Taylor Snead
(they/them)Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Architects and maintains open-source linguistic database (Rust, MongoDB, GraphQL) and web interface (React, Gatsby) for exploring Cherokee language materials. Conducts usability testing and interviews with Cherokee-speaking users. Mentors undergraduate students on programming. Manages tasks on Trello for interdisciplinary team. Won Data and Digital Storytelling award at RISE Expo.
Overhauled product search experience from Ruby on Rails to Node and React. Experimented with static product page generation. Provisioned infrastructure for back-end services using Terraform. Designed GraphQL schema and optimized data access with Go. Debugged NLP model that categorizes products. Streamlined data ingestion process in Apache NiFi.
Built cloud content browser for Autodesk Revit in React, while introducing team to TypeScript. Devised solution for representing content taxonomy with a graph. Collaborated with UX team to design and build responsive UI. Presented at quarterly company check-in representing the five-person team.
Implemented and tested mobile UIs in C++ using Scaleform. Learned essential AGILE methodology on eight-person team. Reduced codebase by transitioning the team to C++11.
Education
Honors & Awards: University Scholar (full tuition scholarship), Honors Program, Dean's List, Global Experience Grant, PEAK Trail-Blazer Award, PEAK Summit Award
Relevant Coursework: Human-Computer Interaction, Compilers, Programming Languages, Algorithms & Data, Software Development, Networks & Distributed Systems, Object-Oriented Design, Embedded Design, Theory of Computation, Computer Graphics, Natural Language Processing
Projects
Collaborated with MIT Media Lab to design and publish accessible and highly interactive website using Gatsby, React, and headless WordPress. Composed complex glitch effects with CSS animations. Project nominated for Webby Net Art Award.
Won $5000 grant from Northeastern University to develop this independent research project. Modeled basic syntactic and grammatical rules for sandwich description language. Built peer-to-peer network in Rust and deployed on six Raspberry Pi devices. Adapted design based on faculty advisor feedback.
Maximized scalability of audio mixing with client-side solution that reduced server load by 90%. Contributed heavily to open-source Roundware libraries for iOS in Swift and web in JavaScript. Taught client basic technical skills in Swift and JS.
Prototyped Android app in Kotlin for this independent project. Engineered real-time shared listening sessions using Firebase Cloud Messaging. Deployed AWS Lambda search service to dynamically aggregate metadata from various music sources.
Published native mobile app for iOS with Swift and Android with Kotlin, storing user data in MongoDB. Collaborated with artist Chloe Bass to design the app and conduct heuristic evaluations.
Skills
Programming: Linux, Git, Rust, Java, Kotlin, Go, HTML, CSS, JavaScript (TypeScript, React, Node.js), Python (NLP stack), C/C++, Swift, Common Lisp, OCaml, LaTeX, GraphQL, REST
Infrastructure: MongoDB, AWS, Terraform, Serverless, Nix, GitHub Actions, Buildkite, Apache NiFi, Heroku
UX: Interface Prototyping, Heuristic Evaluation, Usability Testing, Participatory Design, Adobe suite
Hobbies: Bayan Accordion, Baking, Biking, Emacs, Mandarin, Rollerskating, Travel, Woodworking