Ian Hefflefinger
Ian Hefflefinger smiling outdoors in sunglasses

I build full-stack software, with backend systems that keep data moving.

Full-stack engineer in Salt Lake City with a backend focus and more than a decade in IT. I started in technical support, moved through systems administration, and now build production software, so I understand the whole stack, from front ends and APIs down to the servers and cloud they run on. Open to full-stack, backend, and platform roles.

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Experience

Mar 2026 to present

Planned break

Took time to travel through Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. My wanderlust is satisfied, and I am excited to take my career to the next level.

Feb 2025 to Mar 2026

Software Engineer II, BAE Systems

Full-stack, Hill AFB, UT (hybrid)

  • Built and modified React front ends for internal web applications.
  • Wrote Node.js and Python APIs with unit tests.
  • Wrote stored SQL queries used dynamically by applications.
  • Worked with ArcGIS on mapping layers for web applications.
Oct 2022 to Feb 2025

Software Engineer, Overseas Military Sales Corporation

Full-stack, remote

  • Designed and built a web scraper that fetches, parses, and processes vendor CSV files into our systems.
  • Built AWS Lambdas in Python and Node.js for cron jobs, business-event reactions, API replacements, and monitoring and alerting.
  • Wrote Java (WildFly, formerly JBoss) APIs for data aggregation, email and SMS survey delivery, and data processing.
  • Updated the Angular sites to serve .webp images using a fallback hierarchy of image types, and automated conversion of the images stored in S3.
  • Tested with JUnit, Mocha, Python unittest, and Postman.
Jun 2022 to Aug 2022

Platform Engineer Intern, Stride Inc.

Remote

  • Researched, designed, built, and tested a data-reconciliation module in Java.
  • Wrote Serverless Framework YAML to automate deployment to AWS.
  • Wrote Liquibase scripts to manage Postgres database schema changes.
May 2021 to Jan 2022

Software Developer Intern, Manic Kat Records

Web and mobile, remote

  • Designed, built, and tested a web admin site for the company's mobile app.
  • Fixed bugs and added features in the existing mobile app.
  • Established SDLC and development practices for the coding team.
Sep 2018 to Feb 2020

Support Engineer (Systems Administration), Goldman Sachs

Salt Lake City, UT

  • Administered Windows and Unix (RHEL) systems, including users and computers.
  • Automated repetitive tasks with shell scripts.
  • Kept the team knowledge base accurate by correcting and adding processes.
Jun 2018 to Sep 2018

Technical Support Specialist, CSS Corp

  • Helped non-technical users with a wide range of computer and network problems.
  • Removed malware, created data backups, configured networks, and set up email clients.
Mar 2016 to Nov 2017

Technical Support Specialist, Vantiv Integrated Payments

  • Troubleshot hardware, software, and networks for card-payment solutions.
  • Performed in-depth financial reconciliation to rule out technical errors.

Education

Sep 2017 to Apr 2022

B.S. Computer Science, Southern New Hampshire University

Software Engineering concentration, 3.82 GPA

Skills

Languages
Java, JavaScript and Node.js, Python, SQL, Bash, PowerShell
Front end
React, Angular, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, responsive design, ArcGIS mapping layers
AWS
Lambda, S3, CloudFront, Route 53, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager, EC2
Azure
Function Apps, Cosmos DB, Azure Artifacts
Data
Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Liquibase schema migrations
Systems
Windows and Unix (RHEL) administration, networking, troubleshooting, shell scripting and automation
Practice
Unit and integration testing, API design, git, Atlassian tools, Azure DevOps, Linux, macOS, Windows

Projects

Screen recording of adding the Compass widget to an Android home screen and tapping it to start it

Android app · Kotlin

Simple Android Compass

Pixel phones don't ship with a stock compass, and the free ones I found were full of ads. So I built one: a full-screen compass plus a live home-screen widget that shows true north as the main reading, with magnetic north overlaid so the difference is visible.

  • Turns the phone's fused rotation-vector sensor into a smoothed heading, handling tilt and the jump from 359° to 0°.
  • Calculates magnetic declination offline with Android's World Magnetic Model. The app has no internet permission and no third-party libraries.
  • Updates the widget from a foreground service, only while the screen is on and the heading moves at least 1°, at about 12 updates a second at most.
KotlinAndroid SDKCustom Canvas viewForeground servicesRemoteViews

View source on GitHub

Web · AWS

This site: three iterations

I have rebuilt my portfolio three times, each time to fix a specific problem. It now costs very little to run and loads quickly worldwide because CloudFront caches it close to each visitor.

Visitor Route 53DNS CloudFrontCDN and TLS S3Static files
  1. Version 1: Node.js, Express, and EJS on Amazon Lightsail (source). A full server for a low-traffic site, which cost money every month and was more than the job needed.
  2. Version 2: Plain HTML and CSS on S3, CloudFront, and Route 53 (source). After a cost and traffic analysis, I removed the server entirely, which cut the cost immediately and made the site faster.
  3. Version 3 (this site): A redesigned front end with no external dependencies, deployed by GitHub Actions that sign in to AWS with short-lived OIDC credentials instead of stored keys (source).
Screen recording of the weather app searching for a city

Web app · Node.js

Weather App

Enter a city and the Express backend calls the OpenWeatherMap API, picks out the data the page needs, and returns it to a Bootstrap front end that renders it.

Node.jsExpressHandlebarsBootstrapOpenWeatherMap API

View source on GitHub

Screen recording of building and launching the 3D scene, then flying around it with the keyboard and mouse

Graphics · C++ & OpenGL

3D Scene with Textures, Lighting, and Camera Controls

An interactive 3D scene built from scratch in C++ with modern OpenGL (core profile) and GLSL shaders. Textured objects sit on a table, lit by a visible light source, and you explore it with a free-fly camera driven by the keyboard and mouse.

  • Shader-based pipeline using vertex array and buffer objects, with texture-mapped objects loaded from PNG files.
  • Free-look camera: move with W, A, S, D, Q, and E, and look around with the mouse.
  • Cross-platform: one-command build scripts for macOS and Windows use CMake, Homebrew, and vcpkg to install GLFW, GLEW, and GLM, then build and launch it.
C++17OpenGL 4.1GLSLGLFWGLEWGLMCMake

View source on GitHub

Earlier work

Contact

The best way to reach me is ianrhefflefinger@gmail.com. Outside of work I mountain bike, ski, climb, play ultimate frisbee, and am slowly learning guitar.