Plain text version
about.md
Pascal Allen
Senior Software Engineer · Go / PHP / React / TypeScript / Postgres · Austin, TX
Full-stack software engineer with 10+ years of experience designing, developing, and deploying business applications. My current stack includes Go, React, TypeScript, Postgres, Kubernetes, Docker, and Claude Code. I've deployed and managed production systems on GCP, AWS, and Digital Ocean.
skills.md
Skills
Languages
Go, PHP, React, TypeScript, SQL, Kotlin
Backend & APIs
REST, gRPC, Twirp, GraphQL, WebSockets, Stripe, Gin, Symfony, Laravel
Data & Messaging
Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka, EventStoreDB
Auth & Security
JWT, TOTP 2FA, refresh-token rotation, HMAC request signing, AES-GCM secret encryption
Frontend
React, TypeScript, TanStack Query, Webpack
Cloud & Infra
GCP, AWS, DigitalOcean, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Flux, Spacelift, Elastic Cloud, Elasticsearch
Observability
Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, CloudWatch, PagerDuty
AI Tooling
MCP server authoring, Claude Code skills, multi-agent pipelines
Practices
DDD, CQRS, TDD, SOLID, event-driven architecture, event sourcing, hexagonal architecture, unit/integration testing, progressive feature-flag delivery, code review, Agile/Scrum, event storming
experience/01-sectigo.md
Sectigo — Senior Software Engineer (Contract, via imagineX)
Remote (Austin, TX) · 2026 – Present
- Currently developing https://www.sectigo.com/qspm-quantum-ready
Stack: GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, Flux, Spacelift, Grafana, Elasticsearch, Node, Python, JavaScript, Claude, Copilot
experience/02-intuit-mailchimp.md
Intuit Mailchimp — Senior Software Engineer (Contract, via Tensure)
Remote (Austin, TX) · 2024 – 2026
- Full-stack engineer on the Registration, Delivery, and Segmentation squads, working across a PHP/React monolith, Go microservices, and a Kotlin/Spring CDP service: 764 merged PRs across 18 repositories in ~20 months
- Found that a shipped segmentation upgrade was silently returning zero matches despite a green test suite; traced it to a query shape the downstream data platform didn't support, got the cross-team fix in, and re-checked against production data before re-shipping across four service layers.
- Shipped five audience-segmentation conditions end-to-end (PHP, React, ANTLR-driven Kotlin CDP service, experiment + feature flag), including the regulated Age Gating rollout and Product Collection/Variant targeting; the latter needed a cross-org initiative I drove to expose e-commerce event attributes to segmentation.
- Built WhatsApp campaign creation, Quiet Hours, message-event processing, and retry/throttling; delivered the RCS rollout across five services (rate cards, credit reservations, delivery gateway).
- Fixed performance and correctness bugs on high-traffic paths: a memory-exhaustion bug in the segment-members API caused by pagination-cursor tracking, plus three audience bugs: corrupt segment ASTs that matched everyone, and two inverted booleans that returned the wrong audience.
- Led the SMS Delivery test-coverage epic, adding unit and integration tests that raised coverage on the core Go delivery services (7+) from ~40% to 85%. On-call for messaging delivery; 300+ staged production ramps and 120+ feature-flag cleanups with a revert rate under 1%.
- Built Claude Code tooling for multi-repo work: 19 skills (feature-flag lifecycle, full-stack code generation, test payloads) and a multi-agent pipeline that takes a Jira ticket through triage, parallel implementation, and automated review to a commit that still goes through normal PR review and CI.
Stack: Go, PHP, Kotlin, React, TypeScript, gRPC, Twirp, GraphQL, Kafka, Prometheus, GCP, Kubernetes, Spanner, BigQuery, Terraform, Jenkins, Argo Rollouts, Splunk, PagerDuty
experience/03-monumental.md
Monumental — Senior Software Engineer
Austin, TX · 2022 – 2024
- Designed and launched the NFT marketplace product letting customers purchase NFTs using their attached wallets.
- Designed and launched the CMS product letting companies publish and manage assets available to the public on the NFT marketplace product.
- Both products were acquired for $6M+.
- Contributed frontend improvements to the Arcane: League of Legends web application.
- Ran code reviews and mentored junior developers.
