I'm Steven Skoczen.

Welcome to my résumé.

Skills

Best ever

Awesome

Solid

Novice

Leadership

Mentorship

Processes

Design

Front-end

Back-end

Devops & Automation

DBA

Server Admin

Project Management

Architecture

I love making things that make the world better.

I've been programming for 25+ years, and am a CTO and full-stack developer in the broadest possible senses. Front-end, back-end, everything from UX to hiring to architecture, I've done it all over the years, and I'm pretty decent at all of it. I've also led and grown teams across a wide variety of contexts: small bootstrapped startups, established firms, academia, and large governmental organizations.

These days, I'm happiest coding in python and javascript, using robust and mature frameworks. I love building tools for the team, mentoring, architecting our stack and schemas, and designing for scale.

I am deeply passionate about understanding the user, figuring out their journey, and how what we're building can make their day, month, and life better. But most of all, I just love getting things done. I love jumping in, knocking tasks out quickly and done right the first time. I'm experienced managing projects from small to years-long mammoths, and good at scoping, understanding the business needs, and making tradeoffs to get things shipped.

Experience

I've been lucky to found, work at, and work with some amazing companies. Most recently, that's:

Valence

Technical Lead

Led engineering, architecture, and UX to build an AI-powered leadership coaching for Fortune 100 companies. I developed novel approaches to integrate Generative AI and traditional programming, while managing the development team, and making time to keep my hands on the keyboard for things that mattered - like rewriting the entire core of our stack. I transformed an existing rough proof-of-concept into a secure, scalable, production-ready application that truly met our users' needs.

Ox Intel

Head of Engineering

Led product development and architecture for an Air Force SBIR application, deploying novel approaches to the AI and decision making space, while remaining deployable on air-gapped, hard-to-reach server instances. Built a culture of CI, CD, and Test-Driven Development while stretching our runway by mentoring junior developers and effectively leveraging industry contractors. Made an absoutely stunning, useful decision-making tool to augment human intelligence.

BuddyUp

Co-Founder, CTO

Grew the team from two to six, architected and coded iOS, Android, and web apps built in ionic. Created a platform that handled super-spikey demand at scale with large, real-time chat rooms, and all the stuff you'd expect with a good mobile app. More than the technical achievements, I'm most proud of the healthy, whole-person remote culture we were able to create together.

GreenKahuna

Senior Engineer, Dev Team Lead

Took a team of fresh, talented developers and made app-making warriors. Built an open dev culture, with monthly kick-backs to iterate how we worked. Architected, led code reviews, and moved us from minimal testing to continuous deployment on E2E tests. Wrote and open-sourced will, our chat bot that handled devops, workflow, and fun.

Wieden+Kennedy

Creative Technical Lead

Pushed creative digital thinking on the Coke, Laika, and Nike Golf accounts. Worked on a P&G global campaign, helped conceptualize and code the ParaNorman campaign, and watched my work in that year's Super Bowl. Started a monthly Tech Breakfast series to keep creatives current with the latest tech trends.

GoodCloud

Co-Founder, CEO

Built a full-featured CRM, donor and volunteer management platform for small nonprofits in four months, with one hand tied behind my back at a day job. Open-sourced a number of libraries from the codebase. Made some small nonprofits very happy.

I've also led medical research, founded a handful of companies, written a book, and given a TEDx talk. Weirdly, my degree is in Environmental Engineering from Cornell. Another lifetime ago, I wrote the International Ethobotany Database, after two summers in Perú interviewing shamans. It's been an interesting ride.

Code

I've created over a dozen open-source libraries, including some fairly popular ones. Here are some favorites, and my github:

Visa and Citizenship

I'm a United States citizen, and also have permanent residency in New Zealand, and can accept contracts in both places.