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title: "About — nitrocode"

description: "About nitrocode — Full Stack Engineer with roots in QA, DevOps, and Security."

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<p class="font-mono text-sky-400 text-sm mb-3 tracking-widest uppercase">Who I am</p>

<h1 class="text-4xl sm:text-5xl font-extrabold mb-4">About</h1>

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I'm a <strong class="text-slate-100">Full Stack Engineer</strong> who started in QA,

moved through test automation, software development, full stack engineering, DevOps/SRE,

and security, and came out the other side having been on every side of the wall.

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That journey means I've personally shipped the feature, written the tests that caught

the regression, built the pipeline that deployed it, managed the incident when it

broke, and hardened the system after the post-mortem. I understand how decisions made

on one side of the stack ripple into consequences on another.

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I bring security thinking into every phase of the product lifecycle, not as a final

audit, but as a design constraint from day one. Systems I build are observable,

testable, and defensible.

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I leverage AI tooling to move faster across the full stack, from rapid prototyping

to code review to infrastructure automation. It's a force multiplier, not a

replacement for engineering judgment.

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<h2 class="text-2xl font-bold mb-8">Career arc</h2>

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<p class="font-mono text-sky-400 text-xs mb-1 uppercase tracking-widest">Start</p>

<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">QA Engineering</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Learned to break things before users do. Developed a systematic approach to failure modes, edge cases, and regression testing. Built the habit of questioning every assumption.</p>

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<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">Test Automation</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Moved from manual testing to building automated test frameworks and CI pipelines. Wrote code to validate code, which demanded thinking like a developer while keeping a QA mindset.</p>

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<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">Software Developer</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Crossed to the other side of the wall. Built backend services and APIs. Understood what it feels like to have a QA team file bugs against your code, and designed to prevent them.</p>

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<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">Full Stack Development</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Expanded into frontend (React, component systems, responsive UIs). Developed intuition for how UI decisions affect backend load and how backend design shapes user experience.</p>

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<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">DevOps / SRE</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, observability, and on-call. Learned what breaks at 3 AM and how to build systems that don't.</p>

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<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">Security Engineering</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">AppSec, DevSecOps, threat modeling, policy as code, SAST/DAST. Shifted security left, not as a gatekeeper, but as a collaborator who had already been on every other side of the table.</p>

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<p class="font-mono text-violet-400 text-xs mb-1 uppercase tracking-widest">Now</p>

<h3 class="text-lg font-semibold mb-1">Full Stack (all of it)</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Combining everything: I can own a feature from spec to deploy to security review to on-call runbook. Having been on every side of the wall means I know how to build systems that work for everyone.</p>

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<h2 class="text-2xl font-bold mb-8">How I work</h2>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Critical thinking first</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">I question requirements before writing code. The best solution is often a simpler problem.</p>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Build it, prove it</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Concrete trumps theoretical. When a question is disputed, I build the minimal proof of concept.</p>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Security as a feature</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">Security isn't a final audit. It's a design constraint from day one.</p>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Own the full lifecycle</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">I'm comfortable owning a feature from spec to deploy to on-call runbook.</p>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Test before it ships</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">QA roots mean I think about failure modes while I'm writing the feature, not after. Testability is a design concern.</p>

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<h3 class="font-semibold mb-2">Empathy across the wall</h3>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm">I've been QA, dev, ops, and security. I understand the friction between teams because I've felt it from every side.</p>

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<h2 class="text-xl font-bold mb-3">Want to work together?</h2>

<p class="text-slate-400 text-sm mb-6">I'm open to senior engineering and staff roles. Let's talk.</p>

<a href="https://github.com/nitrocode" target="_blank" rel="noopener"

class="inline-flex items-center gap-2 bg-sky-500 hover:bg-sky-600 text-white font-semibold px-6 py-3 rounded-lg transition-colors text-sm">

Find me on GitHub →

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<h2 class="text-2xl font-bold mb-8">Outside of work</h2>

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<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">🚲 Biking</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">🧩 Puzzles (Sudoku, Kakuro, Wordle, Nerdle, Hanjie…)</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">📚 Reading (books, Hacker News, RSS feeds)</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">🏙️ Code for Boston</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">🌽 Code for Nebraska</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">👨‍👩‍👧 Family time</span>

<span class="bg-slate-900 border border-slate-800 rounded-full px-4 py-2 text-slate-300">📵 Trying to get people off social media</span>

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<h2 class="text-2xl font-bold mb-8">Guiding principles</h2>

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<p class="text-slate-300 italic mb-1">"The important thing is not to stop questioning."</p>

<footer class="text-slate-500 text-sm">— Albert Einstein</footer>

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<p class="text-slate-300 italic mb-1">"Done is better than perfect — because perfect never gets done."</p>

<footer class="text-slate-500 text-sm">— Sheryl Sandberg</footer>

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<p class="text-slate-300 italic mb-1">"Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it."</p>

<footer class="text-slate-500 text-sm">— Anthony J. D'Angelo</footer>

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<p class="text-slate-300 italic mb-1">"Feedback is the breakfast of champions."</p>

<footer class="text-slate-500 text-sm">— Ken Blanchard</footer>

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<p class="text-slate-300 italic mb-1">"Unwritten words are forgotten."</p>

<footer class="text-slate-500 text-sm">On codifying decisions and documentation.</footer>

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