Hi there 👋
My name is José David Baena, and you reached my personal site. Here, you can find a bit more information about me, my interests, and what I value.
A little about myself
Originally from Spain, currently living in San Francisco 🌉, married to an Italian, and have a fantastic baby (born in the USA). It is a bit of the united nations around here 🌎.
I like to be in a room where I feel the dumbest (meaning a lot of space for learning) and always open to new opportunities to grow 💪.
Professional experience
I have been working as a Software Engineer for research projects, startups, and big companies. While most of my experience has been as a Full Stack engineer, I prefer to work on the backend side. In particular, I love architecture problems and wondering how to scale the next big thing from 0 to millions of requests.
At the moment, you can find me working at GitHub, where I enjoy working with some of the smartest people I know.
Personal interests
Things I am interested in and passionate about (besides my lovely family) are:
Tech interests
Machine Learning: It’s an exciting time for Machine learning. Now that there is an ongoing wave of optimized CPUs an GPUs (as well as the availability of these in the cloud) to run the ML algorithms, the number of opportunities is growing exponentially🎉. I think we are at a stage where the entry barrier is lower than ever, and you can accomplish a lot in a short time window.
Performance tuning: Performance tuning is an art 🎨. Sometimes it is not worth it, but when you can reduce resources/query times/<insert bottleneck issue here > by double digits percentage, you start seeing the benefits and eventually getting expertise. Troubleshooting for these has always been fun to me and in my experience, where I learn the most.
Distributed systems: I am fascinated by systems that cooperatively achieve a specific function (could be storage, processing, you name it ✨). I like to code POCs for these and look at current implementations, being Kafka, my favorite system so far.
RAD development: Rapid Application Development is to me a multiplication factor in development productivity. Especially, code generation for boilerplates has always been a topic I have raised when something is taking more time than usual. Huge fan of Yeoman and JHipster.
Outside tech
- 🤼♂️ Brazillian Jiu Jitsu: When I am not coding, I am mostly thinking about BJJ. This sport has been my main passion outside work, and I have been doing it for a while now. When I travel for work, I also make sure I have some time to visit a local academy and mingle with the locals :)
- 🍔 Food: More than cooking it, I prefer to eat it 😂. I love to eat food from different cultures, being the Szechuan cuisine, my favorite. Having said that, if you live around San Francisco, you should check out Mission Chinese Food.
Projects
⚠️ This area is still in development, so please come back in the future! ⚠️
Here are some projects I have worked outside work in my free time:
- Netflix Conductor: (Significant contributions) a workflow management system part of the Netflix OSS ecosystem.
- JHipster: a code generator for Spring Boot + React applications.
- Utiltube: Metadata Service associated with videos. Think about data enhancement for video experiences.
- API Daas: Api data as a Service platform. Declarative APIs for RAD development.
Contact
I am always interested in knowing other people in the sector or with potential interest in tech. I am trying as well to build a diverse network where I can help/ask for help. If there is anything you need help with, feel free to drop me an email at josedab at gmail dot com.