Chris Pivonka — Software Engineer

// about.ts

$ whoami

Senior Software Engineer with 12 years of experience architecting high-scale backend microservices serving millions of active users. I specialize in backend system design, cloud-native infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Terraform), and modern SRE practices — building the systems and the teams that keep them running.

At Fandango, I serve as Tech Lead for cross-functional Agile teams — owning backend architecture for core ticket distribution systems, driving our DevSecOps pipeline, and keeping MTTR low on production-critical services. I also coach and mentor engineers across seniority levels.

Before Fandango, I spent 5+ years at Northrop Grumman building and leading test/integration systems — where I picked up the rigor around reliability, safety, and process that still shapes how I build today.

Lately I've been going deep on AI-assisted engineering — integrating LLM APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude) into real developer tooling rather than just chat wrappers.

Marquette University — B.S. Computer Engineering, class of 2014. Upsilon Pi Epsilon honors society.

12

years.exp

10M+

users.served

24/7

uptime.sla

∞

coffee.consumed

// projects.ts

$ ls -la ~/projects

PRODUCTION

Automated CI/CD & Security Pipeline

Zero-touch continuous deployment. GitHub Actions orchestration with semantic versioning, Lighthouse CI performance gates, Gitleaks secrets scanning, 196-test Jest suite, and strict CSP headers — all gates must pass before deploy.

# .github/workflows/ci.yml jobs: audit: [jest, lighthouse, gitleaks, csp-validate] release: needs: audit uses: release-please-action@v4

GitHub Actions Lighthouse CI Jest Gitleaks CSP

view_repo() →

AUTHENTICATED STREAM

Serverless KittyCam Live Streaming

Authenticated, low-latency live media streaming architecture built on AWS. CloudFront CDN edge caching with Lambda@Edge request interception, token verification, and automated IaC deployments.

// edge/auth-interceptor.js — Lambda@Edge viewer request auth exports.handler = async (event) => { const request = event.Records[0].cf.request; const token = request.headers['x-auth-token']?.[0]?.value; if (!token || !verifySignature(token)) { return { status: '401', statusDescription: 'Unauthorized' }; } return request; };

AWS CloudFront Lambda@Edge OAuth2 / JWT HLS Video CloudFormation

view_code() →

unlisted_route // auth_required

ACTIVE IoT

Smart Magic Mirror

Custom Raspberry Pi-powered smart mirror display. Real-time weather integration, calendar synchronization, transit updates, and automated display power management via a lightweight web dashboard.

// config/mirror.config.js — module layout module.exports = { modules: ["clock", "weather", "calendar", "transit"], motionSensor: true, displayTimeout: 300 };

Raspberry Pi Node.js Electron REST APIs IoT

view_repo() →

PRODUCTION

Custom Wedding Platform

Full-stack web application built for our wedding. Real-time guest RSVP management, interactive schedule, venue details, photo gallery integration, and automated confirmation emails.

// api/rsvp.js — serverless RSVP submission exports.handler = async (event) => { const { guestId, attending, count } = JSON.parse(event.body); await db.updateRSVP({ guestId, attending, count }); await email.sendConfirmation(guestId); return { statusCode: 200, body: JSON.stringify({ status: "confirmed" }) }; };

HTML5 / CSS3 Node.js AWS Lambda DynamoDB SES

view_site() → view_repo() →

IN LABS

3D Printing & Physical Computing

Custom CAD modeling, enclosure design, and micro-controller hardware integration. Rapid prototyping custom physical parts and micro-electronic sensor enclosures (project details TBD).

// hardware/sensor.ino — micro-controller driver void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT); // sensor hardware init TBD }

CAD / Fusion 360 3D Printing ESP32 / C++ Physical Computing

// changelog.ts

$ git log --oneline

2019 — present

Software Engineer / Tech Lead

@ Fandango · Remote

Tech lead for cross-functional Agile teams delivering backend microservices (C#, Node.js, Python) powering core ticket distribution for millions of active users. Established DevSecOps practices and automated CI/CD pipelines; built SRE observability dashboards that cut MTTR on production-critical incidents. Optimized relational and NoSQL data stores — restructuring queries and caching layers to drive down API latency. Mentor engineers across seniority levels and own sprint planning and roadmap alignment.

Sep 2018 — Sep 2019

Software Engineer

@ Northrop Grumman · Greater Los Angeles

Developed embedded C solutions for mission-critical aerospace systems within an Agile development team.

Oct 2016 — Sep 2018

Software/Hardware Test & Integration Lead

@ Northrop Grumman · Greater Chicago

Redesigned test automation in Python, Java, C++, and C#, standardizing validation across the department with Jenkins-based CI. Led Git migration, served as SME liaison to customers and subcontractors. Mentored junior engineers and owned staffing/cost/schedule metrics.

Jun 2014 — Oct 2016

Computer/Software Engineer — Professional Development Program

@ Northrop Grumman · Greater Chicago

Rotational program across software engineering, integration & test, modeling & simulation, and program management. Built a GUI and automated monitoring/error-logging suite for external embedded systems; developed real-time C++ test drivers.

Sep 2011 — May 2014

IT Support Specialist & Student Manager

@ Marquette University · Milwaukee, WI

Promoted to Student Manager; coordinated hiring, onboarding, and training of the support team. Delivered Tier 1/2 technical support and authored troubleshooting documentation that standardized support practices across the department.

// education

2010 — 2014

B.S. Computer Engineering

@ Marquette University — Milwaukee, WI

// package.json

$ cat dependencies

// languages

C# / .NET

JavaScript

Python

Node.js

C / C++

Java

SQL

Bash

HTML / CSS

// infrastructure

AWS

Docker

Terraform

DynamoDB

PostgreSQL

Redis

MongoDB

Google Cloud

Express

// devtools

React / Redux

GitHub Actions

CloudWatch

Elasticsearch

Jenkins

Jest / Pytest

Postman

Linux / macOS

// connect.ts

$ ping chris

Want to talk distributed systems, cloud architecture, or have something interesting to build? I'm always up for a good engineering conversation.

github/chrispivonka in/chrispivonka