Encoura - Technical Lead / Senior Software Engineer
Encoura provides custom technology solutions that combine Eduventures research, data science, strategic enrollment services, and multichannel marketing to serve over 2,000 higher ed institutions.
As the E4E (Encourage for Educators) technical lead at Encoura, I led a cross-functional team across product, design, DevOps, and data—growing it from 5 to 8 developers—during a major company transition. Working in an Agile environment, I drove critical migrations and infrastructure improvements for a product ecosystem serving over 2,000 higher-ed institutions.
Key Achievements
Modernization Roadmap
I authored a full-stack modernization plan in Confluence and secured CTO approval—advocating for infrastructure improvements, observability tooling, and senior engineering resources to boost feature delivery velocity. That plan was adopted as the blueprint for multiple roadmap initiatives across the organization.
Federated GraphQL Migration
The E4E product line was running on a monolithic JavaScript REST API that was slowing down feature delivery. I drove the backend migration to a federated GraphQL architecture on Node.js 22, leveraging TypeScript 5 and NestJS—ensuring strict type safety, improving scalability, and transforming the developer experience.
Auth0 & Database Architecture
Spearheaded the migration to a completely new user management system, replacing legacy database-managed authentication with Auth0.
Collaborated with data team on the design of a new AWS RDS Aurora PostgreSQL database schema, ensuring data integrity and quality through proper types, constraints, and foreign key actions—improving authentication security, session flexibility, and user workflows aligned with stakeholder needs. This was one of the most critical pieces of the entire modernization effort.
Delivering the First Feature on the Federated Graph
Successfully drove the migration plan and deployed the first E4E feature live on the federated graph—a real-time educator-facing dashboard surfacing actionable student profile data. This gave educators a powerful new way to view their students' detailed profiles, transforming team morale and establishing a scalable foundation for all future feature development. It marked a significant milestone in the company's transition.
Full-Stack Upgrades
Upgraded the entire E4E frontend codebase to Node.js 22, React 19, Next.js 15, and Storybook 8, integrating Material UI and the company's shared Design System libraries for consistent UX—streamlining development and speeding up feature releases.
Observability & Testing Modernization
Modernized frontend testing by replacing Jest UI tests with Chromatic visual regression testing, integrated into CI/CD via GitHub Actions. This empowered designers to visually review Figma-aligned snapshot diffs and directly approve or deny PR merges—eliminating QA bottlenecks and accelerating delivery.
Introduced Sentry for frontend error tracking and session replay, enabling faster triage and debugging. On the backend, I leveraged Datadog APM for observability, including query-level tracing that reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR).
Infrastructure & AWS
Coordinated multi-team AWS account migrations, ensuring secure and stable infrastructure transitions across dev environments.
Leadership & Collaboration
Partnered with the shared component library owner to ensure smooth integration of codebases, aligning with company standards and fostering cross-team collaboration. I modernized workflows and established a culture of continuous improvement, enabling the team to overcome complex challenges and deliver high-quality solutions consistently. I provided mentorship and leadership to team members, cultivating a collaborative and high-performing environment.
Engineering Management
Evaluated team performance and dynamics, implementing strategic changes to address inefficiencies—including onboarding senior team members to achieve key objectives. Growing the team from 5 to 8 wasn't just about headcount; it was about bringing in the right people at the right time to execute on an ambitious roadmap.
"I'm hearing great progress on your end. You are making a difference already! Kudos and thank you for being here."
Certifications:
Earned Apollo Graph Developer - Associate Certification and Apollo Graph Developer - Professional Certifications, demonstrating advanced expertise in GraphQL development and implementation.
Tech Stack:
Node.js, Express.js, React, Next.js, GraphQL (Apollo Federation), NestJS, TypeScript 5, Auth0, AWS (RDS Aurora PostgreSQL, Lambda (Python), S3, CloudWatch), Terraform, Kubernetes, Material UI, Storybook, Chromatic, Jest, Sentry, Datadog, Figma, GitHub Actions, Jira, Confluence, Agile/Scrum
