Alexander Petros

Resume

Career

Present

Recurse Center, Spring 2024 Retreat Member

I am doing a 3-month programming retreat at the Recurse Center! It's a tremendous group of thoughtful, smart people all working on interesting projects. I'm working on an open-source ActivityPub implementation that's really easy to self-host.

htmx, Core Maintainer

Core maintainer and occasional blogger for the htmx JavaScript Library. The hypermedia concepts revitalized by htmx are going to reinvent web development for the next decade. I do not get paid.

Freelance Software Consulting, Self-employed

I build software infrastructure for non-software companies, with architectures that can last for years with very little maintenance. You can hire me to do this for you too.

Dartmouth College, Web Administrator

I rebuilt the Outdoor Programs registration stack from scratch (with htmx, to really test out its capabilities) and I now maintain it. This was an unmitigated success, in that it is reliable, cheap, and runs with with virtually no maintenance. I also help them out with other minor web projects related to the First Year Trips program.

Past

The Washington Post, Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer → Engineering Lead

I was responsible for the software platform that powers The Post's freelancing operations, which I took over when it crashed. I rebuilt the entire deployment stack and got the system to a stable state. In my capacity as an Engineering Lead, I was in charge of both engineering direction and product management, working with multiple department stakeholders to coordinate and prioritize our very limited resources. I managed one (1) person.

Amazon, SDE Intern → SDE I → SDE II.

I was on the Alexa Video Multimodal team, which was responsible for video playback on the Echo Show family of devices. I worked on improving the service's performance under peak load, and designed partner-facing APIs.

Stealth Startup, Software Engineer

I quit after three months because I did not like it.