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<matthew />

/* about me */

Engineer. Veteran. Husband, father & hobby farmer.

I am a husband, father, veteran, and senior software professional with almost 20 years of experience in distributed web application software engineering, architecture, design, and leadership across a wide range of platforms, languages, and applications.

My background spans agentic coding and workflows, AI-driven integrations and features, big-data analytics and visualization, web services, UI development, and cloud computing. I enjoy solving complex problems with innovative solutions, always with a focus on true full-stack application knowledge.

I'm passionate about the craft and constantly learning new skills and technologies to keep up with the latest practices. I value teamwork, collaboration, and communication, and I strive to deliver high-quality products that meet the needs and expectations of the clients and users who depend on them.

My career goal is simple: grow professionally in a way that builds a legacy for my family.

Get in touchGitHub
~/family/me-and-my-son.jpg
Matthew Marcus and his son smiling together in a close-up selfie
// off the clock: the people I build for
education.md

# McPherson College

B.S., Computer Science

1999 – 2003

  • - Minor in Religion & Philosophy
  • - Four years on a football and academic scholarship
publications.md

# The Interdependent Dichotomy of Leadership & Following

Medium · Jun 2019

> Darkness cannot exist w/o the definition, and absence of light. Cold cannot exist w/o the definition, and absence of heat. Similarly, Leadership exists as an interdependent dichotomy w/ Following.

$ open article.md ↗

//Experience

  1. Jul 2026 – Present

    Remote

    Staff Software Engineer @ OpenLoop

    • ›Led the refactor of an acquired single-tenant stack to multi-tenant white labeling (data model, API and React UI, with Retool for admin) in ~3 months with two other engineers
    • ›Rolled out Claude Code CLI with MCP integrations across company systems to raise team velocity
    • ›Built custom Claude skills for reusable, shareable agentic capabilities where MCP wasn't available
    • ›Shipped the company's first fully automated agentic PR review workflow (Claude via AWS Bedrock with GitHub Actions)
    ClaudeMCPAWS BedrockReactRetool

  2. Mar 2026 – May 2026

    Remote

    Lead Software Engineer – Platform @ GoodParty.org

    • ›Led the platform team on cross-functional platform features
    • ›Rebuilt the authentication, authorization and access-control layer on Clerk (SSO, OAuth2, TFA)
    • ›Ported an admin feature to a new internal admin app with a proper SOLID, security-first design
    ClerkNestJSNext.js

  3. Mar 2024 – Mar 2026

    Remote

    Senior Software Engineer @ GoodParty.org

    • ›Architected and led a full backend rebuild from Sails.js to TypeScript + NestJS + Prisma + Zod, with SST/GitHub Actions/Playwright CI/CD
    • ›Migrated a ~90k-line Next.js codebase from JavaScript to TypeScript in ~2 months using LLM agents
    • ›Split the marketing site from the core app onto Sanity.io so non-engineers could ship content
    • ›Shipped user-facing features end-to-end with Next.js, Tailwind and Radix/shadcn on Vercel
    TypeScriptNestJSPrismaPostgreSQLNext.jsCursorMCP

  4. Apr 2023 – Mar 2024

    Greater Nashville Area

    Career Break: Family & Property @ Sabbatical

    After a reduction in force following the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and 15+ years into my career, I took a planned year to focus on family, health and our property.

