Senior Director of Engineering. I lead teams, write code, and build public-interest software.

At Coforma, I lead a 23-person engineering structure with six direct reports, including engineering managers and directors, and own the company-wide healthcare engineering portfolio. I also stay hands-on as engineering lead and principal engineer for MyCareer.NJ.gov, a statewide workforce platform available in English and Spanish and used by about 1.7 million New Jersey residents. I am not bilingual; the language options describe the service and reviewed translation work. I stay close to architecture, accessibility, reliability, and the people doing the work.

I've spent the last decade building civic technology. Much of that work is unglamorous but important: turning policy into software, fixing messy data, making public services accessible, and keeping them secure and reliable. I also work on open data standards, including CTDL for workforce credentials and FHIR for health data.

Before Coforma, I built public systems inside California government at the Department of Social Services, Energy Commission, and Public Utilities Commission, and led application development at UC Berkeley. I hold an M.S. in Software Engineering from CSU Fullerton, completed while working full-time in state government, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

Based in Davis, California · Portfolio · LinkedIn

Most projects here are betas or reference implementations. They are not proof of production use or adoption. Each README says what works, what does not, and what still needs human review.

• I won't work on weapons or warfare, policing or mass surveillance, or technology that profits from incarceration. I also won't work with organizations based in, or strongly tied to, Israel.
• I look for organizations whose work helps people routinely failed by public systems, and whose leadership reflects the communities they serve.
• I won't use AI to decide whether someone gets a job, benefit, service, or opportunity. It can help a person make a decision, but that person should be able to see the evidence, correct bad information, and make the final call.
• I collect as little personal data as I can. I prefer local and offline tools when they are practical, and I want people to choose what they share.
• I show sources, calculations, and my own interpretation separately. When a system does not know something, it should say so.

I spend most days in Python, TypeScript, React, AWS, and data systems. I like clear boundaries, useful logs, known-answer tests, and checks that stop when they cannot prove the result. Privacy, accessibility, and operations are part of the first design, not a cleanup pass.

AI agents are part of my development workflow. I choose the architecture, write the acceptance criteria, review the output, and decide whether it is ready to release. Legal, policy, subject-matter, and manual accessibility reviews are done by people.

Even my job search is engineered. A private serverless AWS tool polls 500+ organizations' direct ATS job boards, scores postings against my background with a two-pass Bedrock pipeline gated by a prompt-injection regression suite, and screens out organizations that conflict with the values above. It is a personal, single-user tool, and I describe it that way.

I'm interested in W-2 engineering people-management roles—VP, Head of Engineering, Director, or Senior/Principal Engineering Manager—where I can lead people and managers, stay close to the architecture, and build reliable, accessible public-interest technology. My strongest domains are energy and utilities, public health, workforce systems, social services, and responsible AI.

Reach me through chelseakr.com or LinkedIn.