Matt Libera Email & Phone Number

Homer, Alaska, Us

My 13+ year stint as a freelancer was converted to a full-fledged LLC in Spring 2020, under which I continue to design and develop websites and web applications for independent clients. Many clients are musicians and nonprofits, enabling me to tap into my background as a musician to establish a unique connection and understanding with my clients. Projects have included small portfolio sites for individuals, small business / company websites, and high-visibility sites for nonprofits with thousands of members.Ridge Ten Creative also offers web hosting for client sites, offering a performant and all-inclusive alternative to commodity shared hosting, while maintaining affordability.Freelancing has helped build me into the developer I am today, and continues to afford me valuable experience and growth opportunities even alongside my full-time employment in the field. I intend to continue using this outlet to further hone my skills in Web Development, DevOps, System / Server Administration, and more.

Greensboro, North Carolina, Us

Contracted 2nd Clarinet / Bass ClarinetPerform in a Principal Clarinet capacity as neededMember of the Orchestra Committee

Greensboro, North Carolina, Us

Contracted 3rd Clarinet / Bass ClarinetPerform in a Principal or 2nd Clarinet capacity as neededMember of the Orchestra Committee

Hickory, North Carolina, Us

Contracted Bass / 3rd clarinet

Contracted Principal Bass ClarinetOversee the Bass / Low Clarinet section (bass, contras, etc.)Acting Chair of the Musicians' Committee, Late 2023 - present

Founding member of the PassiveInvesting.com engineering team, working to build internal and customer-facing web and mobile applications for the group's diverse portfolio.Built and launched the web application (Laravel, Livewire, Filament) and mobile application (Vue, Ionic, Nuxt, Capacitor) for 24 Hour Pickleball on an exceptionally quick timeline, used by hundreds of avid pickleball players in South Carolina.Authored a robust, resilient, scalable API layer for the 24 Hour Pickleball mobile application, minimizing data retrieval times and standardizing to predictable data shapes.Involved heavily across the entirety of the SDLC - engaged with stakeholders to drive product roadmaps, build out feature scope, create technical spec, break down work into meaningful tickets, and oversee progress through each sprint and release cycle.Highly engaged with product stakeholders and consumers, with heavy emphasis on professional and effective communication. Excelled at bridged the gap between the technical and the practical.Mentored others on the engineering team, and participated often in pair programming or asynchronous tutoring sessions while working toward completion of day-to-day tasks.Emphasized clean, scalable, and testable code throughout the codebase, not driven by percent of test coverage but by the quality of the coverage.

Los Angeles, California, Us

Co-headed a pod of 6 engineers as Technical Lead, with tax filing and expense tracking as primary areas of focus. Worked in tandem with the Product Manager and Engineering Manager to guide delivery of clean, well-executed, and high-impact features for the pod, and collaborated with Engineering leadership and other pod leads to shape the future direction of the engineering department at ComplYant.Achieved a launch-day zero-failure rate for the tax extension feature through implementation of a robust test suite for mission-critical portions of the codebase.Alongside other pod leads, co-defined engineering policies and practices, and mentored junior engineers to enhance team performance.Steered the team through efficient product discovery, where learnings were applied rapidly and effectively to new software and features.

Los Angeles, California, Us

Worked as a full-stack, senior-level engineer in a high-impact role to help shape the future of tax software for solopreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners.Promoted to Team Lead after stepping into a leadership role and successfully managing timelines, technical specifications, and work distribution while guiding a team of 6 engineers through delivery of a major feature on time, against a hard deadline.

Mission Woods, Kansas, Us

Guiding member of a fast-moving, driven group of full-stack developers, charged with building out a scalable, microservice-based fintech SaaS product to streamline existing business processes for the company, while simultaneously serving as a robust, extensible platform from which new business offerings could stem. Substantially improved code quality and slowed technical debt growth by leveraging code quality tools and language-level tooling (such as PHP8 attributes), leading to a more maintainable and scalable codebase.Assigned to several large-scale, high-impact features, often with heavy focus on scalability and data integrity.Day-to-day responsibilities included rapid researching, scoping, and implementation of new features across the application core codebase and satellite services; reviewing pull requests; and mentoring junior developers through code reviews and pair programming.

