Jeff Clark - Software Engineering Leader & Architect

jeff@nothoo.com ◦ Fairfax, VA, USA ◦ Remote

Who I Am and What I Do

I have more than 30 years of experience across pretty much every part of software engineering. I love the tactics: being in the code, solving real problems, and building software that people use. I also thrive on the strategy: helping shape the direction of a software company and providing the leadership to make it happen.

I am a pragmatist. Too much modern software is over-designed and over-engineered. A simple Node.js backend and SQLite database can support a lot more users and traffic than most people imagine. LLMs make simplicity more important, not less: generating code is cheap, but owning it is not.

I have worked remotely, either part-time or full-time, for more than 20 years. I enjoy helping companies and individuals make remote work actually work.

Skills & Strengths

This is the short list. The work history has the rest.

  • People & Organizations: engineering management, team building, mentoring, organizational change, remote leadership
  • Product & Business: product development, technology strategy, roadmaps, executive advising, connecting technical decisions to business goals
  • Engineering: architecture, platforms, domain-driven design, legacy modernization, SaaS, DevOps, CI/CD, observability
  • Hands-On Tech: Go, Elixir, Phoenix, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Java, PostgreSQL, SQLite, AWS, LLM-assisted development

Work History

Gallformers.org

Co-Founder & All Things Technical | August 2020–Present | Remote

Elixir ◦ Phoenix ◦ JavaScript ◦ PostgreSQL ◦ AWS ◦ Fly.io ◦ Open Source

I co-founded Gallformers.org, an open-source site for identifying plant galls. It is also used by scientists studying them. I am the only engineer, so if it breaks, it is probably my fault.

  • The site had ~460,000 page views in a recent 90-day period. It contains ~4,000 gallformers, ~2,500 host species, and ~900 scientific sources.
  • Gallformers received ~$100,000 from an NSF grant to expand the site. The application and maps now support worldwide data; getting all that data into the system is still in progress.
  • I use LLMs every day for architecture, planning, coding, and review. I approve the plan, require checkpoints, and use separate reviews for quality and security. They help me move much faster; they do not make the decisions.
  • Rewrote the application from TypeScript/React and SQLite to Elixir/Phoenix and PostgreSQL. The data model is better, feature work is easier, and I spend far less time chasing broken Node dependencies. LLMs improved enough by December 2025 to make this rewrite possible. Before then, I would not have attempted it!
  • Replaced a hand-managed pet server with CI/CD via GitHub Actions, repeatable deployments, automated backups, and basic observability. Also rebuilt the admin tools used by ~30 active administrators.

Care.com

Architect | January 2024–August 2025 | Remote

Architecture ◦ Domain-Driven Design ◦ Legacy Modernization ◦ LLM Evaluation ◦ Technical Strategy

I was one of two architects supporting an engineering organization of 75–125 people.

  • Advised the interim and incoming CTOs and helped coordinate architecture across Engineering. Also mentored a group of ~15 principal engineers and architects.
  • Documented the current architecture and set system and domain boundaries that guided work around the legacy monolith.
  • Put the brakes on a microservices buildout that was becoming a distributed monolith. Planned a controlled path away from the legacy system using Bubble Contexts, Anticorruption Layers, Open Host Services, and other Domain-Driven Design techniques.
  • Ran a deliberately unconstrained “vibe coding” proof of concept in Q2 2025. The tools handled small tasks but could not be trusted with Care’s larger systems, so I recommended against trying to go all in at that time.

Interim Director of Platform Engineering | August 2023–January 2024 | Remote

Platform Engineering ◦ Developer Experience ◦ Observability ◦ DevOps ◦ Security & Compliance ◦ Splunk

I took over two Platform Engineering teams: one engineering manager and 12 engineers. I directly managed about half of the engineers.

  • Restored regular 1:1s and worked with the teams to replace a roadmap they no longer believed in.
  • Formed a temporary working group that started a year-plus effort to make monolith development and deployment simpler, safer, and faster. The permanent director carried it through after the handoff.
  • Started rebuilding the ties between Engineering, DevOps, Security, and Compliance. The larger DevOps alignment happened later, but the groundwork was in place.

Senior Engineering Manager | January 2022–August 2023 | Remote

Messaging ◦ Search & Matching ◦ Go ◦ TypeScript ◦ React ◦ Java ◦ MySQL ◦ AWS ◦ Elasticsearch

I managed 7–9 engineers responsible first for in-app messaging and later for search and matching.

  • Shipped a structured messaging experience that guided families and caregivers through the hiring process instead of dropping them into an empty message box. Product priorities changed before it gained much traction.
  • Evaluated replacing Care's messaging system with a third-party platform. Recommended keeping the internal system; the replacement did not justify its cost and disruption.
  • Shipped a new core search experience that used ML-derived signals to produce stronger matches.