- Authored the org's engineering docs including version control, releasing, context mapping, and event storming.
Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Postgres, PHP, Symfony, Mercure, RabbitMQ, Python, React, TypeScript
experience/04-onlinemeded.md
OnlineMedEd — Software Engineer II
Austin, TX · 2018 – 2021
- Designed and launched the admin BI platform with dashboards on product usage, revenue, and analytics. Was used frequently by stakeholders and executives.
- Designed and launched the faculty product letting institutions delegate premium subscriptions to students on our core product
- Extracted the billing service from our core product to its own microservice and added support for different currencies.
Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, PHP, Laravel, Symfony, Mercure, RabbitMQ, React, TypeScript, Webpack, Redux Saga, Postgres, MySQL
experience/05-far-west-capital.md
Far West Capital — Lead Software Engineer
Austin, TX · 2016 – 2018
- Led development and architecture of the factoring firm's internal operations software and client-facing web apps (client portal, credit application, secure document upload), primarily PHP against MSSQL/MySQL/T-SQL data sources; built the proprietary reporting software (SQL Server Reporting Services plus custom reports) used in daily operations.
- Owned the infrastructure alongside the code: server management and hardware upgrades, LogicMonitor host monitoring with alerting, Cisco Meraki network security, Rapid7 assessments, and Trend Micro; earned the Far West Five Award for execution and excellence.
Stack: Go, PHP, React, TypeScript, MSSQL, MySQL, T-SQL
experience/06-crimson-drive-design.md
Crimson Drive Design — Consulting
Austin, TX · 2015 – Present
- Independent consultancy and product studio delivering RESTful services, web apps, and CI/CD infrastructure for business clients, rooted in domain-driven design and event storming.
- Currently operating a school-dismissal app that streamlines end-of-day student pickup for parents and faculty. Leverages TanStack for state management on the FE, Stripe payment processing and subscriptions, JWT refresh-token rotation, and WebSocket fan-out over Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN.
- Designed and launched a SaaS emailing meeting-prep briefs from users' calendars: Microsoft Graph, Google Calendar, and LinkedIn integrations, Stripe billing, dual bearer/cookie SPA auth.
Stack: AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, Go, Gin, PHP, Laravel, React, TanStack, TypeScript, Postgres, JWT
projects/adk-agent.md
adk-agent
Leverages Google's Agent Development Kit to build a basic AI agent.
projects/es-go.md
es-go
Open source software offering a set of guidelines to use Event Sourcing and Domain-Driven Design in Go. Uses EventStoreDB.
projects/hmac.md
hmac (v2)
Repository for the pascalallen/hmac Go module. Offers services for HTTP HMAC authentication and request signing.
projects/mcp-server-go.md
mcp-server-go
An MCP server in Go that offers tools to read and write to a contextual knowledge base.
projects/ollama-cloud-go.md
ollama-cloud-go
Dependency-free Go client for the Ollama Cloud API.
projects/pascalallen.com.md
pascalallen.com
Personal portfolio website. This site runs on Go, WebAssembly, TypeScript, Docker and a Raspberry Pi.
projects/pgmcp.md
pgmcp
An MCP server developed in Go that offers read-only Postgres ops to query, analyze, and inspect your database.
projects/pgqueue.md
pgqueue (v1.1)
Repository for the pascalallen/pgqueue Go module. Offers a Postgres-backed durable job queue and NOTIFY/LISTEN pub/sub.
projects/pubsub.md
pubsub (v2)
Repository for the pascalallen/pubsub Go module. Offers a small, concurrency-safe, in-memory pub/sub, built on goroutines and channels. A Topic fans out every published Message to each of its subscribers.
projects/react-event-dispatcher.md
react-event-dispatcher (v2)
Repository for the @pascalallen/react-event-dispatcher NPM package. A lightweight event dispatcher for React.
projects/react-form-components.md
react-form-components (v3.1)
Repository for the @pascalallen/react-form-components NPM package. Simple HTML form elements for React.
projects/rpi-security-cam.md
rpi-security-cam
Live camera streaming on a Raspberry Pi, served over HTTP in Go.
projects/vllm-server.md
vllm-server
A high-performance Docker Compose setup for running vLLM as an OpenAI-compatible API server, specifically optimized for ARM64 CPU environments.
