Steven Esser
Lead Backend Engineer at Launch Potato
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSteven Esser is a Lead Backend Engineer in Raleigh with 11 years of experience building scalable backend systems, APIs, and cloud infrastructure for startups and enterprise teams. He combines hands-on Django development with Terraform-managed AWS architectures, and has led greenfield projects in AI (LLMs/RAG), BI, and gaming through his consultancy, Esser Software LLC. Steven has strong SRE chops—designing Kubernetes ETL/ML pipelines, automating CI/CD, and building observability stacks to reduce costs and improve reliability. He is an active open-source contributor, improving the ScanCode toolkit’s frontend, CLI JSON output, tests, and docs for a widely used license and package-scanning project. Known for refactoring monoliths into modular services and mentoring peers, he blends pragmatic engineering with product-focused delivery. Based in Raleigh, he brings a mix of startup agility and production-hardened reliability informed by cross-functional collaboration.
11 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Newbury Park High SchoolUniversity of California Santa Cruz
English
Github Skills (9)
html10
copying10
css10
cop10
software-composition-analysis10
licensing10
rights10
jinja29
json9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit
Oct 2015 - Apr 2021
:mag: ScanCode detects licenses, copyrights, dependencies by "scanning code" ... to discover and inventory open source and third-party packages used in your code. Sponsored by NLnet project https://nlnet.nl/project/vulnerabilitydatabase, the Google Summer of Code, Azure credits, nexB and others generous sponsors!
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 release, 14 reviews, 69 commits in 5 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Steven primarily contributed to the front-end development of the ScanCode toolkit, adding initial CSS styling and refining the HTML templates. Their work included correcting CSS classes for improved visual organization, removing unnecessary CSS, and updating links to open in new tabs. The user also made changes to the command-line interface, adding functionality for pretty-printed JSON outputs and reducing JSON file sizes. Moreover, the user added test cases and made updates to the documentation.
licensingdependenciesdependency-graphcode-scanningprovenance
package-url/packageurl-js
Aug 2018 - Sep 2022
JavaScript implementation of the package url spec
Contributions:35 reviews, 15 commits, 29 PRs in 4 years 1 month
javascriptspecpackage-urlpurlnodejs
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