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Matthew J. Whitney

Staff Backend / Platform Engineer

Backend APIs • GraphQL Services • CI/CD Platforms • Cloud Infrastructure

mattjwhitney@gmail.comRemote (US)resume.mjw.shlinkedin.com/in/mattjwhitneygithub.com/mattjw79

Summary

Staff backend and platform engineer with 30+ years of experience building reliable cloud systems, backend APIs, and developer platforms. Experienced designing GraphQL services, infrastructure automation, and CI/CD systems that enable safe and repeatable production deployments. Combines software engineering and infrastructure expertise to build scalable distributed systems and improve developer productivity.

Core Technologies

Languages & Runtimes

  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Python
  • Go
  • Kotlin

Backend & API Development

  • GraphQL
  • REST APIs
  • API Design
  • Caching

Cloud Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • CloudFront
  • Fastly

CI/CD

  • GitHub Actions
  • CircleCI
  • Jenkins
  • Octopus Deploy

Databases & Data Systems

  • PostgreSQL
  • DynamoDB
  • Elasticsearch
  • MongoDB

Observability & Operations

  • Grafana
  • NewRelic
  • Logz.io
  • PagerDuty

Architecture & Systems

  • Distributed Systems
  • Backend Platform Design
  • CI/CD Architecture
  • Infrastructure Automation

Major Systems & Platforms

GraphQL Backend Platform

Production API service supporting customer-facing applications.

Automated Deployment Platform

CI/CD system deploying backend services across dev, test, and production with automated validation and rollback.

Search Infrastructure

Elasticsearch clusters containing 12+ billion documents supporting analytics workloads.

Messaging Infrastructure

Email delivery platform processing more than 80+ million messages per week.

Professional Experience

Nearform

Remote
2021 – Present

Staff Software Engineer

Develop backend systems and developer platforms for cloud-based applications using Node.js, Typescript, Python, GraphQL, AWS, and Terraform.

Deployment Platform

Designed and implemented a fully automated CI/CD deployment platform for a production GraphQL backend service.

  • Built GitHub Actions pipelines supporting dev, test, and production environments.
  • Implemented automated post-deployment validation testing.
  • Added automatic rollback when validation failed.
  • Eliminated manual deployment steps and improved release reliability.

GraphQL Backend Service

Contributed to implementation and maintenance of a production GraphQL API.

  • Improved resolver performance and caching behavior.
  • Diagnosed and resolved production issues affecting API stability.
  • Participated in testing and debugging across multiple backend repositories.

Infrastructure Automation

  • Built reusable Terraform modules for AWS infrastructure provisioning.
  • Implemented CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions and CircleCI.
  • Built data synchronization pipelines integrating Salesforce and Sanity CMS.
  • Implemented CDN architecture using CloudFront, Fastly, and Stellate.

ExecVision

Remote
2019 – 2020

Senior DevOps Engineer

Improved infrastructure reliability and deployment automation for a SaaS analytics platform.

  • Managed Elasticsearch clusters containing more than 12 billion documents.
  • Implemented infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Ansible.
  • Built CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and container-based build environments.
  • Reduced AWS infrastructure costs by approximately 10% within three months.

TiVo Corporation

Durham, NC
2017 – 2019

Staff Systems Engineer

Developed infrastructure automation and monitoring systems supporting production discovery and natural language platforms.

  • Built automation tooling using Go and Python.
  • Created Terraform modules and Ansible roles for standardized infrastructure.
  • Led operations for discovery and NLP systems.
  • Implemented monitoring using Grafana, Zabbix, and PagerDuty.

Match Group

Remote
2015 – 2017

Lead Engineer, Site Operations

Maintained reliability and automation for high-volume messaging infrastructure.

  • Built automation tools using Python, Node.js, Bash, and Lua.
  • Maintained messaging infrastructure delivering 80+ million emails per week.
  • Built monitoring and alerting integrations using Nagios, Slack, and PagerDuty.

Education

B.S. Information Technology

Western Governors University

A.A.S. Systems Administration / Networking

Pima Community College

Teaching Experience

Wake Technical Community College

Adjunct Instructor

  • Introduction to the UNIX Operating System

Pima Community College

Adjunct Faculty

  • Fundamentals of PC Security
  • Introduction to UNIX
  • Designing Windows Network Security