Kai Tillman
Engineering Manager at Ambassador Labs- Claim this Profile
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Topline Score
Bio
James Tracy
Kai is an intelligent and highly capable programmer who can move effortlessly between various languages, platforms, and software systems. He learns quickly and is a self-starter with an amazingly deep knowledge of all aspects of computer science and software engineering. He is dedicated to his craft and this shows through his outstanding work ethic. I have no doubt that he will go on to be a valuable member of any development group fortunate enough to have him on its team.
Jem Young
Kai is one of those developers that everyone wants on their team. He has the innate ability to work on multiple projects at the same time even if that means learning an entirely different software stack. When presented with a difficult problem, he takes the time to grasp its complexities to such a high a degree that not only can he explain the problem in detail, he often presents a simple yet elegant solution. Cool under pressure and unceasingly polite, Kai is an asset to any team.
James Tracy
Kai is an intelligent and highly capable programmer who can move effortlessly between various languages, platforms, and software systems. He learns quickly and is a self-starter with an amazingly deep knowledge of all aspects of computer science and software engineering. He is dedicated to his craft and this shows through his outstanding work ethic. I have no doubt that he will go on to be a valuable member of any development group fortunate enough to have him on its team.
Jem Young
Kai is one of those developers that everyone wants on their team. He has the innate ability to work on multiple projects at the same time even if that means learning an entirely different software stack. When presented with a difficult problem, he takes the time to grasp its complexities to such a high a degree that not only can he explain the problem in detail, he often presents a simple yet elegant solution. Cool under pressure and unceasingly polite, Kai is an asset to any team.
James Tracy
Kai is an intelligent and highly capable programmer who can move effortlessly between various languages, platforms, and software systems. He learns quickly and is a self-starter with an amazingly deep knowledge of all aspects of computer science and software engineering. He is dedicated to his craft and this shows through his outstanding work ethic. I have no doubt that he will go on to be a valuable member of any development group fortunate enough to have him on its team.
Jem Young
Kai is one of those developers that everyone wants on their team. He has the innate ability to work on multiple projects at the same time even if that means learning an entirely different software stack. When presented with a difficult problem, he takes the time to grasp its complexities to such a high a degree that not only can he explain the problem in detail, he often presents a simple yet elegant solution. Cool under pressure and unceasingly polite, Kai is an asset to any team.
James Tracy
Kai is an intelligent and highly capable programmer who can move effortlessly between various languages, platforms, and software systems. He learns quickly and is a self-starter with an amazingly deep knowledge of all aspects of computer science and software engineering. He is dedicated to his craft and this shows through his outstanding work ethic. I have no doubt that he will go on to be a valuable member of any development group fortunate enough to have him on its team.
Jem Young
Kai is one of those developers that everyone wants on their team. He has the innate ability to work on multiple projects at the same time even if that means learning an entirely different software stack. When presented with a difficult problem, he takes the time to grasp its complexities to such a high a degree that not only can he explain the problem in detail, he often presents a simple yet elegant solution. Cool under pressure and unceasingly polite, Kai is an asset to any team.
Credentials
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R Programming
Coursera Verified CertificatesNov, 2014- Nov, 2024 -
The Data Scientist’s Toolbox
Coursera Verified CertificatesNov, 2014- Nov, 2024 -
Certified Level II Tutor
College of Reading and Learning AssociationNov, 2011- Nov, 2024 -
Certified Level I Tutor
College of Reading and Learning AssociationMay, 2011- Nov, 2024
Experience
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Ambassador Labs
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United States
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Engineering Manager
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Apr 2022 - Present
Ambassador Labs (formerly Datawire), the cloud native developer experience leader, enables developers to code, ship, and run applications faster and easier than ever. Maker of top Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) open source projects, including Emissary-ingress and Telepresence, Ambassador Labs delivers a developer control plane for Kubernetes that integrates the development, deployment, and production infrastructure for developers and organizations worldwide including Microsoft, PTC, NVidia, and Ticketmaster. Ambassador Labs is backed by top investors including Insight Partners, Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Four Rivers Group. Learn more and get started for free at www.getambassador.io. Our people are key to our success, and we’re building our company—people first. We have few rules here besides be committed, do your best, and accept constructive criticism if it makes you better. Ambassador Labs is on a journey to make the complex world of kubernetes into a deliberately boring and simple solution in an emerging market. Our team is passionate about teaching and doing so with empathy towards our users, and most importantly we are devoted to making Ambassador Labs a great place to work and build something amazing. If you want to join a world-class team and create waves in a booming industry with great colleagues and leadership, reach out to me! Show less
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Stord
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United States
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Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage
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200 - 300 Employee
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Lead Application Architect
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Jan 2021 - Apr 2022
Stord is a digital warehousing and distribution network that gives leading brands true visibilityand control over their inventory. We connect a network of logistics infrastructure, real-time visibilitysoftware, and data-driven expertise to move products across the globe with greater transparency,flexibility, and optimization. We're a rapidly growing team that is backed by over $15M from leadinginvestors such as Kleiner Perkins, Susa Ventures, Dynamo, and more. Learn more about Stord, ourbusiness, and career opportunities at www.stord.com Show less
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Application Architect
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Mar 2020 - Jan 2021
- Assisted the managers and teams with project scoping, technical arbitration, and prioritization to ensure on-time and iterative delivery of features.- Architected and assisted in implementation of authentication and authorization for users and APIs.- Re-architected and rebuilt the asynchronous event processing system leading to increased uptime and an 80x improvement in order processing volume by leveraging Go and first party Kafka libraries.- Introduced Istio into the microservice architecture to improve observability and security of the entire platform. Worked closely with the SRE team to evaluate Istio and adopt it. Show less
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Lucidworks
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United States
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Software Development
