Cynthia Kiser
Senior Application Developer
Pasadena, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolCynthia Kiser is a Senior Application Developer with 18 years of experience building and maintaining large-scale academic web systems at Caltech, where she designs CMS-driven sites, APIs, and a custom MOOC platform using Python/Django, React, Docker, Terraform, and AWS. She began by architecting a Ruby on Rails CMS and clustered hosting infrastructure that supported over 120 Caltech sites, and continues to blend front-end polish with back-end reliability in production environments. An active open-source contributor, Cynthia has improved usability and embedding features in the Wagtail CMS and enhanced front-end project displays for civic sites like Hack for LA. With a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, she brings a rare combination of deep scientific training and pragmatic engineering that helps translate complex academic workflows into intuitive, maintainable software.
18 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Genetics, Genetics at Emmanual College, CambridgeCalifornia Institute of TechnologyBA with Honors Biology and Chemistry, BA with Honors Biology and Chemistry at Williams College
Stackoverflow
1,086reputation
25kreached
101answers
2questions
Github Skills (23)
cms10
javascript10
python10
django10
css10
wagtail10
github-pages10
front-end-development10
jekyll10
html10
backend10
api-design9
apim9
web-developer9
oembed9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
hackforla/website
Jan 2020 - Dec 2020
Hack for LA's website
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:6 reviews, 100 commits, 153 PRs in 10 months
Contributions summary:Cynthia primarily contributed to the front-end development of the website. Their work included updating the project card display, modifying the "looking for" section, and adding OpenGraph tags for project pages. They also refactored the current projects template and fixed bugs related to display issues and internal link references. The user's commits demonstrate a focus on improving the user interface and website functionality.
docker-composejekylldocker
wagtail/wagtail
Sep 2020 - May 2022
A Django content management system focused on flexibility and user experience
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:33 reviews, 31 commits, 33 PRs in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Cynthia contributed to the Wagtail CMS, focusing on both front-end and back-end aspects. They implemented a new feature to open previews in a new window and made UI/UX improvements to match other admin buttons. They also added custom oEmbed finders for Facebook and Instagram, improving the content embedding capabilities of the CMS. Additionally, they addressed a bug related to empty thumbnail URLs and made improvements to permissioning.
content-management-systemdjangopythoncmswagtail
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