 hours to 30 min while reducing AWS compute costs - Developed and maintained high-performance API services using Golang, deployed across both Kubernetes clusters and AWS Lambda environments to optimize for cost and availability - Implemented infrastructure-as-code practices with GitLab CI/CD, eliminating manual deployment steps and reducing deployment failures - Optimized slow-performing Postgres (RDS) and Redshift database schemas and queries, releasing transactions earlier for more throughput for core user workflows - Spearheaded the design and delivery of a Data API that exposed internal analytics as a service, enabling new product features that increase client engagement - Provided architectural guidance and code reviews that improved system reliability, while troubleshooting critical networking issues within AWS VPCs and VPN connections ### Backend Team Lead - Senior Backend Engineer @ Statespace Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 + Led the design, implementation and delivery of a video conversion pipeline (from raw video to an HLS distribution-friendly format). Video conversion leverages AWS Lambdas and Kafka (AWS MSK) for a re-playable and scalable event system to transition video across stages of the conversion, leveraging AWS MediaConvert for transcoding. Designed the front-end and back-end to handle the S3 video multi-part upload process for raw videos, and Cloudfront OAI (IAM) secured video distribution of private converted HLS videos. + Setup any newly required, or modified existing, infrastructure-as-code changes (Pulumi, a wrapper around Terraform), required by the newly added services, and Dockerized (Docker) and deployed through github workflows for CI/CD. + Designed, implemented and delivered on multiple API micro-services leveraging Kubernetes (EKS). Added public load balanced entry points to internal k8 services. Debugged issues using Datadog logging and PagerDuty monitoring, in conjunction with K8 command line (kubectl). + Led the delivery of breaking out an existing service from a monolith (including code, database and infrastructure), while maintaining uptime for both the broken out service and the monolith. Behind the scenes spun up new Postgres databases, worked with new SSL Certs, utilized API Gateway and load balancers to route traffic, and ensured communication between new microservice, and other existing services (including monolith) were maintained. In cases of full database replacement, used Postgres replication between source and new db to maintain uptime. + Wrote infrastructure code changes that modified network routing rules, allocated subnets, and provisioned secure and easily scalable VPN connections between internal and external VPCs (AWS Site-to-Site VPN Connection with AWS Transit Gateway) to allow staging access to internal Kubernetes (EKS) nodes. Supplied documentation on existing networking, desired direction, and expected costs from the decision. ### Backend Engineer @ Standard Cognition Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 + Designed the architecture of new APIs for third-party access to services in Python using Django framework. Implemented the authentication (OAuth), infrastructure to support (Terraform, GCP), and database (Postgres SQL) backend for the new services. Worked with front-end and product teams to ensure successful delivery of the product in a timely manner. + Helped break up a monolithic backend infrastructure into GCP microservices that rely on events and task queues for service-to-service communication. + Diagnose issues using a combination of monitoring systems consisting of Sentry alerts, Google Cloud Logs, and NewRelic performance monitoring + Interviewed incoming candidates. ### Full-stack Developer @ Lively, Inc. Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Greater Seattle Area + Built the front and backend two-factor auth service for the app (TOTP and SMS) + Worked on a code migration to remap a custom stack to one that incorporated multiple open-source technologies, including Postgresql + Crawled the Typescript AST, and automatically replaced migrated equivalent functions + Set up the unit testing framework (jest), to test migration changes + Researched and presented open-source options for the data-access layer. Replaced the existing custom ORM based on the team's vote + Incorporated a teammate's Postgres savepoint abstractions and rollbacks, and worked it into the migrated app + Incorporated an open-source alternative for persisting a reference to a transaction across a http or websocket request + Worked with a teammate to pull apart and replace a custom bundler with Webpack + Used tools to crawl the database tables, and raw SQL to crawl the JSON column data, to generate previously missing Typescript types ### Frontend Engineer @ Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 + Experience with Typescript + React front-end in addition to generating GraphQL resolvers (API endpoints) for a middle-tier GraphQL service. + Unit testing with jest and integration testing with