Front of house
React, Redux, TypeScript. 8+ production React applications shipped at Kin + Carta alone — Blue Origin, Discover Card, others. Comfortable in Vue and Angular too.
- React
- Redux
- TypeScript
- Vue
- Angular
Senior full-stack developer building production systems for aerospace, fintech, and high-trust enterprise teams. Hands on keys, not on slides.
I'm a full-stack developer with a decade of hands-on production work — including aerospace (Blue Origin) and financial services (Zions, Discover). Not pitches, not roadmaps — the actual thing, in front of users, surviving Monday morning.
React, Redux, TypeScript, Node.js, REST + GraphQL, Postgres, AWS. I write code that's easy to delete and hard to break. Available for contract or full-time — hands on the keyboard, shipping features that work.
Four lanes. Across the stack, end to end. No hand-offs.
React, Redux, TypeScript. 8+ production React applications shipped at Kin + Carta alone — Blue Origin, Discover Card, others. Comfortable in Vue and Angular too.
Node.js + Express middle-tier APIs (REST and GraphQL) integrating with Postgres, Mongo, Oracle, Cassandra. Schema design, query performance, the boring parts that keep things up.
AWS-native architectures (Lambda, EC2, S3, RDS), GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines. 99.9% deployment success at Kin + Carta. Observability over hope.
Aerospace (Blue Origin), financial services ($500M+/day treasury at Zions, Discover Card), enterprise. OAuth 2.0, SAML, RBAC, compliance — security-clearance-adjacent work.
Kin + Carta · Blue Origin + Discover · Principal Software Engineer
Built 8+ production React applications for enterprise clients including Blue Origin (aerospace) and Discover Card (financial services). React, Redux, TypeScript, Node, Express on Postgres and Mongo. Reduced API response times ~35% and deployment cycles ~40%.
Zions Bancorporation · Web Developer IV
Built features on a high-volume treasury application handling $500M+ in daily transactions. Java, Liferay DXP, React, Node, TypeScript on Oracle. Implemented OAuth 2.0, SAML, and RBAC for compliance. Processing speeds up ~50%.
Vivint · Web Developer (Contract)
Built the customer-facing My Account experience across React, Vue, TypeScript, Node.js, and .NET. Tuned APIs and CI/CD — response times down ~35%, deploys down ~40%.
Cisco · Software Engineer III (Contract)
Two major projects delivered ahead of schedule using Python, Node.js, and Angular. Migrated legacy Oracle systems to Cassandra — ~30% query performance gain at lower infrastructure cost.
A few snapshots — not exhaustive, just representative.
Published a short field guide for developers on adapting to fast-moving careers without burning out.
Designed and built a retrieval-augmented agent over internal runbooks. Reduced incident triage time by ~40%.
Updated personal pattern library — typed Result helpers, async queue primitives, retry/backoff utilities.
Argued the case for boring tech in production. Two-pizza talk, lots of pushback, mostly accepted.
Direct, sub-contract, or as part of consultancies. Real product work — not just badges.











Two decades of mistakes, habits, and mental models compressed into a short no-nonsense book for developers and tech-adjacent professionals trying to keep up without burning out.
Bryan O'Connor
Vol. 01 / 2025
A field guide for
developers