Vetted Software Developers in the NYC Metro

Michael Forster

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Senior Data Engineer specializing in ETL/ELT pipelines and data integration platforms

New York, NY15y exp

“Data engineer/software engineer who led an end-to-end ETL/ELT pipeline at Pearson processing millions of rows of student data nightly, including client-side data prep/validation, SFTP/API ingestion, staging-based SQL validation/transforms, and production loading. Built reliability features like configurable per-client validation thresholds, detailed reporting, concurrency throttling via a custom queue, and multi-source merge/backfill logic to keep nightly loads running even when sources fail.”

“Built and shipped an AI-powered driver ranking/assignment system at AffirmoAI using LLM intent classification + RAG over pgvector/Postgres, served via FastAPI with a React UI that explains scores. Drove measurable improvements through optimization and iteration (latency down to <800ms, adoption 60%→90%+) and implemented rigorous eval loops with dispatcher ground truth plus cold-start handling for new drivers.”

“Backend engineer who has shipped both high-throughput real-time systems and production LLM/RAG features. Built a database-free, local-first messaging service (Node/Express/Socket.IO) achieving ~1,500 msgs/sec at <25ms p95, and implemented a Go-based RAG recommendation pipeline with strict JSON/schema validation, catalog grounding, fallbacks, and eval loops that cut hallucinations to ~1–2% while reducing LLM costs ~60%.”

“Backend/platform engineer with production experience building a Python SDK over a microservices ecosystem, emphasizing reliability (JWT auth, retries/timeouts, custom exceptions) and integration testing. Has delivered AWS EKS microservices with Jenkins+Helm CI/CD, strong secrets/config separation using AWS Secrets Manager, and set up Datadog APM/deployment/change monitoring. Also modernized legacy VB applications to C#/.NET WPF via incremental migration with parity testing and stakeholder sign-off.”

Dhananjay Dubey

Screened

Senior Full-Stack Game Engineer specializing in multiplayer Unity and mobile systems

Newark, NJ6y exp

“Unity/C# game developer with hands-on experience shipping large-scale multiplayer mobile games, including titles cited at 1M+ and 10M+ downloads. Combines real-time networking and physics optimization expertise with AI/MR research experience, including an IEEE-published sports coaching system using pose estimation, SMPL-X, and LSTM models. Particularly strong in latency-sensitive, cross-platform interactive systems spanning mobile, multiplayer, and mixed reality.”

Rangel Koli

Screened

Entry-level Software Engineer specializing in backend and cloud systems

New York City, NY1y exp

“Backend engineer who built and scaled a zero-to-one social product backend using Supabase (Postgres, Edge Functions, Auth, Realtime) plus Neo4j for graph-based friend recommendations. Demonstrates strong production rigor: staged rollouts with metrics, incident rollback/postmortems, and complex schema refactors using expand-contract/dual-write with reconciliation and feature flags. Notably proactive about edge cases like geo-boundary realtime delivery and idempotent retry safety.”

“Unity/C# gameplay engineer who built a designer-driven, remotely configurable ability system using JSON configs hosted on PlayFab, including runtime tracking and pooled VFX to handle frequent casts. Has shipped contract VR/AR work (HTC Vive, HoloLens) with strong performance focus (90 FPS) and also understands mobile live-service constraints like KPI integrations, memory/build size, and battery/CPU optimization.”