Paul Reesman

cat README.md

I help teams turn complicated software problems into systems that survive contact with reality.

I've spent my career building and explaining software in hard environments: HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 2, NIST 800-171, AWS GovCloud, Kubernetes, air-gapped deployments, ML pipelines, high-traffic commerce, and early-stage startups. My favorite work lives at the intersection of engineering depth, customer trust, and operational reality.

  • Solutions Engineering
  • Platform Architecture
  • Enterprise SaaS
  • Aerospace & Defense
  • ML / Data Platforms

cat About.md

About

I work best in the space between engineering, product, customers, and the people who need the software to work when it matters.

That has meant different things at different stages of my career: co-founding and architecting secure program management software for aerospace and defense; designing FedRAMP and GovCloud migration paths; building HIPAA-compliant patient data systems; improving high-traffic eCommerce platforms; creating machine-learning recommendation systems for news; and leading engineering teams through the less glamorous but critical work of security, compliance, reliability, and scale.

I'm comfortable going deep technically, but I'm just as interested in making the technical work legible: to customers, executives, product teams, auditors, engineers, and anyone else who needs to make a decision. I like diagrams, tradeoffs, working demos, clear docs, and blunt conversations about what a system can and cannot do.

Before software, I served as a Forward Observer in 2nd Ranger Battalion. That experience still shapes how I work: plan carefully, communicate clearly, adapt quickly, and stay calm when the plan changes.

git --no-pager log --author=paul.reesman --pretty=format:"%ad%n%s%n%d%b%n"

Experience

  1. 2024 — present

    Solutions Engineer / Federal Solutions Architect

    Second Front Systems

    I work with public sector, commercial, and regulated customers to map mission needs onto secure software delivery platforms. Focus areas include customer discovery, technical architecture, DevSecOps, compliance, Kubernetes, containerization, RMF, ATO, AWS GovCloud, air-gapped deployments, and turning complex deployment constraints into workable paths forward.

  2. 2022 — 2024

    Co-Founder & Chief Architect

    Integrate

    Co-founded and led engineering for a secure program management platform serving aerospace and defense customers. Took the product from initial architecture through multiple funding rounds while managing a small, high-performing engineering team. Designed multi-tenant services, a robust RBAC model, data observability pipelines, and secure deployment patterns. Led SOC 2 and NIST 800-171 compliance efforts and kept the engineering work tied to customer and business reality.

  3. 2021 — 2022

    Senior Machine Learning Engineer

    NBCUniversal / NBC News

    Built and improved data and machine-learning systems for personalized news experiences. Refactored Kafka ingest and Airflow pipelines, designed a Kubernetes-hosted recommendation platform using AWS Personalize, and helped increase article interactions by roughly 10%. Led recurring lunch-and-learns between BI and engineering to improve shared understanding across teams working with data, product behavior, and audience insights.

  4. 2019 — 2021

    Senior Software Development Engineer

    Smartsheet

    Led projects across data migration, platform services, and customer-facing tooling. Built a near real-time asynchronous update service for complex data trees, improving update throughput by nearly 33%. Also developed customer tools that reduced related support tickets by about 75%, and built FedRAMP-compliant migration tooling for moving customers from commercial AWS into AWS GovCloud.

  5. 2017 — 2019

    Engineer II

    Nordstrom

    Worked on high-traffic eCommerce systems where performance, reliability, and customer experience had direct business impact. Rebuilt frontend and backend systems for maintainability, supported pages handling up to 150k requests per minute, helped deliver experiments tied to more than $100M in revenue, and led regular engineering lunch-and-learns.

  6. 2016 — 2018

    Co-Founder

    Lender

    Designed and built the backend architecture for an early-stage lending application using MongoDB, Hapi, React, and Node. Focused on creating a secure, scalable foundation from the start rather than bolting security on later.

  7. 2016 — 2017

    Application Developer

    Seattle Children’s Hospital

    Built HIPAA-compliant healthcare software for patient-provider data sharing. Designed microservices for managing patient data and integrated data ingest workflows with other HIE teams using ObjectScript and SAML.

  8. 2016 — 2017

    Instructor

    Coding With Kids

    Taught computer science fundamentals to students from elementary through high school, including Scratch, Python, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Helped younger students build confidence with programming and gave older students a clearer path into real software development.

  9. 2008 — 2012

    U.S. Army Ranger — Forward Observer

    2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment

    Served as a Forward Observer in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Learned how to operate in high-pressure environments, communicate clearly under uncertainty, and make decisions when conditions change faster than the plan.

jq '.' Education.json

Education

Johns Hopkins University
Degree
M.S. Computer Science
When
2019-2020
Oregon State University
Degree
B.S. Computer Science
When
2014-2015

jq '.' Skills.json

Technical Skills

Architecture & Platforms
Multi-tenant SaaS · Distributed systems · Platform architecture · API design · RBAC · Data observability · System integration
Cloud, Infrastructure, & DevSecOps
AWS · AWS GovCloud · Kubernetes · Docker · Terraform · CloudWatch · Grafana · Datadog · CI/CD · Container scanning · Air-gapped and regulated deployments
Security & Compliance
SOC 2 · NIST 800-171 · FedRAMP environments · RMF · ATO support · HIPAA · ITAR-aware workflows · Secure SDLC
Data & ML
Kafka · Airflow · PySpark · PostgreSQL · Redis · AWS Personalize · ML recommendation systems · Data pipelines
Languages & Frameworks
Rust · Go · TypeScript · SQL · JavaScript · Python · Node.js · React · Next.js · HTML · CSS
Domains
Regulated SaaS · Defense & aerospace · Public sector · Healthcare · eCommerce