# Wolfram Rong > Senior Software Engineer Location: Greater Chicago Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/wolfram Coding big things in small steps. Firm believer that good code is fun to collaborate on, empathetic towards both the user and the maintainer, and easy to pick-up and run with. ## Work Experience ### Senior Software Engineer @ Rand McNally Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | Chicago, Illinois, United States • Lead on a major effort in the merger of an acquired company (SafetyDirect) codebase into the Rand McNally software infrastructure. Owned the primary work of the integration of the two company's backend codebases. • Primary engineer who worked on the analysis and merging of SafetyDirect's database architecture with Rand McNally's database infrastructure. • Led a team of engineers to convert outdated and legacy PHP systems to modern Typescript codebases while improving testability, performance, and developer experience on those systems. • Made major improvements to developer workflow, including: updating our AWS workflows to utilize more automated alerting, establishing best-practices for CI/CD pipelines, and cost-optimizing of infrastructure both new and existing. • Worked extensively with the front-end team to migrate the platform's UI from an old Twig based template system to a modern VueJS framework. This work also included: major redesigns to the internal API for a more RESTful interaction flow; and, Dockerizing multiple new parts of the platform for a more integrated developer environment. ### Full Stack Engineer @ Rand McNally Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 | Chicago, Illinois, United States • Primary focus of my role was polishing and integrating an acquired SaaS fleet management platform with existing Rand McNally assets and legacy codebases. • Documented and improved performance of MySQL queries across the platform — in some cases improved queries speeds by 100x. • Worked with PMs and clients to add a variety of quality controls and functionality for government mandated reporting and/or incentive programs (both in the USA and internationally). • Improved code coverage on unit tests across the board — in most cases reaching 90%+ coverage on entire features which had no prior tests at all. ### Senior Backend Engineer @ Turntable.fm Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 • Founding team-member at revitalized startup aimed at building apps with a focus on social experiences beyond just “social media”. • Created a robust backend “starter-kit” that allowed for rapid deployment and testing of new ideas. Features a core GraphQL API built with Typescript on top of Postgres. • Built internal tools for both apps using Vue and React for app moderation and usage metrics. • Setup CI/CD pipelines for automated testing on CircleCI. Launched two applications: 1. Glow, a streaming app with tools designed for IRL-streamer and mobile screen sharing. 2. Sup, a messaging app that allowed users to record and send each other voice messages that auto-played as notifications. ### Senior Software Engineer @ Agentis Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | Chicago, Illinois, United States • Completely rearchitected and refactored company's legacy backend, from a monolith on PHP 5 to multiple hexagonal services on PHP 7. • Improved internal tooling and across the company via:  - an API documentation system based on APIB used by all projects company-wide  - better structured unit testing and more than doubled code-coverage in some repos  - improved security by replacing old Authentication methods with an OAuth2 service  - automation of many time-consuming tasks for the Sales and Customer Service teams • Architected and implemented multiple new features including:  - an equipment and photos cataloging system  - data ingestion and visualization using Highcharts  - user info and usage report generator using Angular  - an event/contractor registration and booking platform ### Software Engineer @ ActiveCampaign Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Chicago • Performance tuning around inefficient SQL queries, at times up to 100x faster fetching, and page load times in EmberJS • Rebuilt platform logging on an ELK stack, implemented usage metrics via DataDog across the application, and integrated Sentry into the developer workflow • Wrote and executed logging standards that effectively reduced "useless" log volumes by 85% and improved Logstash performance making it 60x faster. • Worked on Containerizing our application in Docker and orchestrating those containers in Kubernetes on AWS ### Full Stack Developer @ ActiveCampaign Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | Chicago • Worked on the internationalization of our platform; standardized time, currency, foreign characters and location features within the application • Refactored legacy front-end from bare HTML and PHP Smarty to EmberJS • Maintained and modernized a mission-critical legacy PHP 5.3 codebase to PHP 7 • Worked directly with COO to design and build a system used for the company's internal authorization and permissions management • Led cross-department training sessions • Coordinated with the front-end and UI teams to create a style-guide and component library • Improved workflows by creating internal tools for the sales, support, and customer success departments ### Web Developer @ Freelance Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Greater Chicago Area • Built or extensively modified Wordpress themes • Designed and built marketing sites • Migrated a Wordpress site onto a CMS built on top of Laravel • Created new functionality and updated old features on a custom admin panel • Implemented a variety of analytics, link tracking, referral and advertisement integrations ### Web Developer @ DESIGNATION Labs Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Chicago • Worked heavily with Curriculum Director on the development and refinement of the front-end course material. • Conducted lessons, ran training workshops, and fulfilled other instructor duties • Launched a rebuilt marketing site as the lead developer of a team of three • Sourced and published the company blog ### Development Assistant @ Monmouth University Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | West Long Branch • Integrated a homegrown set of Java tools used by the school’s faculty and staff with 3rd-party APIs and toolkits • Team lead of four on a R&D project to migrate said Java tools into a fully web-based solution on the LAMP stack ## Education ### Industrial Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/wolfram74 - Website: http://www.wolfram74.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/wolfram JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/wolfram/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22