chris@chrismwaters:~$

whoami

I’m Chris M Waters, a Lead Platform Software Engineer at First Dollar with 10+ years of professional experience building cloud-native platforms, APIs, and internal tooling. My background is strongest on the back end: distributed systems, event-driven architecture, CI/CD, and observability. I care a lot about developer experience: clearing roadblocks, mentoring engineers, and making systems faster and more reliable to ship.

linkedin.com/in/cdubya ↗

# experience

Lead Platform Software Engineer

First Dollar · May 2026 – present

Staff Software Engineer

Mastery Logistics Systems · May 2022 – May 2026

  • Provided technical leadership and guidance to the engineering team
  • Cut CI workflow time by more than 60% by resolving pipeline bottlenecks, including memory leaks in the test suite
  • Designed and built internal tooling to improve developer productivity
  • Built and maintained workflows to build and deploy Docker containers
  • Wrote logging guidelines that improved observability in New Relic
  • Tested and documented KEDA autoscaling for Kafka consumers
  • Brought AI-assisted development into day-to-day programming work

Lead Engineer

Cognizant Softvision · Minneapolis, MN · Sep 2021 – May 2022

  • Oversaw offshore development efforts within the team
  • Provided technical approach guidance on stories in a Scrum workflow
  • Collaborated with other development teams to provide cross-team support

Senior Software Engineer

Further · Minneapolis, MN · Feb 2019 – Sep 2021

  • Led migration of the claims processing engine to a cloud-native architecture with parallel processing
  • Built automated testing for mission-critical systems, cutting regression testing from 2 weeks to 2 minutes
  • Developed APIs on AWS using Node.js and Lambda serverless functions
  • Deployed to AWS production environments following release procedures

Joined as a contractor through Alliance of Computer Professionals and converted to full time in August 2019.

Software Engineering Consultant

Avanade · Minneapolis, MN · Jun 2018 – Feb 2019

  • Led development integration with internally built embedded devices
  • Maintained web-based application management tools
  • Built and distributed internal tools for debugging and support
  • Received the Midwest Go Team Award (Oct 2018) for developing and presenting a proof-of-concept mobile application to the client

Senior Software Engineer

Calabrio · Minneapolis, MN · Jun 2017 – Jun 2018

  • Spearheaded unit testing of JavaScript code with Jest
  • Mentored fellow UI engineers on development and testing
  • Refactored legacy pages to modern standards and frameworks

Software Engineer

Robert Half Technology · Des Moines, IA · Sep 2016 – Jun 2017

  • Full-stack web development with SQL, C#, and AngularJS
  • Built ETLs for reporting, including transfer to an external Azure instance
  • Wrote unit tests across front-end, back-end, and SQL code

Software Engineer

R&D Industries / Thinix · Ames, IA · Dec 2012 – Sep 2016

  • Project manager, architect, and lead developer for the Okoboji.com rebuild
  • Built C# web applications with ASP.NET MVC and managed SQL databases
  • Integrated PayPal, Chargify, Twilio, Facebook, and Twitter APIs
  • Spearheaded unit testing initiatives for C# and JavaScript
  • Recruited, interviewed, and mentored candidates for the internship program
  • Co-authored a patent application that was granted to the company in 2021

Programming Intern

Venteura Inc. · Aug 2012 – Dec 2012 · official title: “Computer Wizard”

# skills

languages   JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, SQL, GDScript
frameworks  Node.js, Fastify, GraphQL, Next.js/React, Nx/Lerna
data        MSSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, Kafka
platforms   AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, KEDA, New Relic
devops      Docker, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, CI/CD
testing     Jest, Ava, Tape, Intern, Chai, Sinon, Playwright
tools       Git, VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Claude, Postman/Insomnia
practices   Agile/Scrum, automated testing, observability, mentoring

# patents & recognition

  • Patent: Devices, system and method for associating a tangible asset with a website or target URL. Co-authored at R&D Industries; granted in 2021.
  • Midwest Go Team Award, Avanade (2018), for building and presenting a proof-of-concept application to a client.

# education

Iowa State University, B.S. in Software Engineering (ABET-accredited program), 2013

$ ./connect –with chris

LinkedIn ↗