About
A full-stack developer with deep, hands-on experience across web frameworks, relational databases, RESTful APIs, and game engines. Ayden's background spans the full development lifecycle — from architecting backend systems and managing production databases to building polished front-end experiences and hardening applications against security threats. That breadth isn't accidental: years of professional work in fast-moving environments demanded the ability to pick up unfamiliar tools quickly and apply them effectively under real constraints.
Currently leading projects as a Software Developer, Ayden operates at the intersection of engineering and strategy — building systems that work today while planning for how they'll need to grow tomorrow. Whether he's deep in a legacy codebase, standing up a new hosting environment, or advising a client on their project roadmap, he brings the same disposition: understand the problem fully before reaching for a solution.
Outside of work, Ayden trains in Muay Thai and lifts regularly — disciplines that reward the same kind of incremental, consistent effort he brings to software. On weekends you'll find him on a bike path somewhere new, or exploring a part of the city he hasn't been to yet.
Experience & Education
Project Lead, Software Developer
- Designed and built a proprietary Content Management System from the ground up, serving multiple clients with a shared core and an extensible plugin architecture that allows unique per-client feature development without forking the codebase.
- Inherited and modernized legacy systems across mismatched tech stacks — auditing years of accumulated technical debt, deciding what to preserve, and building contemporary subsystems that extended existing infrastructure rather than requiring full rewrites.
- Served as a technical advisor to clients evaluating software platforms and infrastructure options, translating complex engineering trade-offs into clear, budget-conscious recommendations tailored to each organization's specific constraints and goals.
The work at c308 has required wearing many hats: builder, maintainer, consultant. Shipping a new feature and patching a production issue in the same afternoon is not unusual — which has sharpened the ability to context-switch without losing sight of long-term system health.
Working directly with clients on an ongoing basis has reinforced something that doesn't always show up in a job description: the developer who can explain a complex situation clearly — and actually listen to what a client needs — is far more valuable than one who can only write code. That balance between technical depth and human communication has become a defining part of how I approach every engagement.
Education
Bachelor's of Applied Science Degree
A professionally-oriented program that bridges applied computing with systems thinking, emphasizing real-world problem solving alongside the academic fundamentals of computer science.
Associate's Software Development Degree
A foundational degree covering core programming concepts, object-oriented design, database principles, and software engineering practices — the technical bedrock for everything that followed.
Areas of Expertise
Database Administration
Experienced in the full lifecycle of relational database management — from initial schema design and configuration through performance tuning, security hardening, and disaster recovery planning. Has managed production databases where availability is critical, designing backup and failover strategies that keep systems running when things go wrong, and optimizing queries that meaningfully reduce load on high-traffic applications.
Backend & API Development
Vetran of from-the-ground-up design processes. Adept in designing and building the server-side systems that power business-critical applications — RESTful APIs, authentication and authorization flows, third-party service integrations, and the application logic that ties it all together. Particular focus on building APIs that are predictable, well-documented, and designed to outlast the sprint they shipped in.
CI/CD Process & Containerization
Owns the deployment story end to end: containerizing applications with Docker, building CI/CD pipelines that test and package every change into a deployable image, and defining the release process a team actually trusts. Image-based deployments are central to that approach — they guarantee environment parity and make every release auditable and reversible. The result is infrastructure that scales with the team instead of becoming a bottleneck as the number of projects grows.
Cybersecurity
Approaches security as a design mindset, not an afterthought — threat modeling during architecture rather than bolting on controls at the end. Experienced in vulnerability assessment, access control design, and applying defensive patterns at the framework and infrastructure level to reduce exposure without compromising usability.
Other Skills and Experiences
Leadership
Project leadership, in practice, means being the person who decides what doesn't get built as much as what does. Leading the CMS's development meant scoping a plugin architecture flexible enough for multiple clients' divergent needs, without letting scope creep turn a shared core into an unmaintainable one-off for each project. Planning happens before the first line of code — mapping constraints, budget, and long-term maintenance cost against what a client actually needs versus what they initially ask for.
Mentorship
Has mentored junior developers directly, translating years of hard-won lessons — the kind usually learned by shipping something broken — into guidance that shortens someone else's learning curve. Comfortable in the code review seat: not just flagging what's wrong, but explaining the reasoning behind a pattern so it sticks. Believes the best technical leads multiply the team's output rather than just their own, and treats onboarding, documentation, and knowledge-sharing as part of the job rather than overhead.
AI Usage
Treats AI tooling as another layer of the development workflow, not a separate experiment bolted on the side. Uses it to accelerate the parts of the job that don't require judgment — scaffolding boilerplate, surfacing edge cases during review, speeding up debugging on unfamiliar parts of a legacy codebase — while keeping full ownership of the parts that do. The line matters: AI shortens the distance to a first draft, but the decisions about what actually ships still come from years of hands-on engineering.
Technical Advising
Over years of advising clients on tech solutions and project planning, I've found that the most important part of it all is an understanding of your client's needs. The relevancy of specific technical details varies from client to client, but that doesn't make their decisions any less important. What's critical in this process is that the client is offered the information that suits their understanding, and the end result meets the expectations that are set in these advisory settings.