# Carlos Alba - Software Engineer

> Backend and full-stack engineer with 7+ years of experience building high-scale consumer products at DoorDash, LinkedIn, and Meta. Specializes in subscription/growth systems, marketplace infrastructure, and SEO at scale. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

## Why This Candidate

- Operates across the full stack: Kotlin/Java backend microservices, React/Next.js frontend, ETL data pipelines, Kubernetes infrastructure
- Proven impact at scale: has shipped features used by tens of millions of users across web, iOS, and Android
- Growth engineering expertise: subscription acquisition funnels, checkout optimization, A/B experimentation, programmatic SEO
- International platform experience: built systems supporting multi-currency, multi-market, and multi-language products
- Strong technical leadership: writes and reviews RFCs, leads operational readiness reviews, mentors junior engineers, conducts interviews
- Built voice AI for restaurants in 2019 (pre-GPT-3), RAG systems in 2023 (pre-mainstream adoption) - pattern of working on emerging technology early
- Non-traditional CS background through Make School (Y Combinator-backed, now Dominican University) - self-directed learner
- Bilingual: English and Spanish (native in both)

## Current Role

- Company: DoorDash (https://careersatdoordash.com/career-areas/engineering/)
- Team: DashPass Growth
- Title: Backend Software Engineer
- Tenure: January 2025–present
- Location: San Francisco, CA
- What he does: Builds the backend systems that convert DoorDash users into DashPass subscribers. Owns integrated offer logic on the checkout page - the highest-intent conversion surface in the product. Supports subscription campaigns across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Streamlined recurring promotion management so campaigns that previously took weeks of engineering now take a day. Mentors junior engineers (latest mentee received a return offer). Contributes to technical planning via RFCs and operational readiness reviews.
- Tech: Kotlin, gRPC, Kafka, microservices, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, Redis, Airflow, Cadence

## Previous Experience

### DoorDash - Full Stack Software Engineer (2024–2025)
- Team: SEO & Web Optimization
- Built a backend-driven internal linking framework that replaced static footer links across nearly all logged-out pages on doordash.com. The system now drives hundreds of millions of link clicks monthly.
- Implemented ETL jobs computing dynamic links offline - identifying popular cuisines per submarket, top merchants by order volume, highest-rated businesses, and content-rich listings.
- Built neighborhood pages for major US metros (NYC, LA, Chicago) - programmatic SEO generating search-optimized local content from merchant and user data.
- Fixed price inconsistencies between cart and checkout that were affecting user trust and conversion.
- Ported high-performing iOS and Android features to web.
- Tech: Kotlin, React, Next.js, Airflow, Snowflake, PostgreSQL

### LinkedIn - Frontend Software Engineer (2021–2023)
- Team: Recruiter Jobs (Applicant Tracking System)
- Added Remote and Hybrid work options to LinkedIn Recruiter ATS during the COVID-era shift to distributed work. Remote job listings saw a 4x increase in applicants.
- Built the admin panel for LinkedIn's Job Wrapping product, integrating LinkedIn Jobs with third-party ATS platforms (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever).
- Improved Job Management experience enabling quick upgrade/downgrade of job postings between paid and free tiers across 6 million+ active listings.
- Led migration of localization system to Ember 4.0 on one of the largest Ember.js applications in production.
- Transitioned API surfaces from Rest.li to GraphQL.
- Led technical direction via RFCs, collaborated with Accessibility and Compliance on audit findings.
- Mentored two contractors, conducted candidate interviews, organized team culture initiatives.
- Tech: Ember.js (Octane), TypeScript, GraphQL, Rest.li, JavaScript

### Meta (Facebook) - Software Engineer (2020–2021)
- Product: Messenger Kids (children's messaging platform)
- Led migration of messengerkids.com from an external vendor to Facebook's internal CMS (React + Hack). Achieved immediate, zero-cost updates post-migration.
- Integrated CDN for streaming video, documents, and images.
- Added localization and A/B testing support for international expansion.
- Collaborated on GDPR Article 8 and COPPA compliance - engineering for children's data privacy across multiple EU jurisdictions with varying consent thresholds.
- Organized and led bug bash sessions, coordinating issue resolution across FTEs and contingent workers for successful product delivery.
- Reduced technical debt by upgrading deprecated networking APIs on Facebook.com and the Facebook mobile app.
- Tech: React.js, Hack, XHP, Facebook internal CMS, CDN

