Derek Cuevas

GitHub (contact email in bio)

Summary

Senior Software Engineer with 8 years of professional experience, specializing in systems software engineering and low-latency, real-time product development.

Experienced in leading teams and delivering Emmy award-winning projects. Passionate about functional programming and building high performance real-time systems. Skilled in a variety of programming languages and technologies with expertise in Rust and TypeScript.

Programming Languages

  • Proficient: Rust, TypeScript (& JavaScript), Clojure, Elm
  • Experienced: Elixir, Swift, Objective-C

Technologies, Skills, and Interests

  • Rust: Tokio, Futures, Diesel, Actix, Axum
  • Platforms and Services: AWS, Docker, PostgreSQL, Redis, Apache Pulsar, RabbitMQ, Prometheus, Grafana, GitLab CI/CD, Node.js, Deno, HTML & CSS
  • Tooling: Git, Vim
  • Frameworks: React, React Native, Redux, RxJs, SwiftUI
  • Protocols: HTTP, GraphQL, WebSockets, ØMQ, Pub/Sub, JSON, MessagePack, Protobuf, FlatBuffers

Professional Experience

Senior Software Engineer II (Lead), Second Spectrum (acquired by Genius Sports)

(January 2021 - Current)

https://www.secondspectrum.com/

https://geniussports.com/

  • Technical lead for the “Real-time Augmentation Engine” project’s system team, developing low-latency and real-time augmented reality experiences for live TV broadcasters of sporting events.
  • Led the development and integration of core systems using Rust, Tokio, MPSC channels, FFmpeg, and Pulsar.
  • Oversaw operational management and monitoring systems, release management, simulation systems, and data ingestion/export pipelines.
  • Optimized the overall pipeline for 60fps real-time rendering over high definition broadcast feeds.
  • Key contributor to projects recognized with multiple Emmy awards, including the prestigious George Wensel Technical Achievement Award and Amazon’s Outstanding Interactive Experience at the Sports Emmys.

Senior Software Engineer I (Lead), Second Spectrum

(January 2019 - January 2021)

https://www.secondspectrum.com/

  • Led a team in designing and developing the company’s first GraphQL service serving as a unified gateway for various microservices. Built upon the Apollo server framework leveraging Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Redis for caching and pub/sub.
  • Developed a dashboard built with Three.js for visualizing 3D player tracking datasets and highlighting data discrepancies.
  • Created a prototype iOS application for video highlights using Swift, SwiftUI, and the Combine framework.
  • Mentored interns and fellow engineers, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Software Engineer, Second Spectrum

(August 2016 - January 2019)

https://www.secondspectrum.com/

  • Developed the operational and quality assurance management application for the company’s optical player tracking system. Stack included Elixir (with the Phoenix framework), React, and heavy use of WebSockets to sync and display corrections to operators in near real-time.
  • Improved operator efficiency by 100% through the implementation of an automated task selection system.
  • Led the development of the LA Clipper’s live streaming web and mobile application “Clippers CourtVision”. Stack included Elm for the web front-end and React Native for the mobile app.

Software Engineer Intern, MindGraph Medical

(September 2015 - January 2016)

  • Designed, developed, and deployed the MindGraph Medical website using Node.js, jQuery, and Bootstrap.

Education

B.S. Computer Science, San Diego State University, San Diego

(Class of 2016)

Personal Projects

  • Daily Dall-E: Combining Google Trends and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E to Create Daily Artwork. Built with Deno and deployed onto GitHub Actions.
  • Advent of Code 2022: Solutions to Advent of Code programming problems using functional approaches in Clojure.
  • Interview Cake Algorithms Problem Set: Solutions to the interview cake programming problems also by exploring functional approaches in Clojure.
  • Friend List: A non-trivial programming challenge exploring asynchronous side effects with different programming patterns.
  • Redux Meta Reducer: A Redux higher-order reducer for simplifying the state of fetched data.
  • Avowal: An asynchronous form validation library for JavaScript.