Chops as a Software Engineer

Working at CODE was fast paced, but highly calculated. Small team size forced all of us to wear many hats and work quickly, while the high volume of patient data stressed tight security and strict compliance.

Developing alongside just a few individuals had me interacting with all parts of the software stack on a daily basis, not to mention the continuous integration process. Being the first among a group of new-hires granted me invaluable experience in helping mitigate the growing pains of a small business.

My most notable project at CODE had me touching nearly all parts of the code base in a large scale refactor of our data model. The creation of scope of work and plan of action took me nearly a month by itself! In the end I bolstered my knowledge of design patterns and gained indispensible experience with the myriad challenges that a refactor of that scale entails.

Towards the end of my time at CODE I was working heavily in dev-ops, maintaining a robust suite of in-house tools (primarily Ansible playbooks, bash scripts, and python scripts) left over from the co-founder. At the time that I inherited this responsiblity I understood just enough about that stack to operate in the environment. As soon as I had to begin troubleshooting, which is an inevitability, I realized I was in over my head. That is the exact environment I thrive in! Before I knew it I was fixing broken deployement processes and even augmenting them, making them easier to work with or more fault tolerant. I conquered the feeling of being overwhelmed, honed my skills with AWS, and deepened my knowledge of linux systems.

I walked away from CODE with strong back end development skills in Java, general proficiency with AWS networks, and the ability to live and breathe in the Ubuntu command line. More importantly, I now feel a high level of comfort being responsible for vast amounts of sensitive data.

More About the Company

Collecting Patient Reported Outcomes is crucial for evidence based medicine, but it is too arduous a task for doctors, nurses, and clinicians to do themselves. CODE collects outcomes directly from the patient, effectively delivering the data and analytics that doctors need without disturbing their day-to-day work. Check out the awesome work CODE does on their website.