Summary
Andrew Cates is a Principal Software Engineer with over 15 years of hands-on engineering experience and more than 20 years of professional leadership across startups and Fortune 500 companies. He specializes in full-stack web and mobile platforms, having led product rewrites, secure React Native launches, GraphQL/Apollo backends, and complex OAuth/Cognito integrations. Andrew is known for improving performance and developer workflows—reducing load times, streamlining monorepos, and automating CI/CD and app store releases—while maintaining a strong focus on UX and accessibility. His background includes mission-critical work at Netflix, Walmart, and Experian, plus modernization projects for aerospace clients, reflecting deep experience in both consumer and enterprise domains. Equally comfortable shaping architecture and shipping features, he pairs pragmatic engineering with people leadership and a knack for turning wireframes into reusable cross-platform components. Based in Huntington Beach, he blends technical breadth (from native modules to Terraform) with a persistent emphasis on security, observability, and measurable business outcomes.
15 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
University of California, Irvine