Everything is on LinkedIn or the resume today anyways, but here's the more human side to the story. The explanation on how I got where I am in technology. If you want more details whether they be exact projects I have done or personal stories they are linked here on the site.
About Myself
My name is Lucia, I'm a software engineer who first started work in industry at 18 years old (currently 31). I've worked on everything from websites, to mobile, to Linux/embedded devices, to server backends with billions of connections. If it has a processor I've probably at least dabbled in it. My thesis is in IOT device security, specifically the effectiveness of taught cyber security practices if they were applied in a corporate or military setting. I am listed as an inventory on patents in both AI and distributed systems.
How We Got Here
I started in software development at the age of 14. Originally I did this for fun and not something I ever realistically expected to have a career in. It was a passion largely instilled in me by my grandpa, who likewise was an inventor. I worked on various open source projects, video game mods, and personal projects such as a calculator for chemistry formulas and a text RPG. At age 18 I took a position as a temp in a warehouse and found an issue with the system I was entering orders into. I knew enough about technology to identify something was wrong, so I dug into it and reported my findings. In the end I was given an IT position. Which later became a programmer position where I was connecting various databases together.
Shortly after this I started university where I ended working at a small developer shop (say 15 engineers) during my time there. We did some interesting projects during my time there such as building the app and video streaming solution for the Indiana Bicentennial. Which...was fairly technically impressive at the time as there really weren't video encoding/streaming components off of the shelf for that scale (we streamed to if memory serves 3000 concurrent users) much less something that was interactive. Eventually however, I needed money for my classes, living expenses, etc. I put myself through school so I couldn't ask family for it. My solution was to freelance doing ecommerce websites and custom solutions for small businesses and after a year this became an LLC with subcontractors. These two sources of income together covered my expenses.
I graduated university and moved to Atlanta. Originally as a software consultant typically being sent in for new contracts. During this time I worked on a greenfield team developing new cloud/microservice patterns. Within a year I had moved to Research and Product Development where I worked on the RISE platform. After a few years (and genuinely great team to work with) I ended up taking a contract for NCR in 2021.
During my time as a contractor I competed in a hackathon that the company held. Out of the thousands of partipants my team of four won second place. Our project was presented to the executive team and shortly afterwards I was hired on as a full time employee. I was later promoted to lead engineer and would maintain a repo with over 100 contributors. I worked on various areas from Linux support to scalability concerns to performance and internal libraries\platforms.
In 2024 I opted to move from Atlanta to California. There was a list of reasons, but I felt this is what was best for me to do. Shortly after arriving in California I took a position writing k8s operators, kubelets, and hypervisors for ARM\Apple hardware. All in all it was an interesting bit of tech, but sadly in late 2025 the company would announce layoffs due to declining sales and unfortunately I would be caught in it.
Unfortunately I was supposed to go under for a medical procedure a few months after this layoff which meant well not really enough time to look for another opportunity as my recovery would be a couple months. So I did what any reasonable engineer would do...I took some time writing some code for a project I thought was interesting, worked on my homelab, and learned a few new languages. For example, this website is statically generated using Rust. And continued to participate in industry conversations with my peers.
Fully recovered at this point and with no long standing health issues. I'm stepping back out to see what interesting projects and opportunities there are. I love challenges and have worked across a variety of technologies.