denver, colorado

hi, i'm jake

Senior Software Engineer

I build the backend behind large partner integrations: event-driven services, REST APIs, and the AWS infrastructure holding them up. Currently doing that at Ibotta.

who's this

about me

I'm a backend software engineer in Denver with 8+ years building and running distributed systems on AWS. At Ibotta I own the architecture of the event-driven services and REST APIs behind our partner network, which includes publishers like Walmart, 7-Eleven, DoorDash, and Instacart.

A lot of my time goes into the parts that keep things running: queue processing that keeps going when a partner's API doesn't, observability set up before there's an incident rather than after, infrastructure you can rebuild from source. Enough years of on-call will do that to you.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, I moved to Denver in 2018 and haven't looked back. The mountains are a big part of my life — skiing in winter, backpacking and rafting in summer. I'm also into live music, barbecue, and in my free time I enjoy exploring real estate and personal finance, including managing my own Airbnb property.

Quick Stats

Years of Experience: 8+
Current Location: Denver, CO
Current Role: Sr. Software Engineer
Current Company: Ibotta

CurrentlyOct 2026

release notes, life edition

BuildingBackend services at Ibotta
LearningKeeping up with the rate of change in AI tooling
PlanningA wedding
ExploringThe Colorado 14ers

off the clock

SkiingBackpackingLive MusicSoccerRaftingReal EstateCoffeeBarbecueTravelBikingInterior DesignPhotographyRunningPersonal FinanceBoard Games

the résumé bit

experience

Ibotta

Denver, CO

Senior Software Engineer

Current

Jan 2024 — Present

Owned architecture and development of event-driven backend services and RESTful APIs supporting a partner network spanning Walmart, 7-Eleven, DoorDash, and Instacart.
Designed extensible, Terraform-managed AWS infrastructure enabling rapid onboarding of high-traffic enterprise partners with zero-downtime deployments.
Architected a CDN-backed image delivery pipeline (API Gateway, S3, CloudFront) serving tens of millions of low-latency product images per day.
Drove observability improvements through Datadog dashboards, Runscope API test suites, and BlazeMeter load testing — reducing mean time to detection on production incidents.
Led 24/7 on-call rotations, owning incident response, root cause analysis, and stakeholder communication for a high-traffic production platform.
Won an internal hackathon building an image resizing and compression service that reduced annual data transfer costs by $100,000+.

Software Engineer

Jun 2021 — Dec 2023

Designed and launched the Ibotta Performance Network — an event-driven promotion platform powering Walmart's digital offers, sustaining peak loads of ~150 events/sec through queue-based asynchronous processing.
Built the platform's backend services and data layer from scratch on AWS — DynamoDB, SQS/SNS messaging, S3, and API Gateway — to support high-throughput event processing and real-time partner integrations.
Authored Terraform modules to provision and version-control all infrastructure, enabling repeatable, auditable, and environment-parity deployments.
Led cross-functional delivery across 3+ engineering teams, owning risk management, dependency mapping, and milestone tracking from design through production release.

TypeScriptNode.jsAWSLambdaEC2API GatewaySQSSNSEventBridgeCloudFrontS3DynamoDBTerraformDatadog

Xactly

Denver, CO

Software Engineer

Nov 2020 — May 2021

Built Node.js backend APIs and React UI components giving enterprise customers granular control over sales compensation data.
Implemented feature flagging and A/B testing pipelines using Split.io, enabling safe, incremental rollouts of customer-facing features.

Associate Software Engineer

Nov 2018 — Oct 2020

Delivered REST APIs and SQL data migrations to support new product integrations across a multi-tenant SaaS platform.
Built CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins to run multi-environment test suites, improving release reliability.

Node.jsReactREST APIsSQLSplit.ioJenkins

TrueCar

Santa Monica, CA