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Brandon Yee

Software Engineer

Brandon Yee

San Francisco Bay Area

I'm a developer who's passionate about building things — from apps to businesses. I've gone from enterprise Java, to a million-copy publishing business, to leading platform engineering at an insurtech startup.

I started my career at Raytheon, building data ingestion systems in enterprise Java. Then I took a detour into entrepreneurship: I wrote, published, and marketed fiction, selling over a million copies and landing three USA Today Bestsellers, and I built my own Java tools to run the business along the way. The itch to code brought me back. I went through Fullstack Academy, stayed on as a Teaching Fellow, and spent the next six years at Socotra building enterprise frontends and platform services, growing from Senior Software Engineer to Manager of Platform Engineering.

01 — Experience

Where I've built things

  1. Socotra

    Aug 2019 – Nov 2025 6 yrs 4 mos

    San Francisco Bay Area

    Insurance technology platform. Built enterprise frontends and platform services.

    1. Manager – Platform Engineering

      Apr 2021 – Nov 2025 4 yrs 8 mos

    2. Staff Software Engineer – Platform

      Feb 2021 – Apr 2021 3 mos

    3. Senior Software Engineer – Platform

      Aug 2019 – Feb 2021 1 yr 7 mos

  2. Fullstack Academy of Code

    Greater Chicago Area

    1. Teaching Fellow

      Aug 2018 – Jan 2019 6 mos

      • Taught data structures to students and answered questions during workshops and office hours.
      • Managed student team projects.
      • Conducted admissions interviews for prospective students.

  3. Blackbird Publishing

    Greater Chicago Area

    Independent publishing business.

    1. Publisher

      Feb 2012 – Aug 2018 6 yrs 7 mos

      • Wrote, published, and marketed romance novels, tapping into the surge in demand for romantic fiction after the worldwide success of Fifty Shades of Grey.
      • Sold 1M+ copies globally and published three USA Today Bestsellers.
      • Built an internal metrics tool (Java, HtmlUnit) that scraped and aggregated data from self-publishing platforms (Amazon, Nook, Kobo), social media, and email lists, saving an hour of manual Excel entry every day.
      • Built a writing-assistance tool (Java, Solr, JBoss, JSP) that ran textual analysis on bestselling books and offered writing suggestions.

  4. Raytheon

    1. Software Engineer

      Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 3 yrs 1 mo

      • Developed a new data ingestion system using Enterprise Java and Solr, and received a spot award for key contributions to integrating Solr.
      • Built new functionality for an internal Java EE project management tool, gathering requirements directly from users and running user acceptance testing.
      • Organized and ran voluntary study groups on Java concurrency for coworkers.

Education

  • Fullstack Academy

    • JavaScript full-stack development (React, Redux, Node, Express, Sequelize, Postgres)

      2018

  • Cornell University

    • Master of Engineering, Computer Science

      2008 – 2009

    • BA, Computer Science

      2004 – 2008

02 — Skills

What I work with

CoreFamiliar

Languages
  • JavaScript (core)
  • Java (core)
  • SQL (core)
  • HTML (core)
  • CSS (core)
  • C++ (familiar)
Frontend
  • React (core)
  • Redux (core)
  • jQuery (core)
  • Angular (familiar)
  • Material UI (familiar)
Backend
  • Node.js (core)
  • Express (core)
  • Tomcat (familiar)
  • Apache Web Server (familiar)
Data & Search
  • PostgreSQL (core)
  • MongoDB (familiar)
  • Neo4j (familiar)
  • Solr (familiar)
Infra & Tooling
  • Git (core)
  • AWS (familiar)
  • Docker (familiar)
  • Mocha (familiar)
  • Chai (familiar)