Programming
I have been working as a software engineer for Mastercard since April of 2021. I work on applications that support Mastercard Digital Enablement Service, which handles digital payment technologies like digital wallets (e.g., Apple Pay), online payments (e.g., Amazon), and contactless card payments.
I am a member of an agile backend development team that is responsible for a web application (and related standalone applications) that issuers use to enable digital payments for their cardholders. Our applications are primarily written in Java and SQL using Spring Boot, and over the years, they have been shifting from being run on-site to being run on the cloud via Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
I have held several positions on my team. I have been a Senior Software Engineer since March of 2025; prior to that, I was a Software Engineer II for two years; prior to that, a Software Engineer I for over a year; and initially, an Apprentice Software Engineer for eight months.
What enabled me to switch from philosophy to software engineering was a class I took with LaunchCode in 2017 (halfway through my PhD program), wherein I learned the basics of web development. In the Spring of 2020, I decided that I would pursue a career in software engineering instead of philosophy. I thus spent the final year of my PhD program dividing my time between finishing my dissertation and relearning how to program. I practiced full-stack web development, took an intensive Coursera class on machine learning, and wrote a number of programs for microcontrollers to get back into it. (If you care to see the blog I was writing during this period to keep track of my progress and maintain my sanity, you'll find it here – it contains many detailed explanations of the programs I was writing, along with posts about my thoughts as I changed careers.)
I joined LaunchCode's apprenticeship program a few months before defending my dissertation, and lined up an apprenticeship with Mastercard (on my current team) that started immediately after I received my PhD. After a successful apprenticeship, during which I learned to write production-quality code effectively, I became an employee of Mastercard.
I returned to LaunchCode as a teaching assistant for their LC101 class in the Fall of 2021. I was partly responsible for helping a group of about 20 students, with little to no experience programming, learn to write three-tiered web applications from scratch.