San Francisco, California, Us

Member of a small development team focused primarily on backend development in an agile environment. Development work centers around a multi-tenant, API-driven Laravel backend that services a React frontend. Administrative features and functionality are provided via Laravel Nova.Day-to-day responsibilities included delivery of features and fixes to the codebase, performing code reviews, monitoring and adjust Continuous Integration pipeline (Jenkins), and serving as engineering lead for continuous discovery processes. Served as functional team lead for the engineering team’s two-week agile sprints.Streamlined team release procedures through workflow refinement and clear delegation of duties, restoring a consistent bi-weekly release cadence. Documented these optimizations for company-wide adoption.Reduced deployment time and overhead cost by 50% by optimizing artifacts uploaded to Laravel Vapor.Other experience included deployment into a serverless stack (AWS/Laravel Vapor), use of standard code-quality tools (PHPStan, PHP Insights, PHPCS, etc.), test suite development, error monitoring (Sentry), and testing (PHPUnit).

Greensboro, Nc, Us

Developed, deployed, and maintained 10+ Laravel-based web applications, facilitating smooth operation and utilization of University-wide cloud services for a user base exceeding 20,000.Optimized application backends to efficiently handle millions of requests and process millions of records by leveraging asynchronous queues and optimizing database schemas and queries.Enabled deployment of applications in restrictive environments through creation and maintenance of virtual servers and custom Docker images.Eliminated rework by modularizing common functionality into PHP packages, some of which were open-sourced, including API client libraries and wrappers for cloud services used by the University.Reduced new application creation time by 75% and maintenance overhead by 50% by developing a custom framework that extended Laravel with boilerplate functionality and included an automated upgrade system.Achieved 100% performance improvement over existing tools in the Google Workspace account lifecycling workflow, while additionally augmenting the process with robust data retention and compliance controls.

Greensboro, Nc, Us

Maintained day-to-day operations of UNCG cloud services, primarily Webex/Zoom and Canvas (our Learning Management System). Other applications managed by the group included Google Workspace, Box, Adobe, and others.Handled Tier 3 support requests for University faculty, staff, and students regarding usage of the cloud platforms.Empowered faculty, staff, and students to improve efficient and effective usage of cloud platforms through individual training sessions and group workshops.Assisted in developing and maintaining middleware applications, which performed many mission-critical purposes across the University around account lifecycling and augmenting cloud service functionality to provide superior user experience and/or bridge gaps between services.Development work included extensive use of a number of third-party REST APIs for many services, including Webex, Canvas, Grouper, Box, and others.

Greensboro, Nc, Us

Webmaster for the UNCG School of Music, Theatre and Dance, where I rebuilt the unit's website with a custom-built PHP framework, improving the site's performance by 100% and drastically increasing visibility and clarity.Instructional technology specialist, providing training and research assistance for UNCG faculty and staff. Trained users in our Learning Management Systems (Blackboard, Canvas), Smartboard technology, conferencing platforms (Webex), and more.Directed curriculum and implementation of MUS 107 and MUS 108, freshman-level courses in the Music department geared toward teaching critical technology skills to new music majors.Developed several custom web applications, including online exams, databases, and interactive online courses.Served on campus technology committees, representing the SMTD.Pioneered UNCG's adoption of with new and upcoming technology in the performing arts, including the high-quality / low-latency conferencing application LOLA.

Directed the Varsity Band and Marching Band, and taught applied Guitar and Piano classes.Brought stability to a band program that had previously lacked direction. Established a Beginning Band and Jazz Band, and began development of an AP Music Theory curriculum prior to departure.Students received many recognitions, including appointment to area honor ensembles.Realized 200% growth in the band program through recruitment efforts over 2 years.

Oversaw updates to the company website, focusing on marketing for target audiences, and analytics. Helped write copy for website and product packaging.

Oversaw the fulfillment of customer orders and general workflow of the office. Responsible for adopting new postage system that saved the company significant money on mail. Programmed a web-based interface to better track and ship demo discs, which greatly improved productivity at the position.

Ithaca, Ny, Us

Trained college faculty and staff on the use of WebCT (LMS), and various computing applications. Performed video / audio media transfers to digital format. Taught in workshop and one-on-one settings. Helped write and maintain college's official help documentation for the ITS department.

Post-Masters Certificate, Information Technology

Mm, Clarinet Performance

Bm, Music Education / Performance

High School