writing/01-run-a-go-web-server-with-apple-container.md
How To: Run a Go Web Server With Apple Container
Build, run, and test a Go web server with Apple's container — without installing Go on your Mac.
writing/02-event-sourcing-in-go.md
Event Sourcing in Go: A Full CQRS Implementation with EventStoreDB and
RabbitMQ
A code walkthrough of a complete Go implementation — aggregate versioning, RabbitMQ command bus, EventStoreDB projections, and Wire DI.
writing/03-live-security-camera-with-go.md
I Turned a $35 Computer Into a Live Security Camera With Go
No cloud, no subscription, no WebRTC. Just a Raspberry Pi, a camera module, and about 170 lines of Go.
writing/04-structuring-go-projects-with-clean-architecture.md
Structuring Go Projects With Clean Architecture
How I structure my Go projects with a focus on Clean Architecture.
writing/05-build-an-mcp-server-in-go.md
How To: Build an MCP Server In Go
Learn how to build an MCP server in Go and install it for use with an AI client such as Claude Code.
writing/06-go-ing-beyond-the-ordinary.md
Go-ing Beyond the Ordinary: Discovering the Unique Superpowers of the Go
Language
From Fortune 500 heavyweights to indie open-source projects, many developers worldwide have already fallen in love with Go.
writing/07-mastering-the-fundamentals-of-algorithms.md
Mastering the Fundamentals of Algorithms: A Beginner’s Guide
An exploratory look into some core algorithms, their efficiency, and how they work step by step.
writing/08-automate-your-deployments-with-cron.md
Automate Your Deployments With Cron
A basic set of instructions to automatically deploy your app with cron.
writing/09-build-a-grpc-server-in-go.md
How To: Build a gRPC Server In Go
Learn how to build a gRPC server and client in Go.
writing/10-developing-a-framework-for-any-project.md
Developing a Framework for Any Project
A resource for designing and developing a product that can be easily maintained and extended by future software developers and domain experts.
writing/11-streaming-server-sent-events-with-go.md
Streaming Server-Sent Events With Go
This publication demonstrates how to stream server-sent events over HTTP with Go.
writing/12-dispatching-events-with-react-and-typescript.md
Dispatching Events With React and TypeScript
A demonstration on how to dispatch and listen to events with React and TypeScript.
writing/13-jwt-authentication-with-go.md
JWT Authentication With Go
A walk-through of creating, validating, and refreshing JSON Web Tokens using the HMAC signing method with Go.
writing/14-compile-a-webassembly-module-from-go.md
How To: Compile a WebAssembly Module From Go
Learn how to compile a WebAssembly module from Go.
writing/15-deploy-to-kubernetes.md
How To: Deploy to Kubernetes
Learn how to deploy to Kubernetes.
writing/16-build-a-containerized-web-app-in-go.md
How To: Build a Containerized Web App In Go
Learn how to build a containerized web app with Docker and Go.
writing/17-releasing-packages-to-github-and-npm.md
Releasing Packages to GitHub and the npm Registry
This publication describes a simple process I follow to tag and release a new package version to GitHub and the npm Registry.
writing/18-scrum-simplified.md
Scrum Simplified
A simple Scrum infrastructure, with insights.
writing/19-divergent-career-paths.md
Divergent Career Paths
San Antonio Business Journal: How tech talent is leaking out of San Antonio.
education.md
Education & Certifications
- Codeup — Full-Stack Web Development
- Harvard Online — CS50
- Google — Google Cloud Sales Credential
- Intuit — Secure Coding for Web Applications
- Anthropic — Claude Code 101
- Anthropic — Claude Code in Action
- Docker — Docker Foundations Professional Certificate
contact.md
Contact
Email pascal.allen88@gmail.com
README.md
README
This is Pascal Allen's home directory, served as a read-only terminal. Everything on the site is a plain text file you can list, read and search.
Getting around
help list every command
ls, cd, cat, tree browse the files
grep -i <text> search every file
man <command> read the manual for a command
Shortcuts
about, resume, skills, experience, projects, writing, contact, education
repos, packages live lists from GitHub and npm
camera a live stream from a Raspberry Pi
theme <name> dark, light, amber or green
Tips
Tab completes commands and paths. Up and Down walk your history. Tap any underlined command to run it. Links open in a new tab.
