Contact Info
phone: no
email: matt+gh@culpepper.co
Skills
- Ruby, Rails, Roda, Hanami
- Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, Sequel, ActiveRecord
- AWS, Heroku
- Terraform
- JavaScript, Ember, React, Next.js
- HTML, CSS
- 🔠Currently working on scaling a Ruby project and leading a team of engineers
- 🌱 Currently learning how to make site go brrrr and how to be an effective leader
- 💬 Ask me about Ruby, Crypto, Web3. Very interested in these topics.
- 📫 How to reach me: @_mculp on twitter
- 😄 Pronouns: he/him
- âš¡ Fun fact: my first website
- 📓 Wrote a few blog posts over on dev.to/mculp
Experience
PrimeTrust (Aug 2020 - August 2022)
Principal Engineer / Engineering Manager
During the crypto craze of early 2021, I led the effort to scale my employer's API to handle exponential growth in traffic. In early 2021, when Elon Musk tweeted about Doge, our API would buckle. But a few short months later, when another Elon tweet went viral, our API stood strong while we watched Coinbase and Robinhood buckle. To highlight the sort of growth we're talking about -- there was one day in April 2021 that our API received more traffic than the entire month of December 2020. Not only did we handle the increase in traffic, but our p95 latency was about 50% lower. They sent me and my daughter to Disneyland for my efforts. :)
Later promoted to Engineering Manager and Tech Lead, where I wore multiple hats as the manager of the team and tech lead of the Crypto Team, all while still doing lots of IC work.
ScaleFactor (Oct 2017 - June 2020)
Senior Software Developer
At ScaleFactor, I worked with a monolith Rails API and Ember frontends to build automated bookkeeping and backoffice features for small businesses. As one of the first developers with extensive Ruby and Rails experience, I invested time reviewing code and teaching other developers. Over time, I transitioned to infrastructure / devops and gained valuable experience with AWS and Terraform.
Self-Employed (Oct 2014 - Oct 2017)
Freelance Web Developer
I did contract web development work for various companies, mostly using Ruby on Rails.
TurboSquid (April 2013 - Oct 2014)
Senior Developer
At TurboSquid, my title was Senior Developer and my responsibilities included design, creation, and maintenance of internal projects created to manage 3D assets in the TurboSquid system. I refactored several internal applications for better maintainability and performance.
Connect for a Cause (August 2012 - April 2013)
CTO / Co-Founder
At Connect for a Cause, as CTO, I was in charge of all technology and architectural decisions. The web app was a traditional Rails app with server-side rendering.
iSeatz (April 2010 - August 2012)
Developer II, Rails Lead
At iSeatz, I went through several titles and responsibilities, but one of the most rewarding was when I was lead Rails developer on American Express travel site. I was in charge of the initial design of a Rails app that consumed an internal API and also consumed several external American Express APIs. I led teams ranging from 3 to 8 developers throughout my last year at iSeatz.
University of Southern Mississippi (July 2009 - April 2010)
Senior Software Developer II
At the University of Southern Mississippi, I met with professors and other administrators on campus to obtain requirements and implemented these requirements using MSSQL and PHP.
BearingPoint (June 2007 - July 2009)
Application Developer II
Introduced to several new technologies, such as IBM Rational, EJB, Message Queues, WebSphere, WebLogic, SVN, Serena PVCS, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, Oracle, Luntbuild and Cruise Control.