Syniti (formerly BackOffice Associates)

VP, Engineering | July 2015–March 2020 | Remote

Go ◦ Python ◦ C# ◦ PostgreSQL ◦ AWS ◦ Grafana ◦ Jenkins ◦ SaaS ◦ SAP

Led a distributed engineering organization of 40–50 people across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. A director, engineering managers, the architect, and the DevOps lead reported to me. Our products helped Fortune 50 companies solve data-migration and data-governance problems.

  • Turned an organization shaped largely around consulting into a software product engineering organization. Moved QA from manual testing toward automation and introduced GitHub, Jenkins, Grafana, AWS, and basic engineering standards.
  • Built the company's first SaaS product, a data-governance platform, and took it from an idea to paying customers in production. We continued investing in the core data-migration product at the same time.
  • Prepared Engineering and Technology for acquisition due diligence and participated in the process. After the acquisition, I regularly contributed to the Board's Technical Committee.
  • Made Engineering remote-first before COVID made that normal. We closed offices, hired for remote work, wrote things down, used asynchronous communication, and tried to make meetings actually useful.
  • The 40–50-person organization supported a company with $300M+ in annual revenue, including $30–$50M from software.

Content Analyst Company

Principal Software Architect | August 2012–July 2015 | Reston, VA | Hybrid

Semantic Search ◦ LSI ◦ Text Analytics ◦ Java ◦ Scala ◦ Akka ◦ Elasticsearch ◦ PostgreSQL ◦ AWS ◦ SaaS

I was a hands-on architect and engineer, responsible for the overall design, but still writing code, reviewing designs, and mentoring engineers.

  • Worked on semantic search using latent semantic indexing—back before LLMs changed what “semantic search” meant. Legal customers used it for e-discovery and automated email threading; government customers used it for other large text-analysis problems.
  • Designed and helped build a SaaS version for customers that could not run the product on-premises. It launched on AWS and had paying customers. This was before Docker made operating this sort of system easier.
  • Worked with one other engineer and a pharmaceutical CIO on a drug-discovery proof of concept. We ingested ~100 million documents and built a visual tool for finding relationships among genes, drug precursors, and diseases. The technology worked; the company chose not to pursue it.

Behaviors for Life

Co-Owner & All Things Technical | 2008–2012 | Fairfax, VA

Objective-C ◦ iOS ◦ iPhone ◦ iPad ◦ Product Development ◦ Small Business Operations

Co-founded an applied behavior analysis business with my wife, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She did the ABA work; I helped run the business and built an iPhone and iPad app to replace manually sorted language cards. It reached closed beta, but licensing enough photos made a broader launch impractical.

SOALogix

Software Architect | 2004–2008 | Reston, VA | Hybrid

Java ◦ Spring ◦ Scala ◦ Groovy ◦ SAP ◦ Primavera ◦ Enterprise Integration
  • Led architecture for a ~15-person engineering team building SAP and Primavera integration software used primarily by Fortune 50 oil and gas companies during plant shutdowns.
  • Designed and wrote the original core engine in less than two months. Dropped the original EJB plan for Spring dependency injection, which gave us a much simpler foundation.
  • Introduced Scala for asynchronous messaging and Groovy for adapter scripting. The company was later acquired by SAP.

Earlier Experience

.NET ◦ C# ◦ C++ ◦ Windows ◦ SQL Server ◦ MFC ◦ ASP ◦ ASP.NET
  • Software Architect, AtStaff | 2001–2004 | Durham, NC | Remote — Stayed with the products after MSI became AtStaff and moved from Virginia to North Carolina. Documented the architecture, transferred knowledge, helped build the new team, and worked with Product and executives on the roadmap.
  • Director of Development & Software Engineer, MSI Software | 1996–2001 | Reston, VA — Led up to 15 people across Engineering, QA, and IT Operations. Built physician and nurse scheduling products used by medical practices and hospitals, and helped turn the original desktop application into an enterprise system.

Education & Professional Development

Georgia State University

B.S. in Mathematics, Minor in Computer Science | Atlanta, GA | 1996

  • I was a reluctant student but graduated in three years and received the Pi Mu Epsilon award for outstanding achievement in mathematics.
  • Tutored in the math lab, including subjects I had never formally taken. It paid for pizza and beer.

Functional Programming Principles in Scala

EPFL | Martin Odersky | 2013

A Few Things That Shaped Me

  • My first computer was a Commodore 64; that, plus my dad's subscription to BYTE magazine, pretty much set my path.
  • Simple Made Easy — Rich Hickey's distinction between simple and easy has influenced nearly every architecture decision I have made since. Easy now often means complexity later.
  • Hacking Is Important — Healthy companies need both the people who keep the trains running and the people willing to disrupt the schedule by building something new. I have tried to be both.