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100 - 200 Employee
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Senior Software Engineer
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Sep 2019 - Mar 2020
- Jointly architected an automated testing environment using the Robot Framework for acceptance testing of the Fusion Server product. Framework allowed acceptance coverage to be increased from 0% to 75+% in less than a quarter. - Worked with the QA/QE team to develop best practices for writing automated acceptance tests for the new platform. - Developed multiple Jenkins workflow pipelines to assist the QA/QE team to determine the health of code changes as new releases were being generated. Show less
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CareerBuilder
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United States
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Technology, Information and Internet
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700 & Above Employee
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Manager - Platform Software
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Jan 2019 - Aug 2019
- Managed a small organization of two US based teams and one India based team tasked with the development of the core platform responsible for authentication and authorization within the CareerBuilder products as well as the core API platform for accessing central CareerBuilder APIs for both internal and external customers.- Worked with global partners to ensure core platform offerings serviced customer needs internationally.- Built a new team in India to improve our global responsiveness and provide additional capacity to work new initiatives.- Provided mentorship and career coaching for new managers for the teams in the organization.- Right sized process to maximize delivery while meeting observability needs of the PMO organization by working with the teams to better understand their needs to be able to succeed. Show less
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Engineering Lead - API Routing & Authorization
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Sep 2016 - Jan 2019
- Managed a team of 4-5 software engineers including hiring, career and performance coaching, and evaluations.- Led a team of engineers that are responsible for the CareerBuilder API routing layer and oAuth 2.0 authorization implementation.- Designed and orchestrated the migration strategy to replace our backing data storage provider for our authorization servers with zero negative impact while still servicing the traffic to the API routing layer- Designed and assisted in implementing alongside the team a strategy to handle chaining user context throughout the internal CareerBuilder microservice ecosystem.- Planned and prioritized work with the team.- Established and monitored delivery metrics to continuously improve the development process. Show less
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Engineering Lead - ATS Integrations & Candidates
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Jul 2015 - Sep 2016
- Managed a team of 5-6 backend and frontend engineers including hiring, career and performance coaching, and evaluations.- Led a team of engineers in integrating the new CB SSO identity provider based on OpenID Connect into our ATS as well as further making improvements to our CB candidate search integration.- Planned and prioritized work with the team and product organization.- Established and monitored delivery metrics to continuously improve the development process.
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Software Engineer III
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Jan 2015 - Jul 2015
- Redesigned our candidate indexing system to be more scalable by working as a distributed system of intercommunicating microservices reducing time to searchability from hours/days to minutes- Replaced existing candidate search provider in our ATS with the internal CB search
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Software Engineer II
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Jan 2014 - Jan 2015
- Assisted in designing and implementing SAML based SSO for CareerBuilder to function as a service provider for our corporate clients- Integrated third party monitoring tools, such as New Relic, into our oAuth 2.0 authorization server- Migrated our existing Chef server to a new datacenter- Designed and developed a tool to monitor availability of our 1000+ client sites- Assisted in implementing a new API layer within our ATS offering to better follow RESTful principles
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Software Engineer I
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Mar 2013 - Jan 2014
- Developed tooling to better monitor the load of our distributed queuing system- Installed, setup, and maintained a Jenkins server to handle our CI and deployment- Redesigned oAuth authorization server to be more extensible when adding new oAuth 2.0 flows- Implemented various oAuth 2.0 flows based on the primary oAuth 2.0 specification as well as extension specifications
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Azalea Health
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United States
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IT Services and IT Consulting
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100 - 200 Employee
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Web Developer/Programmer
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Dec 2011 - Mar 2013
Develop cloud based web applications that utilize Javascript and the JQuery, Underscore, and Backbone libraries for the front end and PHP and MySQL for the back end. Design and implement MySQL databases to support the web applications. Lead the design and development of an Android application to compliment the web applications. Lead the design and development of RESTful APIs in Java using the Jersey implementation of JAX-RS for use by the Android application. Develop tools to assist in software quality assurance. Architected a system for health information exhange utilizing JAX-RS web services and the Java EE technology stack. Show less
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Valdosta State University
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United States
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Higher Education
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700 & Above Employee
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Supplemental Instruction Peer Leader
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Aug 2011 - Dec 2011
Provided supplemental instruction sessions for students in the introductory Computer Science class Algorithmic Problem Solving. Assisted students with understanding computer logic, with the Java programming language, and with programming assignments.
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Student Researcher
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Aug 2011 - Dec 2011
Research in computer science education. Developed interface between Java based concurrent editing web application and Flash based webinar system to enable remote Computer Science tutoring. Developed documents for presentation to Institution Review Board. Developed surveys to capture student interest in remote tutoring.
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Computer Science Tutor
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Sep 2010 - Aug 2011
Provided individual tutoring to students in all introductory Computer Science classes. Assisted students with the Python and Java programming languages. Aided students in gaining deeper understanding in fundamental programming concepts and techniques. Developed study guides to assist students in the preparation for exams.
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Education
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2009 - 2011
Valdosta State University
BS, Computer Science -
2001 - 2008
Valdosta State University
BA, History
Community