Nightwatch. Code review process that enforces DRY, scalable, and secure code. + Execution of multi-stage and multi-region deployments. + Experience with operations and swift resolutions of high impact issues. + Owning features by documenting a plan, conducting meetings against that plan to arrive at final decisions, before finally writing the code. ### Web Development Engineer I @ Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Seattle, Washington ### Frontend Developer @ Boston Energy Group Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Bellevue, Washington + Angular application and Chrome Extension that allows energy Traders to exchange trade information, monitor profit and loss, research paths, and trade energy paths. + Built scheduled jobs to ingest external data in SQL Server and C#/ASP.NET, and API endpoints to serve it. + Restructured the architecture by building custom services and directives, and switching to Sass. + Improved build process with Gulp and front-end reporting with Raven and Sentry + Comfortable in a class-based and strongly-typed language since the Angular application is built with Typescript + Set up and build tests for all pages of the application, using both unit testing with Jasmine and Karma and End-To-End Testing with Nightwatch with text notifications and test status reports automatically uploaded to S3 + Set up the web app server environment in Azure and wrote Kudu deployment scripts to build the UI on the server, triggered by GitHub deployment hooks ### Node Full-Stack Developer @ Atomic Infotech Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Bellevue + Experience in working in NodeJS and PHP, with HandlebarsJS and jQuery front-end + Experience working with and making storage decisions for varied sources of data, both non-relational/No-SQL (CouchDB) and relational (MySQL/MS SQL) + Worked on safe transfer of large amounts of No-SQL data to integrate into MySQL for sustainability and usability issues that arose from existing setup + Built api endpoints and pages for reporting purposes + Used Agile/Kanban methodology + Created a Cordova app for publishing to the Amazon App Store and Google Play Store ### Software Development Engineer @ Share Interactive Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Kirkland + Experience in Agile Software Development using Jira and Git version control + Experience in OOP for Javascript and PHP + Server side code run on either Node or Apache in AWS Ubuntu servers + Automated deployment scripts in Bash for MySQL and Drupal CMS to deploy to AWS + Front-end desktop and mobile web development, using responsive web frameworks, AngularJS and ionic + Built custom content import/migration, with images stored in S3 buckets and served with Cloudfront + Built custom API layer following RESTful architecture for external content data access + Log checking and troubleshooting within server environments using SSH in terminal + Managed R and MySQL summer intern ### Business Systems Coordinator @ TripAdvisor Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Newton, Massachusetts • Maintained Workday software used for TripAdvisor HCM, Payroll, and Financial data • Worked collaboratively with HR, IT, Compensation, Payroll, and Finance teams to troubleshoot Workday issues • Created audits and reports using Workday and MS Excel to identify historically inaccurate data • Trained HR employees in the US, UK, China, and Singapore offices in self-service Workday business processes • Provided routine and ad hoc reports tailored to the requesting party • Assisted in implementing new business processes for workflow optimization and to streamline HR data entry - for instance, building compensation eligibility rules involving equity and salary ranges • During the annual compensation cycle, utilized EIBs to load performance review scores, created manual compensation statements, and audited all promotions and data changes • Tested business processes and UI updates in an implementation tenant before Workday updates went live • Created Excel macros to expedite routine tasks, such as Single-Sign-On updates, and liased with IT to identify access issues ### Research Administrative Assistant @ University of Massachusetts Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Boston, MA • Administered experiments to collect data on participant stress levels • Recruited new research participants by organizing proejcts such as filming a recruitment video hosted on the UMass website • Responsible for training new interns in participant recruitment, conducting experiments, and data entry and analysis • Used programs such a MS Excel, SPSS, and others for data analysis and tracking purposes ## Education ### Bachelor's degree Wellesley College Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/swong2 - GitHub: http://github.com/sarapple - Website: http://make-gem.herokuapp.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/sarawong JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sarawong/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22