William Elder

Senior Software Engineer | Java | JavaScript | Spring | Node

Seattle, Washington, United States

About

I am a results-driven Senior Software Engineer with 20+ years of experience designing and implementing scalable, high-performance applications. Strong expertise in backend development (Java, Spring Boot, NodeJS), cloud solutions (AWS), messaging systems (Kafka, ActiveMQ), and DevOps (Docker, Jenkins). Adept at leading cross-functional teams, optimizing legacy systems, and driving innovative solutions that enhance efficiency and business growth.

Experience

  • Staff Software Engineer at MediaAlpha
    Feb 2026 - Present · 6 mos

  • Lead Software Engineer at At Dawn Technologies
    Feb 2025 - Feb 2026 · 1 yr 1 mo

    ● Led a small, cross-functional team, mentoring junior developers and maintaining high code quality through structured code reviews. ● Designed and created secure, scalable Spring-based microservice applications. ● Integrated Apache Kafka message bus for event-driven processes. ● Maintained database schemas and queries and added versioning using Flyway. ● Maintained CI/CD environment and cloud deployment strategy.

  • Senior Software Engineer at Starcom Computer Corporation
    2019 - 2024 · 5 yrs

    ● Developed message-driven system using ActiveMQ. ● Designed and built web UI that reduced customer sales load by enabling direct end-user orders, increasing overall customer sales by 15%. ● Drastically lowered build friction and increased dev speed by creating a one-click build process, automated build system using Jenkins and Artifactory. ● Integrated MS Graph API for email and maintained legacy applications. ● Migrated legacy Java code to modern JVM, increasing performance by 20% and code coverage by 50%. ● Developed Swagger/OpenAPI compliant customer-facing REST APIs.

  • Senior Software Engineer at American Well
    2017 - 2019 · 2 yrs

    ● Designed and created a Spring service platform that cut new service development time by 50% while boosting test coverage by 60%, companywide. ● Decreased onboarding time for new partners 20% by automating collection of scattered partner data into a single service ● Developed server components and led training on NodeJS testing. ● Created Node microservices to provide custom messaging to users via multiple transports (SMSE, email, etc). ● Built and maintained UI and security components. ● Introduced automated testing and led training on testable code using Mocha/Chai

  • Senior Software Engineer at HERE Technologies
    2011 - 2017 · 6 yrs

    ● Researched and developed petabyte-scale real-time event processing platform PoC to be used with HERE connected-car initiative via Flink and Kafka. ● Developed Java ESME service platform for large-scale (20M messages/day) SMS delivery for T-Mobile. ● Created and maintained T-Mobile mobile web portal, a $10M annual contract.