AWS Software Development Engineer

Stephen M White

Designing and building scalable, cloud-native systems on AWS — from event-driven backends to resilient, observable platforms.

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AWS | Distributed Systems | DevOps EC2 · Lambda · API Gateway · DynamoDB · S3 · CloudFormation · Terraform

About

I am an AWS-focused Software Development Engineer specializing in building reliable, observable, and secure backend services that power customer-facing products at scale.

Over the past several years, I have delivered distributed services and cloud-native platforms for fintech and SaaS companies, working end-to-end from architecture and infrastructure-as-code to backend APIs, observability, and CI/CD automation.

  • Designed and operated event-driven services on AWS using Lambda, SQS/SNS, DynamoDB, and Step Functions.
  • Implemented secure, versioned APIs with API Gateway, AWS WAF, and automated deployments via CodePipeline / GitHub Actions.
  • Partnered with cross-functional teams to improve reliability (SLOs, error budgets) and reduce lead time through modern DevOps practices.

Experience

Senior Software Development Engineer

Acme Cloud Remote 2022 – Present

Lead engineer for a multi-tenant analytics platform running on AWS, focused on scalability, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.

  • Architected a serverless ingestion pipeline using API Gateway, Lambda, and Kinesis, reducing infrastructure cost by ~40% compared to the previous EC2-based design.
  • Modeled high-throughput data access patterns in DynamoDB, achieving sub-50ms P95 latency under peak workloads.
  • Defined infrastructure-as-code with CloudFormation and Terraform, enabling repeatable environments and safer rollouts.
  • Introduced distributed tracing with AWS X-Ray and structured logging, improving MTTR for production incidents.

Software Development Engineer

FinEdge Analytics Seattle, WA 2019 – 2022

Backend engineer on a real-time risk and pricing platform used by financial clients across multiple regions.

  • Built microservices in Node.js and Java running on ECS Fargate and EKS, integrating with RDS, ElastiCache, and S3.
  • Implemented idempotent message processing with SQS and Kafka, improving resilience to downstream outages.
  • Automated CI/CD with GitHub Actions and CodePipeline, including blue/green and canary deployments.
  • Collaborated with product and data science to design APIs that balanced performance, safety, and flexibility.

Software Engineer

CloudStart Labs Austin, TX 2017 – 2019

Full-stack engineer on a small team delivering customer portals and internal tooling on AWS.

  • Developed RESTful APIs in Node.js and Python, fronted by API Gateway and secured with Cognito.
  • Implemented CI pipelines, automated tests, and deployment strategies that reduced release friction.
  • Worked closely with stakeholders to iterate quickly on features while maintaining code quality and observability.

Projects

Selected projects that highlight my experience building AWS-native backends, distributed systems, and developer tooling.

Serverless Analytics Pipeline

Event-driven pipeline for processing product telemetry at scale with near real-time dashboards and alerting.

AWS Lambda API Gateway Kinesis DynamoDB CloudWatch
GitHub Live Demo

Deployment Observability Dashboard

Internal dashboard aggregating deployment, health, and incident data to improve release safety and visibility.

ECS Fargate CloudFormation CloudWatch Logs OpenTelemetry React (UI)
GitHub Case Study

Multi-tenant API Platform

Secure, versioned API platform with tenant isolation, rate limiting, and automated onboarding flows.

API Gateway Lambda Cognito RDS Terraform
GitHub Architecture

AWS Cost Optimization Toolkit

Automation scripts and dashboards that identify waste, right-size resources, and track cost KPIs.

AWS SDK Lambda Step Functions S3 Athena
GitHub Docs

Skills

Cloud & DevOps

  • AWS: EC2, ECS/Fargate, EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, SQS/SNS, RDS, CloudFront, CloudWatch, X-Ray
  • Infrastructure-as-Code: CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform
  • CI/CD: AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI
  • Security: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, parameterized configs, least-privilege policies

Backend & APIs

  • Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript (Node.js), Java, Python
  • API Design: REST, JSON, API versioning, pagination, rate limiting
  • Architectures: microservices, serverless, hexagonal architectures
  • Testing: unit, integration, contract tests; test doubles and fixtures

Data & Messaging

  • Datastores: DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis/ElastiCache
  • Messaging: SQS, SNS, Kafka, Kinesis
  • Patterns: event-driven design, CQRS, idempotent processing, outbox pattern
  • Analytics: S3 data lakes, Athena, Glue (exposure), basic data modeling

Tooling & Practices

  • Git, code review, trunk-based development
  • Monitoring & Observability: metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerting
  • Agile delivery, incremental design, technical documentation
  • Mentoring, design reviews, and cross-team collaboration

Education & Certifications

B.S. in Computer Science

Chapman University Class of 2022

Coursework in distributed systems, databases, algorithms, and software engineering.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Amazon Web Services Valid: 2023 – 2026 (placeholder)

Validated ability to design and implement distributed systems on AWS that are secure, resilient, and cost-optimized.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

Amazon Web Services Valid: 2022 – 2025 (placeholder)

Focused on developing, deploying, and debugging cloud-based applications using AWS services and tooling.

Contact

Interested in collaborating, hiring, or discussing AWS architecture? Feel free to reach out using the form below.