Nice to e-meet you!
I'm kf Fellows, pronounced like the letters: kay eff. My pronouns are they/them. I’m a coder based in Portland, OR.
Work
I have over 10 years of experience working primarily in high-growth startups. For about half of my career, I’ve worked in analytics engineering, and the other half I’ve spent in site reliability engineering—applying analytics skills to software engineering practices.
In a past life, I did a lot of functional programming on the JVM. I gave dozens of professional trainings on programming in Clojure, a dialect of Lisp.
My entire career, I have worked remotely—primarily on distributed, international teams—and I intend to continue that streak as long as possible!
Past Jobs
Interested in reading a little more about my work? Check out
- Webflow, where I’ve worked as an SRE manager and data engineer since 2020;
- Netlify, where I was an engineering manager for in-product analytics in 2020;
- Ad Hoc, where I started an infrastructure standardization team for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from 2018-2020;
- Turbine Labs, where I spent the summer of 2018 hacking on tooling for Envoy;
- Splice, where I ran the business analytics team from 2017-2018;
- Simple, where ran the data warehouse and built in-product analytics from 2015-2017;
- Comcast, where I was a data infrastructure engineer running Riak on OpenStack from 2014-2015; or
- Bizo, where I got my start as a junior data engineer building ad targeting from 2013-2014.
Community
In my spare time, I've served on the program committees for conferences like Strange Loop, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Clojure/West, and Philly ETE. I've also been a co-organizer of Open Source Bridge, formerly an annual conference in Portland for OSS contributors. I live vicariously through my friends in academia so co-organized both the Philly and Portland chapters of Papers We Love (simultaneously!) for several years, as well.
Education
I originally went to University of Houston-Clear Lake for undergrad in literature, math, and teaching, wrapping up my studies in 2012.
After one semester of grad school in math, I dropped out in 2013 to attend Hackbright Academy, then a code school for women and nonbinary people in San Francisco.
More recently, I went back to school part-time to study for an M.B.A. in business analytics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which I expect to finish in Spring 2025.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
I incorporate DEI into everything I do, but previously I have
- Served on the board for Bridge Foundry, an umbrella nonprofit that provides workshops in programming languages for people from underrepresented backgrounds in tech. You may have attended one of our workshops through RailsBridge, ClojureBridge, ScalaBridge, or GoBridge.
- Mentored and volunteered for Hackbright Academy, a code school for women and nonbinary people in San Francisco.
- Mentored and volunteered for Techtonica, a nonprofit code school for low-income women and nonbinary people in San Francisco.
- Mentored and served on the Fellows selection committee for Code2040, a nonprofit focusing on Black and Latinx racial equity in the tech industry.
- Been an early key-holding member at Double Union, a feminist hackerspace for women and nonbinary people in San Francisco.
I am very grateful to have a stable, high-paying job and strive to bring more underrepresented people into the tech industry, as well.
So, if you come from a marginalized background and need help with resume reviews, interview prep, or even just understanding what job options exist in the tech industry, please reach out via my links section below!
I can’t promise I’ll be helpful but I can promise that I’ll try.