I'm a software engineer and writer in Seattle, Washington. My background is in web applications, both backend and frontend, and software and documentation tools. I'm also interested in video game design and technology, user experience design, and tools to empower creative work of all kinds.

Software technologies used: AWS, Google Cloud, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS 3, React, jQuery, AngularJS, Java, Perl, C, C++, Autotools, PHP, MySQL, Django, Flask, LaTeX, Markdown, 6502 assembly language

Programming Google App Engine

I am the author of Programming Google App Engine, published by O'Reilly Media. The book describes Google App Engine, a platform for building scalable web applications, using extensive examples in Python and Java. The book has been praised for its in-depth coverage of App Engine's schemaless datastore. The 1st edition was published in 2009, and was translated into Japanese. The 2nd edition was published in 2012. The 3rd edition was published in July 2015, and is now two language-specific titles, one for Java and one for Python.

Visit the book's website (last updated 2015): https://ae-book.appspot.com/

PICO-8

I wrote the initial seed draft and was lead maintainer of the Wiki for PICO-8, a fantasy programmable game console. The seed draft consisted of approximately 150 articles. The community has made further contributions since then, and I have handed over administrative responsibilities to another member.

Visit the PICO-8 Wiki: https://pico-8.fandom.com/

MEGA65

I am the author and producer of Dan's MEGA65 Digest, a newsletter and audio podcast for retro computing enthusiasts, with a focus on the MEGA65 personal computer. I am currently the lead writer and editor for the MEGA65 manuals, and I write articles on MEGA65 programming.

Visit the Digest website: https://m65digest.substack.com/

Museum of Electronic Games and Art, 2022-present

Principal contributor (volunteer). I'm on the Steering Committee for the MEGA65 project, an open source hardware and software project based on Commodore microcomputers. Software engineering for developer tools and microcomputer platform development. Technical writer for the manual and other tutorial and reference materials. Media producer for a monthly community email and podcast. Developer relations and community support.

Amazon.com, 2017-2022

Senior software engineer, People Experience Tech, 2020-2022. I worked on projects in a lead technical design role, working closely with leadership across multiple organizations to align technical vision. Responsibilities included high-level systems design, API design, and coordinating integrations between multiple teams and organizations.

Senior software engineer, IMDb, 2017-2020. I was the tech lead for the homepage redesign, a multi-team project for which I built the first iteration of a new page framework and editorial content system. I contributed to new patterns for evolving a monolithic architecture into a microservices architecture.

Google, 2007-2017

Software engineer, Google Cloud Developers Console (console.developers.google.com), 2013-2017. I developed features and frontend components as part of a multidisciplinary core team. This team supports multiple teams building features for the site with a design language specification and component library. I contributed user experience (UX) design and technical writing, and worked closely with UX designers to develop and prototype ideas for the long term vision of the product. Our frontend makes heavy use of AngularJS, with a backend built on Google App Engine and Java.

Software engineer, Google Developers (developers.google.com), 2010-2013. I co-founded a grassroots project to reinvent Google's developer-facing public persona, build scalable content infrastructure, and establish a full-time team to support developer relations efforts. The new site replaced the old site (including a 70,000+ page migration effort), and eventually provided many new features, including registration for Google's annual developer conference Google I/O, event calendaring, and the Google Developers Live streaming video channel. Google Developers is built on Google App Engine, using Python and JavaScript.

Software engineer, documentation tools, 2007-2010. On my own initiative (via Google's “20% time” policy), I developed tools and provided technical support for technical writers at the company. I built Linux command-line tools and web utilities, and extended and repaired the existing content hosting and deployment infrastructure.

Technical writer, Google App Engine, 2008-2010. I was the sole author of the official documentation for App Engine, starting with its Python-only beta release in 2008, up through the addition of Java support and the official (out of beta) release in 2010.

Amazon.com, 2001-2007

Technical writer, Amazon Web Services and Amazon Mechanical Turk, 2004-2007. I was part of the founding team for the Mechanical Turk project (4 people). I wrote the original design documentation and contributed to design meetings. I became the sole technical writer for Mechanical Turk's public documentation, and also contributed writing to other nascent AWS projects. I helped build and support content management tools for the AWS writing team.

Software engineer, Catalog, 2001-2004. I developed and supported services used by teams across the company to access catalog and availability information. I also supported and extended related data batch jobs. Services and tools were implemented in C and C++.

Walt Disney Internet Group, 2000-2001

Software engineer, Mr. Showbiz, Wall of Sound, Movies.com. I wrote apps and tools for several entertainment websites, in Java. The teams were laid off when the sites were shut down in 2001.

University of Washington, 2000

Software engineer, Computing & Communications. I designed and built University campus support tools, including a searchable faculty directory that replaced a paper-based process.

I have a BS in Computer Science from the University of Washington, with a minor in Philosophy.

https://dansanderson.com/
https://twitter.com/dan_sanderson
https://github.com/dansanderson
http://stackoverflow.com/users/453278/dan-sanderson