  5. Oct 2018 – Apr 2023

    Remote

    Sr. Software Engineer @ HEAVY.AI (OmniSci / MapD)

    • ›Championed, architected and built a Go/Echo web services layer over Apache Thrift for a GPU-RDBMS analytics platform
    • ›Redesigned the Node.js/Koa application layer for modular, serverless-ready distribution, with Socket.io for full-duplex data
    • ›Built big-data visualization features with product and design partners
    • ›Routinely refactored large, undocumented legacy JavaScript
    GoTypeScriptReactReduxNode.jsKoaMaterial-UI

  6. Feb 2021 – Nov 2022

    Remote

    Sr. Software Engineer (Contract) @ Lexima.io

    • ›Principal engineer and architect for cluster.byheart.com on Next.js and GCP, including cold-start tuning and Segment/Klaviyo/Contentful pipelines
    • ›Built features and Sanity.io caching optimizations for axiaspirit.com, plus a custom Google Maps 'find us' product
    • ›Led the ThemeFlight Shopify app through marketplace certification (OAuth2, Lambda webhooks, CI/CD)
    Next.jsGCPAWS LambdaSanity.ioShopify

  7. Apr 2018 – Sep 2018

    Remote

    Sr. Software Engineer @ eFlex Systems

  8. Oct 2017 – Apr 2018

    Nashville, TN

    Senior Software Architect @ Honeyco Homes Society

    • ›Architected the front-end stack for B2B and B2C at-home-care SaaS apps
    • ›Koa 2, RxJS + redux-observable action streams, and React with Material-UI
    • ›JWT auth and session management; Heroku CI/CD
    ReactRxJSKoaAWSIoT

  9. Sep 2015 – Oct 2017

    Sunnyvale, CA

    Sr. Lead Technical Staff Engineer @ Fanatics, Inc.

    • ›Led 10–12 UI and Node engineers on the rewrite of a $1B+/yr e-commerce platform
    • ›Got the entire app rendering universally (isomorphic React/Relay)
    • ›Tuned for 120+ TPS hot-market loads; Docker + CircleCI + RunDeck delivery
    • ›Security work: CSRF/XSS defenses, JWT/JWK payment flows, URL-integrity algorithm
    ReactReduxGraphQLRelayKoaDocker

  10. Oct 2013 – Sep 2015

    Mountain View, CA

    Team Lead Sr. Software Engineer @ Captora

    • ›Led the next-gen AngularJS UI rebuild, including auth, ACL, routing and state
    • ›Built the patented point-and-click page-authoring UI (US 8,869,019 component)
    • ›Invented a scalable automated page-testing service (patent application filed)
    • ›Introduced the build, deploy, code-review and branching processes
    AngularJSNode.jsD3PhantomJS

  11. Apr 2013 – Aug 2013

    San Ramon, CA

    Webmaster / Director of Lead-Gen Engineering @ WANdisco

    • ›Led an international team and cut marketing change turnaround from days to minutes
    • ›Introduced an SDLC where there was none; refactored the Marketo integration
    DrupalZend Framework 2Marketo

//Toolkit

Technologies I've used in production, grouped by domain.

~/toolkit.ts

export const toolkit = {

// daily drivers and past lives

languages: ["TypeScript", "JavaScript", "Go", "SQL", "PHP", "Shell"],

// UI architecture

frontend: ["React", "Next.js", "Redux", "Relay", "Tailwind CSS", "Radix / shadcn", "Material-UI", "styled-components", "AngularJS", "D3"],

// services & APIs

backend: ["Node.js", "NestJS", "Koa", "Express", "Echo (Go)", "GraphQL", "REST", "WebSockets", "Apache Thrift"],

// persistence & analytics

data: ["PostgreSQL", "Prisma", "MySQL", "MongoDB", "Mongoose", "Big Data Analytics", "Data Visualization"],

// agentic engineering

ai: ["Anthropic Claude", "Claude Code", "MCP", "Claude Skills", "Cursor", "AWS Bedrock", "Generative AI"],

// infra & delivery

cloud: ["AWS", "GCP", "SST", "Serverless", "Vercel", "Docker", "GitHub Actions", "CircleCI", "Playwright"],

// content platforms

cms: ["Sanity.io", "Contentful", "Drupal", "Shopify API"],

// beyond the code

leadership: ["Software Architecture", "System Architecture", "Cross-functional Leadership", "Mentorship", "SDLC", "Agile"],

};

