Marco Helmich

Software Engineering Swiss Army Knife. I’m focusing on distributed systems, how to store data, and what to do with it.

San Francisco, California, United States

About

I write software to help solve hard problems. And I hope that in the end me solving hard problems makes users happy. Areas of interest include: how to collect and organize data (distributed systems, databases, data streaming) and how to put this data to good use (data science, machine learning).

Experience

  • Software Engineer at Skyflow
    Sep 2020 - Present · 5 yrs 11 mos

  • Software Engineer at Newfront Insurance
    Oct 2019 - Apr 2020 · 7 mos

    Start-up life: Writing functional React components, converting JS -> TS in the backend, developing graphql APIs, spec'ing out a new authentication infrastructure, delivering features. You name it, I did it.

  • Software Engineer at Salesforce
    Nov 2017 - Oct 2019 · 2 yrs

    Building a data store that is globally distributed (as in all over the world). The store needs to be up all the time (as it's powering features like login), consistent enough (can't create the same username twice concurrently), but still fast enough (to support use cases such as user login). This store bases on Etcd's excellent raft library written in Go. It's designed to run on AWS all around the world in stateless docker containers. Co-owning all aspects of this project such as design, development, deployment, you name it. Side gig: Writing a globally distributed Kafka based on the same technology.

  • Software Engineer at Lending Club
    Jul 2016 - Nov 2017 · 1 yr 5 mos

    Built bullet-proof document storage for documents. Storing legal documents is at the core of banking. I was part of a team of two building and managing a store that never loses data ... ever. But still is fast enough to handle incoming traffic. Developed parts of Lending Club's authentication service powering the login functionality - chiefly the addition of anomaly detection for authentication attempts. This project involved tracking authentication attempts to generate profiles and verifying new authentication attempts against these profiles to find deviations. Owned all aspects of these services: Deployment on AWS, testing and deployment pipelines using Jenkins, monitoring and response, development and design, and integration into the rest of Lending Clubs service landscape.

  • Software Engineer at AppDynamics
    Jul 2015 - Jul 2016 · 1 yr 1 mo

    Built microservices that derive insight out of massive amounts of raw data (such as dashboards, alerts, etc.). These services are racing through gigabytes of data every minute to notify you about broken services before your customers realize. Contributed to all aspects of AppDynamics' microservice landscape: deployment infrastructure automation on AWS using Docker, release pipelines using Jenkins, data storage (MySQL, HBase), API (Java, Dropwizard), integration with other services, customer cases.