This site runs on
Go, WebAssembly, TypeScript, Docker, Raspberry Pi
Source
resume.md
Pascal Allen
Senior Software Engineer · Go / PHP / React / TypeScript / Postgres · Austin, TX
Email pascal.allen88@gmail.com
Summary
Full-stack software engineer with 10+ years of experience designing, developing, and deploying business applications. My current stack includes Go, React, TypeScript, Postgres, Kubernetes, Docker, and Claude Code. I've deployed and managed production systems on GCP, AWS, and Digital Ocean.
Technical Skills
Languages
Go, PHP, React, TypeScript, SQL, Kotlin
Backend & APIs
REST, gRPC, Twirp, GraphQL, WebSockets, Stripe, Gin, Symfony, Laravel
Data & Messaging
Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka, EventStoreDB
Auth & Security
JWT, TOTP 2FA, refresh-token rotation, HMAC request signing, AES-GCM secret encryption
Frontend
React, TypeScript, TanStack Query, Webpack
Cloud & Infra
GCP, AWS, DigitalOcean, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Flux, Spacelift, Elastic Cloud, Elasticsearch
Observability
Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, CloudWatch, PagerDuty
AI Tooling
MCP server authoring, Claude Code skills, multi-agent pipelines
Practices
DDD, CQRS, TDD, SOLID, event-driven architecture, event sourcing, hexagonal architecture, unit/integration testing, progressive feature-flag delivery, code review, Agile/Scrum, event storming
Professional Experience
Sectigo — Senior Software Engineer (Contract, via imagineX)
Remote (Austin, TX) · 2026 – Present
- Currently developing https://www.sectigo.com/qspm-quantum-ready
Stack: GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, Flux, Spacelift, Grafana, Elasticsearch, Node, Python, JavaScript, Claude, Copilot
Intuit Mailchimp — Senior Software Engineer (Contract, via Tensure)
Remote (Austin, TX) · 2024 – 2026
- Full-stack engineer on the Registration, Delivery, and Segmentation squads, working across a PHP/React monolith, Go microservices, and a Kotlin/Spring CDP service: 764 merged PRs across 18 repositories in ~20 months
- Found that a shipped segmentation upgrade was silently returning zero matches despite a green test suite; traced it to a query shape the downstream data platform didn't support, got the cross-team fix in, and re-checked against production data before re-shipping across four service layers.
- Shipped five audience-segmentation conditions end-to-end (PHP, React, ANTLR-driven Kotlin CDP service, experiment + feature flag), including the regulated Age Gating rollout and Product Collection/Variant targeting; the latter needed a cross-org initiative I drove to expose e-commerce event attributes to segmentation.
- Built WhatsApp campaign creation, Quiet Hours, message-event processing, and retry/throttling; delivered the RCS rollout across five services (rate cards, credit reservations, delivery gateway).
- Fixed performance and correctness bugs on high-traffic paths: a memory-exhaustion bug in the segment-members API caused by pagination-cursor tracking, plus three audience bugs: corrupt segment ASTs that matched everyone, and two inverted booleans that returned the wrong audience.
- Led the SMS Delivery test-coverage epic, adding unit and integration tests that raised coverage on the core Go delivery services (7+) from ~40% to 85%. On-call for messaging delivery; 300+ staged production ramps and 120+ feature-flag cleanups with a revert rate under 1%.
- Built Claude Code tooling for multi-repo work: 19 skills (feature-flag lifecycle, full-stack code generation, test payloads) and a multi-agent pipeline that takes a Jira ticket through triage, parallel implementation, and automated review to a commit that still goes through normal PR review and CI.
Stack: Go, PHP, Kotlin, React, TypeScript, gRPC, Twirp, GraphQL, Kafka, Prometheus, GCP, Kubernetes, Spanner, BigQuery, Terraform, Jenkins, Argo Rollouts, Splunk, PagerDuty
Monumental — Senior Software Engineer
Austin, TX · 2022 – 2024
- Designed and launched the NFT marketplace product letting customers purchase NFTs using their attached wallets.
- Designed and launched the CMS product letting companies publish and manage assets available to the public on the NFT marketplace product.
- Both products were acquired for $6M+.
