Kathleen Howard
Senior Software Engineer at Chainguard, Inc
Portland, Maine, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolKathleen Howard is a Senior Software Engineer in Portland, Maine with seven years of experience building resilient full‑stack and DevOps-driven web systems. She transitioned from a rigorous academic career (PhD-level training in English) into engineering, bringing strong communication, curriculum-style planning, and data-driven problem solving to product and infrastructure work. Kathleen has led migrations to Kubernetes, redesigned high-traffic marketing properties at DigitalOcean, and contributed front-end improvements and UX-focused features to Sourcegraph’s public site. She cares deeply about accessibility and community, and her open-source contributions span both front-end UX and backend stability efforts—everything from cookie-consent UX and code insights pages to Sidekiq/Redis Docker ops and logging for Hacktoberfest. Colleagues rely on her mix of systems thinking, polish-oriented craftsmanship, and an inability to leave a good problem alone.
7 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), English Language and Literature/Letters, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), English Language and Literature/Letters at Rutgers University-New BrunswickBachelor of Arts (B.A.), Magna Cum Laude, English Language and Literature/Letters, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Magna Cum Laude, English Language and Literature/Letters at Wellesley College
French, English
Github Skills (19)
ruby-rails10
javascript10
docker10
website-development10
redis10
rails10
dockers10
sidekiq10
ruby10
devops10
react10
caching9
sc9
css9
scs9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
Hacktoberfest/hacktoberfest-2020
Jun 2020 - Oct 2020
Hacktoberfest - App to manage the annual open source challenge.
Role in this project:
DevOps & Backend Developer
DevOps & Backend DeveloperContributions:98 reviews, 239 commits, 88 PRs in 4 months
Contributions summary:Kathleen primarily focused on improving the Docker-based development environment and backend configurations. Their work included setting up Sidekiq, adjusting Redis configurations, and adding a restart script to run migrations. Furthermore, the user addressed linting errors, added logging, and implemented error handling for API connections, demonstrating a focus on application stability and maintainability. The changes also included adding testing configs and extending cache expirations.
cssjavascript
sourcegraph/about
Jul 2021 - May 2022
Sourcegraph blog, feature announcements, and website (about.sourcegraph.com)
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:134 reviews, 15 commits, 30 PRs in 9 months
Contributions summary:Kathleen primarily contributed to the website's front-end development by implementing new features, components, and styles. They added a script to check the Node version and install dependencies, updated styles for existing components, and added functionality related to cookie consent on the website's videos. The user also worked on a new code insights page and updated existing code with tracking for various buttons, suggesting a focus on user experience and website performance.
announcementsreactsourcegraph
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