//How I Lead

Great software comes from great teams, not lone heroes. These principles guide how I lead and mentor.

principle_01

Leadership is earned by followership

Real leadership can't exist without free-will following. I lead by building trust, context and ownership, not by title.

principle_02

Breadcrumbs, not answers

Good mentorship gives just enough guidance to keep the team moving without taking away the chance to learn, and knows when to jump on a call and go deep.

principle_03

See around corners

Zoom out to spot the problems a plan is missing, then zoom back in to fix the details before they become incidents.

principle_04

Make the boundaries explicit

Typed contracts, validated I/O, a real data layer and SOLID modules make a system safe to change, for humans and agents alike.

//Recommendations

Excerpts from recommendations on LinkedIn.

“Matthew is one of those engineers who knows how to spot the problems other people are overlooking in a plan. He seems to see around corners and I'm glad to have had him on my team. If you need someone you can count on to solve big problems and never complain about it being unfair - Matthew's your guy.”

Sam Hughes

CTO / Fractional CTO · Ex-MSFT, Ex-GoDaddy

· Apr 2026

“Matt is a highly skilled engineer, technical leader, and product-minded user champion. His leadership in technical vision, architectural direction, complex problem solving, and robust, maintainable code elevates the entire team. His intentional mentorship inspires the kind of hardcore skill-building that creates world-class engineers.”

Nikao Hill

Software Engineer · Performance-Critical Services

· Sep 2025

“His technical abilities far surpass most engineers that I've worked with in my career. This involves design, architecture, implementation and knowledge of libraries, frameworks etc. Overall, Matthew is a phenomenal engineer and its always a privilege working with him.”

Anindo Mukherjee

Principal Engineer, Google Gemini Enterprise

· Sep 2015

“Matt is a phenomenal colleague. He has years of experience and is constantly growing his skill set, which gives him the ability to design full-scale applications for both front and backend. Beyond his technical skill, Matt has an infinite patience in explaining deeper technical requirements and trade-offs in design decisions.”

Hugh Karimi

Sr. Data Engineer

· Apr 2026

“He has an ability to zoom in and zoom out of a technical project. He could see issues from a bird's eye and which could popup in future as well as zoom in and fix the technical nuances to take care of them. He is an asset to any engineering team!”

Dhirendra Sinha

SW Engineering Manager at Google

· Sep 2015

“Matthew had an immense positive impact on the early success of Captora and contributed significantly to multiple large initiatives. Ability to take fuzzy, high level concepts from product visionaries and actually deliver on a working, high quality, winning product with an aggressive timeline.”

Srihari Kumar

President @ JLL · 4X founder

· Sep 2015

“Matt was LIGHTNING quick to respond to any escalated customer issue, and he made sure to collaborate in a way that comprehensively guided us to a solution, not just slapping a bandaid on issues and bugs. He was a technical coach to the team and most importantly just damn useful.”

Isaac Roman

Senior CSM, WalkMe (SAP)

· Sep 2015

“Matt setup the architecture platform of Captora's major product, and leads the team to build the big Angular application in a very short period of time. To me he is also my mentor on single page UI development. For any projects that need an advanced UI architect, he is the one you don't wanna miss.”

Stanislaus Ju

Full-stack Engineer

· Sep 2015

“Matt is a strong, passionate, and honest developer. He worked for me at the NFL and was one of the developers I relied upon to get the job done.”

Dmitry Erman, CISSP

VP of Engineering

· Sep 2015

//Beyond Engineering

U.S. Army Veteran

Served in the US Army. Since 2019 I've been Quartermaster of VFW Post #6181 in Ashland City, TN, managing the post's finances and accounting.

Husband, Father & Hobby Farmer

Life on our Middle Tennessee property keeps me grounded, and occasionally sends me off to tune a 7.3L Powerstroke.

Writing

"The Interdependent Dichotomy of Leadership & Following" (Medium, 2019): why true leadership can't exist without free-will following.