Stephen DeBaun

Work

1. 2026

   Sovera Corporation

   Senior Staff Enterprise Software Engineer

   2026

   Contract through coyote.dev from Apr 2026, full-time from Jul 2026

   A sovereign satellite communications company. Directed Claude Code agent teams through design, implementation, testing, and review.

   • Built the internal platform and six modules in under four months as the sole product engineer, directing Claude Code agent teams, in place of tools the company would otherwise have bought, and took it into internal rollout.
   • Designed and built TARDIS, Sovera’s internal intranet platform: a Go reverse-proxy shell that composes the navigation and wraps independently built modules in shared chrome, with Tardisbook, the platform’s design system (a design-language kit and component gallery) that every module imports, keeping the modules visually consistent.
   • Built the platform’s modules: Steward (ticketing with queues, crews, and an append-only ticket history on Firestore), T-Minus (an interactive gantt and schedule builder), Pulse (usage analytics over BigQuery), Transcripts (a meeting-transcript browser), a people directory, and Vellum, a generic markdown-rendering engine that replaced two bespoke modules.
   • Worked as the engineering partner to the Chief Partnership Officer on a sales push to a major Asia-Pacific telecom carrier: built the sales decks, a vetted baseline of customer-facing technical claims, prospect research, and answers for sales-engineer training.
   • Sovdemo, a sales showcase appBuilt Sovdemo, a sales showcase that presents the product’s sovereignty story (routing, encryption) as views over a recorded session.

2. 2025

   Maxim Vote

   Senior Engineering Manager

   Mar 2025 – Oct 2025

   Brought in post-MVP, through the Appmakers USA agency, to stabilize delivery, build an engineering team, and scale a B2C web and mobile product for growth.

   • Led a global remote engineering team of eight across five time zones, improved hiring, and grew the team by two.
   • Established sprint planning, velocity tracking, weekly demos, and technical and product design reviews.
   • Led delivery of the product’s React Native mobile app as engineering manager, managing the engineer who owned it.
   • Worked hands-on across UX, Twilio SMS messaging, Segment and Mixpanel analytics pipelines, GrowthBook experimentation, and AWS infrastructure, taking on critical issues directly.
   • Used AI-assisted engineering for both building and design.

3. 2024

   coyote.dev

   Principal Consultant, Product Engineering

   contract, Feb 2024 – Jul 2026

   Project-based contracts as needed, between full-time roles.

   End-to-end product engineering for newspace startups, from discovery to delivery, working with Coyote’s other principal consultants to gather requirements, then design and build the web application components for their clients.

   • Satellite imagery ordering platformBuilt a B2B satellite imagery ordering platform that unified multiple imagery providers behind one interface, with the UX optimized for mission-critical workflows.
   • Ground systems for a space communications platform (Solstar)Built frontend and backend ground systems for Solstar’s space communications platform, delivering SBIR milestones for Space Force while shaping the product for commercialization: persistence, UX, and rapid prototype iterations.

4. Consulting & contracting

5. 2021

   Credit Karma

   Senior Fullstack Engineer

   Jun 2021 – Jun 2023

   Individual contributor on Credit Karma’s Easy Apply team, placed through the Signify agency, focused on maturing the product and improving its observability and maintainability.

   • Improved a customer-facing application generating $500M+ a year, cutting development cycles by introducing automated end-to-end testing.
   • Designed self-serve tools that let subject-matter experts manage configuration and onboard new partners with minimal engineering effort.
   • Built shared libraries for metrics, logging, and secure HTTP requests that streamlined engineering workflows across teams.

6. Consulting & contracting · personal projects: This Legion Kills

7. 2019

   Soundpruf

   Principal Engineer

   Feb 2019 – Feb 2020

   Joined pre-MVP as the first engineering hire to solve early scaling problems, owning the architecture of a high-volume music analytics platform that blended fintech and gamification: data pipeline, persistence, UX, and deployment.

   • Built modular infrastructure and a deployment pipeline that reduced delivery time by about 50%.
   • Re-architected the backend from Postgres to DynamoDB to solve the platform’s repeated crashes.
   • Introduced user-driven design at Soundpruf: interviewed the product’s beta users and used what they said to drive a complete redesign of the frontend.

8. 2015

   Sparks.Network

   Managing Director & CTO

   founder, Jan 2015 – Feb 2019

   Founded and ran, as CTO, a platform connecting volunteers with the people and organizations that needed them, based in Ventura, California.

   • Built and scaled Sparks.Network’s volunteer management platform, used by thousands, as one of its primary builders.
   • Raised six-figure seed funding to accelerate the volunteer management platform’s development and growth.
   • Led a 12-person company delivering an ATS-style workflow platform for recruiting, scheduling, and payments, through multiple tech-stack transitions.
   • Owned Sparks.Network’s mobile-friendly, responsive web app as CTO, because volunteers primarily used the platform on mobile.
   • Did design-system work for Sparks.Network’s volunteer management platform.

9. Consulting & contracting · personal projects: Ars Victor

10. 2009

    Talon Data Systems, Inc.

    Principal Engineer

    Dec 2009 – Feb 2013

    First software engineering hire at Talon Data Systems, brought on to build the software side of the company’s flagship data synchronization appliance, in Southern California.

    • Big-data synchronization appliance for entertainment clientsDesigned and built a big-data synchronization appliance used by major entertainment clients, including Disney and TMZ: billion-scale file management, high-speed transfers across multiple locations, and a web-based management UI and operator tooling that let non-technical users run complex workflows.

11. Consulting & contracting · personal projects: Smashball

12. Earlier

    DataProse

    Software Development Manager

    Software development manager at DataProse in Oxnard, CA, leading the print billing company’s early move into online billing.

    • Designed and delivered tooling that transformed client data formats into production-ready outputs, supporting $10M+ a year in print and billing services.
    • Spearheaded the transition to online billing for telecom clients.

    Consulting & Contracting

    Self-employed

    ongoing

    Engagements from hands-on development to strategic consulting, for clients including Chevron, LADWP, Fox Entertainment, and The Burning Man Project, plus nonprofit work with local art centers, environmental advocacy, and public-engagement groups.

    Banking system build and installation in Kazakhstan

    Computer King, Inc. (Santa Maria, CA)

    Built and installed a new banking system in post-Soviet Kazakhstan for Computer King, a Santa Maria, California software company, working with its international partner, Texas Timber & Exporting.