Dan Finch

Staff Software Engineer - Platform Engineering - Product Engineering

About Me

I work across product, architecture, code, and operations. I've built user-facing and internal platforms that make complex work simpler and more pleasant.

I focus on making products and systems that are easy to understand, use, and change. This means clear boundaries and responsibilities, and removing unnecessary friction and ceremony.

Experience

Dynatrace - Senior Software Engineer

July 2023 - June 2026 (Graz, Austria - Hybrid)

  • Designed and implemented a strongly-typed embedded DSL to generate the data warehouse queries, significantly reducing maintenance overhead across my team's applications.
  • Designed and built a Playwright-based E2E testing framework used across 2 teams and 4 applications, standardizing test setup and substantially reducing the effort required to add and maintain tests.
  • Created and integrated a Zustand/Immer-based state management framework across two applications, simplifying frontend architecture and reducing implementation complexity while improving UI responsiveness.
  • Migrated a large application from Bitbucket/Jenkins to GitHub/GitHub Actions, simplifying CI/CD and consolidating development workflows.

Independent Consultant

Dec 2014 - July 2023 (Remote) - intermittently alongside other roles

Independently designed and delivered web, mobile, desktop, and backend products for startups and enterprises across social networking, IoT, advertising, and manufacturing.


RiskLens - Senior Software Engineer

June 2017 - Dec 2017 (Spokane, WA)

Helped lead development of FAIR-U, driving the frontend architecture and the team's migration to TypeScript and a modernized web toolchain within a security-focused engineering environment.


TenX Logic - Contract Developer

Oct 2015 - Mar 2016 (Remote)

Designed and implemented a C# driver architecture for ARM-based industrial equipment running Mono, with an AngularJS control interface.


Kochava - Senior Developer

Apr 2014 - Nov 2014 (Sandpoint, ID)

  • Built and evolved distributed infrastructure for high-volume realtime analytics using Node.js, Redis, MongoDB, and Linux.
  • Led early development of a scalable analytics backend as the company's traffic and data volumes grew rapidly.

Coldwater Creek - Web Developer

Oct 2012 - Apr 2014 (Sandpoint, ID)

  • Designed and implemented a high-performance product search experience, including a custom infinite-scrolling approach.
  • Built customer-facing features for an e-commerce site handling roughly one million daily hits.
  • Built or substantially rewrote ~30 internal web applications used by e-commerce and marketing teams, along with a shared UI framework and component library.
  • Designed an interoperability layer allowing MVC and WebForms applications to embed each other, enabling incremental migration away from the legacy stack.

Promitheia - Technical Director

Sep 2006 - Sep 2012 (Austin, TX)

  • Co-founded the company and owned software engineering end-to-end, spanning product development, architecture, infrastructure, operations, security, and technical project delivery.
  • Designed and built a substantial e-commerce platform supporting retail, affiliate marketing, and numerous internal business workflows.
  • Defined the technology stack and architecture, introducing service-oriented systems and cloud infrastructure.
  • Operated production infrastructure and owned security-sensitive e-commerce responsibilities including PCI compliance and payment integrations.

Mercury ML - Founder

2002 - 2004 (Lapeer, MI)

Founded a small software business after graduating high school, building applications that replaced spreadsheet-based affiliate-management and order-processing workflows for two growing companies.

Technical Expertise

Architecture & Systems

Domain modeling - API design - Service boundaries - Event-driven systems - Data modeling - State architecture

Platform & Developer Experience

Platform engineering - Internal developer platforms - Developer tooling - CI/CD - Build/release automation - Test infrastructure - GitHub Actions - Docker - IaC - Observability

Backend & Data

Node.js - .NET/C# - PostgreSQL - SQL - Redis - MongoDB - AWS

Web & Product Engineering

Product engineering - Web platform - Interface architecture - TypeScript - JavaScript - React - HTML/CSS - Interaction design

Engineering Practice

Functional programming - Explicit data flow - Modular design - Testing - Refactoring - Mentoring

AI-Assisted Engineering

Agentic development workflows - Claude Code - Codex - OpenCode - Spec-driven development - OpenSpec - AI-assisted code review - AI-assisted testing/refactoring


Additional Technologies

TypeScript - JavaScript - F# - HTML - CSS - React - Vite - Zustand - Immer - Redux - React Router - React Query - Webpack - CSS Modules - SCSS - ASP.NET - Express - Koa - Fastify - Hapi - NestJS - Deno - Bun - Electron - React Native - Browser Extensions - Cloudflare - Firebase - Supabase - SQLite - MySQL - SQL Server - REST - Feature Flags - TDD - Unit Testing - Integration Testing - E2E Testing - Accessibility - Responsive Design - Progressive Enhancement - Technical Leadership - Product Collaboration - Design Collaboration - Claude Code - Codex - OpenCode - OpenSpec - MCP - AI Coding Agents

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