Jen Trudell
Backend EngineerSenior Engineering Leader at GitHub
GitHub
AI is analyzing your overall score…
Identifying your key strengths…
Evaluating your skill match against the job requirements…
Assessing your cultural and operational fit
Senior Engineering Leader at GitHub
AI is analyzing your overall score…
Identifying your key strengths…
Evaluating your skill match against the job requirements…
Assessing your cultural and operational fit
I am a software engineer. I lead the data center teams within the infrastructure org at GitHub, which are responsible for all GitHub's data centers and the thousands of servers within them. I like infra, Ruby, Go, Vim, getting things done and grumbling to myself. I also used to be a lawyer (don't tell anyone).
University of Michigan
AB, Anthropology
N/A – Present
University of Chicago Law School
JD, Law
N/A – Present
GitHub
Staff Software Engineering Manager
March 1, 2024 – Present
GitHub
Senior Software Engineering Manager, Network and Physical Infrastructure
October 1, 2023 – March 1, 2024
GitHub
Senior Software Engineering Manager, Physical Infrastructure
August 1, 2022 – November 1, 2023
GitHub
Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure
September 1, 2020 – August 1, 2022
Ascent
Senior Software Engineer
September 1, 2020 – September 1, 2020
Ascent
Software Engineer
October 1, 2019 – September 1, 2020
Sittercity
Senior Software Engineer
January 1, 2019 – October 1, 2019
Greater Chicago Area
ReviewTrackers
Senior Backend Engineer
November 1, 2017 – December 1, 2018
Chicago, Illinois
iLoan, a OneMain brand
Software Engineer
August 1, 2016 – November 1, 2017
Chicago
MortgageHippo, Inc.
Software Engineer
February 1, 2016 – August 1, 2016
Chicago
Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago
Freelancer
December 1, 2015 – January 1, 2016
Chicago
Goldberg Kohn Ltd.
Senior Attorney
January 1, 2010 – June 1, 2015
Chicago
Go Fakesgiving
September 1, 2017 – Present
Built so I could try writing web app in pure Go without a framework, allows my friends to signup for our annual "Fakesgiving" pre-Thanksgiving dinner. DB is Postgres, CSS is bootstrap, deployed to Heroku. Source: https://github.com/jtrudell/go-fakesgiving/
go-rails-repos
September 1, 2017 – Present
Command line script written in Go that updates your local rails repositories from origin/master, bundles and then runs the rake tasks to drop, create, migrate and seed the repo database. Why? Because at work we have a bash script that does this but it is slow. This is faster, because of concurrency (and, depending on your computer, parallelism using GOMAXPROCS). Also, Go is fun.
Exoneration Law Intake
January 1, 2016 – Present
Intake website for the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago. Built using Rails, Devise, Active Admin, jQuery, Bootstrap, Postgresql, and Heroku.
NCAA Pick Five Challenge 2015/2016
January 1, 2016 – Present
Single-page app built for my neighbor's pick five basketball pool. Uses Ruby, Sinatra, jQuery, Materialize, Heroku, and the ncaa_scrape gem I wrote for this purpose.
Introduction to Data Science in Python
Coursera
June 27, 2026 – Present
Cultural Fit Analysis
The candidate's personal projects demonstrate initiative, a passion for learning new technologies (Go, pure Go web apps), and a willingness to build tools for personal and community use. Their diverse professional background, including a significant career change, suggests an open-minded and adaptable individual. However, the recent shift into management roles might indicate a different career trajectory than a pure backend engineering role, which could be a mismatch if the target role is strictly individual contributor.
Soft Skills & Operational Fit
The candidate's career progression from Senior Software Engineer to Staff Software Engineering Manager at GitHub indicates strong leadership, project management, and team collaboration skills. Their descriptions of automating processes and optimizing infrastructure suggest a proactive and problem-solving attitude. The transition from law to software engineering also highlights adaptability and a strong learning aptitude.