Michael E. Scott-Nelson

Senior Software Engineer | Developer Accelerator | Lifelong Learner

mscottnelson@gmail.com | (724) 953-6892 | GitHub

Curated Work Experience

33Across | Remote

Senior Software Engineer

May 2022 - Sept 2025

• Guided a purpose-driven team of eleven through the modernization of ad-exchange services enhancing efficiency, reducing error rates, and increasing throughput, while simultaneously improving guarantees around user privacy and data security. The changes reduced infrastructure costs by ~30% while improving reliability with canary and blue/green deployments, A/B testing, and trace monitoring in GCP.
• Built data-generation and traffic-simulation tools for faster dev-test cycles that could accurately mimic production traffic patterns, allowing faster iteration and more robust deployments, improving both developer experience and system reliability.
• Rolled out app and CTV monetization using dynamic traffic management, directly increasing programmatic ad revenue.
• Participated in tiger-teams to integrate ML/AI-oriented tooling into our bid-stream and traffic-optimization models, as well as developing best practices for their responsible use during development.
• Designed and delivered a new analytics data pipeline, giving our clients improved reporting and transparency.
• Built a Golang enrichment processor classifying network traffic handling 150 B events/day with ~2 ms latency overhead and zero downtime since launch.

SAS Institute | Remote

Senior Software Developer

July 2017 - May 2022

• Designed and built enterprise cybersecurity tools on top of ElasticSearch, Kafka and RabbitMQ pipelines, and Angular UI components with explorable GraphQL API, improving threat detection and response times for clients.
• Produced model React / Go codebases to demonstrate best practices as part of a cross-team effort to standardize front-end and back-end development across the company. This was a coding style guide first and foremost, but also demonstrated an easily deployable system demonstrating the use of “digital twins” to simulate system behavior and Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) patterns to improve system scalability and maintainability.
• Refactored a Node.js backend serving the entire 10,000+ software organization from JavaScript into TypeScript with a per-team accessible plugin architecture, improving developer experience, delivery times, and visibility into automated systems while maintaining backward compatibility with existing integrations.
• Led efforts to containerize and orchestrate internal applications using Docker and Kubernetes, improving deployment speed and reliability.
• Championed infrastructure as code practices, implementing Terraform and Ansible to automate provisioning and configuration management while supporting dev/test teams on a hybrid cloud environment (vSphere and Azure).
• Assisted with CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes operations, and infrastructure reliability.
• Mentored junior developers, fostering a culture of collaborative learning.

Goucher College | Baltimore, MD

Academic Director and Professor of Digital Arts

Aug 2011 - Jul 2017

• Directed a graduate Master of Arts in Digital Arts multidisciplinary program, helping students achieve their creative and professional goals, overseeing curriculum development, faculty recruitment, student admissions, and program assessment.
• Managed nine interdisciplinary faculty towards a common vision of student success.
• Designed and maintained a makerspace integrating electronics and art.
• Taught courses in web development, graphics programming, and digital signal-processing, mentoring students and encouraging interdisciplinary exploration.

The Kiski School | Saltsburg, PA

Teacher

Aug 2006 - Jun 2008

• Taught high school courses in mathematics, computer science, and music.

Education

University of Kansas

Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition

2010 - 2013

• Researched and implemented various algorithms for real-time music generation, with a focus on interactive live music software via Markov chain based system adaptation.
• Developed to allow AI-generated music to adapt during improvisatory live performance.
• Taught undergraduate and graduate courses on computer music and in traditional music theory.

Johns Hopkins University

Master of Music in Computer Music

2008 - 2010

• Explored the intersection of computer science, human-computer interfaces, perception, acoustics, and music, focusing on real-time audio processing and generative music systems and musical composition.
• Developed software tools for live performance and interactive installations, enhancing the creative possibilities for musicians and artists.

Kenyon College

Bachelor of Arts with High Honors

2002 - 2006

• Studied music, computer science, and anthropology, culuminating in an interactive music software / performance project that combined elements of all three disciplines.
• Lead technician for the college’s audio-visual computing lab, managing both the computer systems for students as well as sound and lighting for various events and performances.

Technologies

Languages

Proficient with: JavaScript / TypeScript, Golang / Go, Java / Spring, Lua, HCL

Experience with: Ruby, C/C++, Python, Zig, Pd/GEM, Arduino, and more.

• I enjoy learning new programming languages and paradigms, and have strong foundations in functional, object-oriented, and declarative programming styles.

Systems & Tools

Proficient with: Node.js, Kubernetes, Azure, Jenkins CI/CD, Kafka, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch/OpenSearch, Postgres, esbuild, OpenAPI/Swagger, Terraform, Git, Docker, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Helm, Linux, Bash/Shell scripting, Redis, gRPC, React, Angular, GraphQL, RESTful APIs, HTML/CSS

Experience with: Ansible, GCP, AWS, vSphere, Hadoop, Spark, D3.js, WebGL, WebAssembly, and more.

• Software engineering is an ongoing conversation between tools, systems, processes, and people. I believe in adapting to the conversation at hand and choosing the right tools for the job, rather than forcing a specific technology stack.

Specialties

System scalability, edge processing, privacy compliance (GDPR/CPPA), monitoring & observability, monetization strategies, low-latency systems, cross-functional collaboration, mentoring and team leadership.

• I care about provably correct systems as well as human-computer interaction. I want to make tools that feel like a natural extension of user intent. However, I also believe in taking a pragmatic approach that prioritizes product delivery and maintainability over theoretical purity. Deployed systems beat perfect plans every time.