Sam Swanke

As a Software Development Manager at Amazon, I lead a team of 5 Engineers, driving innovation and operational excellence in large-scale, complex AWS full-stack applications. I played a pivotal role in designing and implementing Amazon Bridge, an application supporting the Amazon Community Together program, automating workflows with AWS Step Functions, serverless infrastructure, and React-based front-end systems. Under my leadership, the application delivered critical features, scaled to support 750+ charities and 30,000+ annual cases, and enhanced user experience with intuitive, responsive UX standards. I transitioned seamlessly into the managerial role by earning trust through hands-on contributions, and mentorship. With over 400+ code reviews, driving unit test coverage from 5% to 40%, and reducing weekly on-call tickets by over 50%. I have successfully coached team members through promotions, championed design/code reviews, and implemented mechanisms to improve team growth and delivery quality. Additionally, I led the handover and successful launch of InsurGuide within 4 weeks, driving technical handoff, risk mitigation, and prioritization of mission-critical tasks, while ensuring production readiness through metrics and monitoring systems, InsurGuide saw the procurement of over nine figures in insurance contracts. My ability to manage ambiguity, influence technical and product strategies, and foster customer-centric solutions is shown by my experience delivering exceptional products and building high-performing engineering teams.

Led in the design, implementation and deployment of the large-scale application, Amazon Bridge. Designed services using cutting edge AWS serverless architecture. Lead front-end development on the team, introducing code quality patterns such as typescript, redux and component design. Learned and established best practices for DynamoDB table design. Created critical step function workflows for the application. Earned trust on the team and became known for being a mentor and mediator, which opened the opportunity to take on management responsibility.

Led and created an internal service tool to manage trip and operational logistics. Collaborated with design stakeholders to componentize the design system for the eCommerce site, LiveFeather.com. Maintained a flexible React code library and drove site efficiencies. Established the foundational pillars for the company’s headless CMS. Adjusted code to render images 30% faster, resulting in faster load-time for users. Mentored junior team members to drive the company’s mission: to encourage furniture rental, reuse, and refurbishment. Code and digital product development ultimately contributed to keeping furniture out of landfills and promoted the circular economy for home furniture rentals.

Ignited the fashion-tech company by being brought-in as engineer #2. During tenure, grew the team to 4 engineers. Built a digital platform that made it easy to design, produce, and deliver custom fashion products. Led development on scalable systems in TypeScript with NodeJS, React and Redux. Partnered with designers and non-technical teams to create a delightful digital-product experience. Created industry leading fashion management software that is used for generating production timeline tracking.

Created graph traversal library to canonicalize messy user data. Led development of maintainable front-end applications with React & Webpack. Educated team by giving talks on React, as the front-end specialist. Grew the company’s mission to be the premier digital marketing solution and partner within the automotive industry. Leveraged advanced digital technology and data for projects.

Maintained & enhanced existing Java & Angular applications.

Sole Developer for HarvestingHappiness.org, a non-profit serving vulnerable community members. Volunteered for 4 weeks in Guatemala to build stoves and deliver medicine.

Re-designed legacy Google Search Appliance XSLT using modern web standards.

Within the College of Engineering, enabled automated QA by writing a multithreaded Python web crawler integrated with Slack.

Created a game of snake in Google Maps with a team of four friends