01.

About

I'm a Seattle-based software engineer who's spent the last two decades building and scaling distributed systems for large consumer platforms. My work has focused on backend API development, cloud infrastructure, and observability — modernizing legacy systems, improving performance, and reducing operational overhead.

I have additional experience across DevOps, infrastructure, and test automation. Currently building side projects and exploring new opportunities.

02.

Skills

Languages
Kotlin, Java, Python, Go, C, Shell Scripting, JavaScript
APIs & Protocols
REST, gRPC, Protobuf
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS (EC2, S3, Route53, Neptune), Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD
Messaging & Data
Kafka, Gremlin, Couchbase, ElasticSearch, MongoDB
Observability
OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Grafana, Graphite
AI Tooling
GitHub Copilot, Claude Code
03.

Experience

Comcast Technology Solutions 09/2015 — 07/2025
Senior Software Engineer
Seattle, WA
Seaplane Team — API Modernization
  • Modernized legacy entertainment data service by delivering REST and gRPC/Kafka APIs in Kotlin backed by a NoSQL stack, with improved system observability via OpenTelemetry — reducing cluster size requirements and improving average response times by ~3x at lower infrastructure cost.
  • Re-architected video entitlement and identity service by ingesting legacy entitlement data via Kafka into Gremlin DB, powering new Kotlin APIs to efficiently resolve per-user video access — eliminating chronic load issues and improving response times by ~4x on a previously overloaded endpoint.
  • Leveraged GitHub Copilot via IntelliJ throughout the modernization — using it to understand undocumented legacy features, research implementation approaches, accelerate code completion, and conduct code reviews.
Metadata Team — Distributed Caching & Infrastructure
  • Designed and implemented a distributed caching layer, achieving ~3x improvement in cache hits and ~4x increase in TPS under heavy media load, while substantially reducing database load.
  • Designed and implemented a cache invalidation service that consumed notifications from our media service via a NoSQL DB to maintain proper state across the distributed caching layer, eliminating stale-data incidents.
  • Drove end-to-end containerization of team services from RPM to Docker/Kubernetes on AWS in collaboration with the DevOps team — cutting deployment time from days to hours and enabling on-demand horizontal scaling.
Staples, Inc. 11/2013 — 09/2015
Senior Software Engineer in Test
Seattle, WA
  • Built a JUnit/Selenium/Maven integration test suite for third-party search engine integrations on staples.com, including A/B test coverage for search algorithm validation.
  • Designed and implemented a Selenium/JUnit/Java/Maven UI testing framework for personalization features, enabling daily automated regression and reducing testing time from multiple days to a few hours.
  • Designed and implemented a JUnit/Java/Maven testing framework to validate personalization web service requests and responses across various payloads and endpoints.
Nuance Communications, Inc. 11/2012 — 10/2013
Software Engineer in Test
Seattle, WA
  • Built an Android JUnit/SDK automated testing framework for the Swype keyboard API, covering language download, installation, and update flows for third-party integrations — automated via Jenkins on each new build.
  • Developed a web-based scripting tool enabling manual QA testers to write, store, and run test scripts directly against the Swype keyboard, reducing reliance on engineering for test case creation.
  • Extended a competitive benchmarking tool to compare Swype against rival products across key performance metrics.
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. 04/2010 — 10/2012
Senior Software Engineer
Bothell, WA
  • Designed and built a voicemail traversal testing framework for a Linux-based unified communications product using Python, C, and XML, reducing reliance on manual test engineers for environment setup.
  • Implemented a web-based scheduling feature enabling the system to dynamically handle calls based on configurable schedules (JavaScript, MySQL backend).
  • Redesigned and automated the system upgrade procedure via Bash scripting, cutting upgrade time and reducing error rates.
Active Voice, LLC 03/2005 — 04/2010
Software Engineer (02/2007 — 04/2010)
Seattle, WA
  • Built a Python-based database migration tool to convert legacy C-tree databases to MySQL, enabling a clean upgrade path for existing customers to supported voicemail versions.
  • Designed and implemented a web-based upgrade utility with a JQuery/AJAX/PHP frontend and a Shell Scripting backend communicating with the upgrade server via XML/SOAP packets.
Software Quality Assurance Engineer (03/2005 — 02/2007)
  • Developed internal tooling to support functional testing, performance benchmarking, and load testing for product releases.
04.

Contact

duan@duantran.com LinkedIn