Vanessa Nicole Naff

   /\_/\    Vanessa Nicole Naff
  (>^.^<)   Seattle, WA
   > ^ <    hello@sourcekitten.com

  Backend software engineer (Go) · mentor, educator, community builder

  Strongest where correctness is the product: privacy tooling that never
  moved customer data, event pipelines that kept GPS data in order at 100M+
  requests a day, and compliance-critical ETL over tens of millions of
  records. Most recently, live sports streaming infrastructure at Warner
  Bros. Discovery.

  SELECTED WORK

  PII scanning that never moves the data
  Preclusio (YC S19)  2019-10 → 2020-12
    A scanner that found personal data in customer databases and showed
    CISOs where it flowed, shipped as a Go binary that ran beside the data,
    so the data never left.
    • Built a data-source scanning service that sampled schemas, detected
      PII and privacy risks, and surfaced findings, including downstream
      consumers, to CISOs.
    • Shipped it as a containerized Go binary installed alongside customer
      data stores, so data never left the customer environment.
    • Built a React schema visualization mapping database fields with
      sensitive data highlighted, plus install scripts and in-app guidance
      that diagnosed network and port configuration issues.
    Go · containers · React · privacy engineering

  Keeping GPS data in order at 100M+ requests a day
  Glympse  2018-03 → 2019-10
    Helped replace a Python 2 monolith with microservices, choosing Kafka
    for its per-partition ordering so GPS data stayed correct at 100M+
    requests a day.
    • Co-designed the microservices architecture replacing a legacy Python
      2 monolith; chose Kafka for strict per-partition ordering to preserve
      GPS data integrity.
    • Profiled and benchmarked REST and gRPC APIs handling 100M+
      requests/day; reduced latency through connection pooling and caching.
    • Led design meetings and wrote specs for new services with SRE and
      Customer teams; standardized handlers across a multi-repository
      codebase to speed onboarding.
    Kafka · gRPC · REST · microservices

  Compliance-critical ETL at 20–60M records
  Garden City Group (now Epiq)  2015-10 → 2018-02
    Automated the ETL behind legal and financial data under federal court
    compliance requirements, over data sets of 20–60M records per project.
    • Automated compliance-critical ETL on client data sets of 20–60M
      records per project, for legal and financial data under federal court
      compliance requirements.
    • Designed parameterized data objects for calculation, evaluation, and
      reporting.
    • Built microservices, Angular/TypeScript front-end components, and
      deployment scripts; mentored the team in T-SQL best practices.
    T-SQL · ETL · Angular · TypeScript

  EXPERIENCE

  Developer Community Lead (contract)
  AutoBridge Systems  2025-10 → present
    Sample applications, API integrations, documentation, and training
    curriculum for developers building on an agentic AI platform for
    government and enterprise, including starter code for an "Advent of
    APIs" developer event.

  Fractional Software Engineer (contract)
  Rosie Match  2025-10 → present
    Bug fixes and reworked user flows and state management in production
    React/TypeScript applications.

  Platform Software Engineer
  Warner Bros. Discovery (iStreamPlanet, WarnerMedia)  2020-05 → 2024-06
    Owned the playback position tracking service for live sports clients
    serving millions of daily users, and led load testing ahead of events
    including Copa América. Built Go tooling for zero-downtime node
    handover on live streams and extended Datadog APM tracing end to end
    across team services.

  Founding Software Engineer
  Preclusio (YC S19)  2019-10 → 2020-12
    One of two engineers at a Y Combinator startup building GDPR and CCPA
    compliance tooling; co-owned the full product lifecycle through the
    company's wind-down.

  Backend Software Engineer
  Glympse  2018-03 → 2019-10
    Backend services and APIs carrying GPS data at 100M+ requests a day.

  Data Engineer & Full-Stack Developer
  Garden City Group (now Epiq)  2015-10 → 2018-02
    Data pipelines and enterprise software for legal and financial data
    under federal court compliance requirements.

  COMMUNITY

  Meetup Organizer / Committee Chair
  Seattle Tech Communities  2018-04 → present
    Refactoring Tech, Papers We Love Seattle, Seattle Go User Group, Latinos
    in Tech Seattle.
    • Procure venues, recruit speakers, and organize panels; build spaces
      where engineers share skills and grow together, focused on increasing
      access and opportunity in tech for people with underrepresented
      identities.

  CS Fundamentals Tutor
  Ada Developers Academy  2018-10 → 2020-02
    • Guided new developers one-on-one through a computer science
      curriculum and software projects, with a professional mentorship
      component.

  Data Structures & Algorithms Instructor
  Girl Develop It  2018-10 → 2018-12
    • Taught and created class materials for early-career developers
      identifying as women or non-binary people.

  SKILLS

  Languages
    Go, Python, SQL (various flavors), JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, C#,
    Java, shell

  Backend & Systems
    API and services design (REST, gRPC), microservices, system design,
    event streaming, database implementation, privacy & security

  Video
    live streaming, real-time transcoding and re-encoding, stream
    monitoring, playback services, live-event load testing

  Infrastructure & Observability
    Kubernetes, Helm, Argo CD, HashiCorp (Nomad, Consul, Vault), Docker,
    Kafka, RabbitMQ, Elasticsearch, GitLab CI/CD, Datadog (APM, dashboards,
    alerting), AWS (S3, EC2, Lambda, CloudFront, SNS, SQS)

  AI & Agents
    agentic API design, MCP servers, LLM-assisted development

  EDUCATION

  The University of Arizona  Tucson, AZ
    Mathematics, minor in Biochemistry & Biochemical Engineering

  MORE
  GitHub     https://github.com/axiomista
  LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessanaff
  Email      hello@sourcekitten.com

  try: curl sourcekitten.com/man · /resume.json

VANESSA(1)                    Engineers' Manual                    VANESSA(1)

NAME
       vanessa - backend engineer, recovering mathematician, team lead

SYNOPSIS
       vanessa [--design] [--prove] [--lead] [--teach] PROBLEM...

DESCRIPTION
       Vanessa reads the source first. Came to software from mathematics
       and still loves exploring what underlies any abstraction. Regards
       a system as a set of claims to be proven: what must always be
       true, what may not be allowed to happen, and which of those the
       code guarantees.

       She has kept customer data inside customer networks, kept GPS
       updates in order at 100M+ requests a day, kept compliance-critical
       ETL running over 20-60M-record data sets, and kept live sports
       streams playing for millions of viewers. She is happiest on
       backend and platform work where correctness, failure modes and
       operability matter, leading a team that can reason about all
       three without her in the room.

OPTIONS
       --design
              Starts from invariants and failure modes, then picks the
              boring technology that satisfies them.

       --prove
              Writes the argument down: a short design doc, a property
              test, or a comment explaining why the edge case can't
              happen. "Trust me" is not a proof.

       --lead
              Makes the reasoning visible so the team can own it.
              Measures success by how many decisions get made well
              without her.

       --teach
              Tutored CS fundamentals, taught data structures and
              algorithms, and has organized Seattle meetups since 2018:
              explains the hard thing plainly, then checks it landed.

       --review
              Code review as a conversation about intent, clarity, and
              (as always with engineering) tradeoffs.

EXIT STATUS
       0      The system does what it claims, and someone besides
              vanessa can explain why.

SEE ALSO
       curl sourcekitten.com, curl sourcekitten.com/resume.json,
       https://github.com/axiomista

sourcekitten                       2026                           VANESSA(1)