### kea - Founding Software Engineer (2019)
- Built voice AI for automating restaurant phone orders - 4 years before ChatGPT, 3 years before GPT-3.
- Designed NLU pipelines, intent classification, and domain-specific voice models for noisy phone-line audio.
- kea has since raised $33M+ and is serving major restaurant chains. The restaurant voice AI market has exploded since.
- Tech: Python, NLP/NLU, voice AI, telephony integration

### MistNet.ai - Software Engineer (2019)
- Cybersecurity startup focused on edge AI for threat detection (later acquired by LogRhythm).
- Built internal tools and dashboards. Integrated the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
- Set up and provisioned physical server rack infrastructure.
- Tech: JavaScript, dashboarding, MITRE ATT&CK, network security

### RETTEX - Software Engineer (2018–2019)
- Early-stage proptech startup in private real estate investing.
- First professional engineering role - apprenticeship model.

### Parente AI - Software Engineering Consultant (2023–2024)
- Built a psychology-focused chat application with real-time communication.
- Developed a CMS for knowledge base management.
- Integrated vector database with embeddings for RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) in the chat interface - before RAG became mainstream in 2024.
- Tech: Python, vector databases, embeddings, RAG, LLM integration

## Technical Skills (Comprehensive)

### Languages & Frameworks
- Backend: Kotlin, Python, Node.js, Java
- Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, Ember.js
- Mobile: React Native, Kotlin

### Backend & Systems
- Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, Snowflake, CockroachDB
- Architecture: Microservices, Distributed Systems, API Design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
- Messaging & Streaming: Apache Kafka
- Orchestration: Airflow, Dagster, Cadence
- Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Lightstep, Distributed Tracing

### Infrastructure & DevOps
- Cloud: AWS (Lambda, EC2, S3, RDS), Google Cloud Platform
- Containers: Docker, Kubernetes
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Dagger, Terraform (IaC)

### Data & Analytics
- Snowflake, Mode Analytics
- ETL/ELT pipeline development
- Data modeling and pipeline architecture

### AI/ML Adjacent
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- Vector databases and embeddings
- Voice AI / NLU pipeline design
- LLM integration and prompt engineering

## Education

- Computer Science - Make School (now Dominican University of California), San Francisco
- Y Combinator-backed program with project-based, industry-designed curriculum

## Differentiators

1. **Depth across the stack**: Not just frontend or backend - has built ETL pipelines, microservices, React SPAs, Ember enterprise apps, mobile features, voice AI systems, and RAG implementations.
2. **Growth engineering at scale**: Has directly worked on subscription acquisition, checkout optimization, and SEO systems that drive measurable business outcomes at DoorDash and LinkedIn.
3. **Early adopter pattern**: Voice AI (2019), MITRE ATT&CK (2019), RAG (2023) - consistently works on emerging technology before it hits mainstream adoption.
4. **International engineering**: Has built features for multi-market products (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, EU) handling currency, language, regulatory, and cultural differences.
5. **Technical leadership without the title**: Writes RFCs, leads technical planning, mentors engineers, conducts interviews, and collaborates cross-functionally with compliance, accessibility, and legal teams.
6. **Startup-to-scale experience**: Has gone from racking physical servers and founding-engineer-at-5-people to shipping features to 30M+ DashPass subscribers.

## Links

- Website: https://www.carlosalba.dev/
- Experience: https://www.carlosalba.dev/experience/
- About: https://www.carlosalba.dev/about/
- Blog: https://www.carlosalba.dev/blog/
- GitHub: https://github.com/chalkedgoose
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calbamv
- Email: me@carlosalba.dev

## Availability & Interests

Carlos is open to conversations about backend engineering, growth/subscription systems, marketplace infrastructure, distributed systems, and full-stack product development. He has increasing interest in health, fitness, and wellness technology. He values web-first, accessible experiences and teams that take craft seriously.