- Contributed frontend improvements to the Arcane: League of Legends web application.
- Ran code reviews and mentored junior developers.
- Authored the org's engineering docs including version control, releasing, context mapping, and event storming.
Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Postgres, PHP, Symfony, Mercure, RabbitMQ, Python, React, TypeScript
OnlineMedEd — Software Engineer II
Austin, TX · 2018 – 2021
- Designed and launched the admin BI platform with dashboards on product usage, revenue, and analytics. Was used frequently by stakeholders and executives.
- Designed and launched the faculty product letting institutions delegate premium subscriptions to students on our core product
- Extracted the billing service from our core product to its own microservice and added support for different currencies.
Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, PHP, Laravel, Symfony, Mercure, RabbitMQ, React, TypeScript, Webpack, Redux Saga, Postgres, MySQL
Far West Capital — Lead Software Engineer
Austin, TX · 2016 – 2018
- Led development and architecture of the factoring firm's internal operations software and client-facing web apps (client portal, credit application, secure document upload), primarily PHP against MSSQL/MySQL/T-SQL data sources; built the proprietary reporting software (SQL Server Reporting Services plus custom reports) used in daily operations.
- Owned the infrastructure alongside the code: server management and hardware upgrades, LogicMonitor host monitoring with alerting, Cisco Meraki network security, Rapid7 assessments, and Trend Micro; earned the Far West Five Award for execution and excellence.
Stack: Go, PHP, React, TypeScript, MSSQL, MySQL, T-SQL
Consulting Projects
Crimson Drive Design
Austin, TX · 2015 – Present
- Independent consultancy and product studio delivering RESTful services, web apps, and CI/CD infrastructure for business clients, rooted in domain-driven design and event storming.
- Currently operating a school-dismissal app that streamlines end-of-day student pickup for parents and faculty. Leverages TanStack for state management on the FE, Stripe payment processing and subscriptions, JWT refresh-token rotation, and WebSocket fan-out over Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN.
- Designed and launched a SaaS emailing meeting-prep briefs from users' calendars: Microsoft Graph, Google Calendar, and LinkedIn integrations, Stripe billing, dual bearer/cookie SPA auth.
Stack: AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, Go, Gin, PHP, Laravel, React, TanStack, TypeScript, Postgres, JWT
Open Source & Writing
- pgmcp — An MCP server developed in Go that offers read-only Postgres ops to query, analyze, and inspect your database.
- hmac (v2) — Repository for the pascalallen/hmac Go module. Offers services for HTTP HMAC authentication and request signing.
- pubsub (v2) — Repository for the pascalallen/pubsub Go module. Offers a small, concurrency-safe, in-memory pub/sub, built on goroutines and channels. A Topic fans out every published Message to each of its subscribers.
- pgqueue (v1.1) — Repository for the pascalallen/pgqueue Go module. Offers a Postgres-backed durable job queue and NOTIFY/LISTEN pub/sub.
- ollama-cloud-go — Dependency-free Go client for the Ollama Cloud API.
- mcp-server-go — An MCP server in Go that offers tools to read and write to a contextual knowledge base.
- es-go — Open source software offering a set of guidelines to use Event Sourcing and Domain-Driven Design in Go. Uses EventStoreDB.
- rpi-security-cam — Live camera streaming on a Raspberry Pi, served over HTTP in Go.
- adk-agent — Leverages Google's Agent Development Kit to build a basic AI agent.
- vllm-server — A high-performance Docker Compose setup for running vLLM as an OpenAI-compatible API server, specifically optimized for ARM64 CPU environments.
- react-form-components (v3.1) — Repository for the @pascalallen/react-form-components NPM package. Simple HTML form elements for React.
- react-event-dispatcher (v2) — Repository for the @pascalallen/react-event-dispatcher NPM package. A lightweight event dispatcher for React.
- pascalallen.com — Personal portfolio website. This site runs on Go, WebAssembly, TypeScript, Docker and a Raspberry Pi.
Education & Certifications
- Codeup — Full-Stack Web Development
- Harvard Online — CS50
- Google — Google Cloud Sales Credential
- Intuit — Secure Coding for Web Applications
- Anthropic — Claude Code 101
- Anthropic — Claude Code in Action
- Docker — Docker Foundations Professional Certificate