Madison Dunitz
Graduate Student
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMadison Dunitz is a software engineer with 12 years of cross-disciplinary experience who transitioned from genomics and microbiology into backend engineering and now studies geobiology at Caltech to build scalable carbon-fixing microbial communities. They have shipped production backend systems at DoorDash and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, specializing in data storage, retrieval, and database engineering—most notably contributing backend and TileDB-backed annotation functionality to the widely used single-cell explorer cellxgene. Madison pairs scientific rigor with product impact, from optimizing SQL for 96% query speedups to delivering merchant- and privacy-focused platform features that drove millions in revenue. Comfortable moving between research labs and product engineering teams, they mentor engineers, design curriculum-level training, and lead onboarding programs. Fluent in Python, Django, and database schema design, they bring a rare blend of wet-lab genomics experience and large-scale backend architecture. An understated skill is translating complex biological workflows into reproducible engineering pipelines that scale from lab experiments to production systems.
12 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Political Science and Government, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Political Science and Government at University of California, DavisAcademic Semester Abroad, Language and Culture, Intensive Arabic and Islamic Studies, Academic Semester Abroad, Language and Culture, Intensive Arabic and Islamic Studies at Université Moulay Ismail Meknès
Github Skills (12)
data-storage10
postgresql10
sqlalchemy10
python10
database-design10
annotate9
sc9
annotations9
annotation-processing9
transcriptomics9
rna-seq9
seq9
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
chanzuckerberg/cellxgene
Apr 2020 - May 2022
An interactive explorer for single-cell transcriptomics data
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:153 reviews, 28 commits, 78 PRs in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Madison primarily contributed to the back-end infrastructure of the project, specifically focusing on database setup, database updates, and annotation functionalities. They implemented database schema changes, and created test data, as well as wrote code for retrieving and storing user annotations, including interacting with TileDB. These contributions indicate a strong focus on data storage and retrieval mechanisms within the single-cell transcriptomics data exploration project.
transcriptomicsscientificvisualizationscrna-seqdataviz
FTP2018/HelloWorld
Sep 2018 - Jan 2019
Companies without Female Leaders are Fundamentally Flawed
Contributions:27 commits, 5 PRs, 32 pushes in 4 months
cssjavascriptleaders
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