# Golda Velez (@goldavelez.org)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/goldavelez.org
Headline: Sr Software Engineer getting the AIs to work for us.    Writing at GoldaVelez.org.  Passion projects: LinkedTrust.us and RaisetheVoices.org.    The bar I hang out in is called “Bluesky”
Location: Tucson, Arizona, United States

## About

Sr Software Engineer, Architect and Communicator interested in human rights advocacy, advising startups, tech for good, politics, writing. Interested in chatting/writing about/collaborating on any project that makes positive systemic change.

## Career

- **Angel and Advisor at LinkedTrust** (Jan 2019 - Present)
  Applying LLM Agent and RAG pipelines to extract structured credentials from narrative and PDF data sources.
  
  Originators of LinkedClaims, an emerging high level standard in development getting traction in diverse domains of Learning Credentials, Supply Chain & Impact Validation.
  
  In discussions to have a new IEEE standard for Issuer Registry using progressive trust layering.
  
  Business development, landing grants and winning competitive bids for software development.
- **Staff Software Engineer at You.com** (Jan 2026 - Present)
  US
  We'll see, possibly swallowing the ocean.
- **Executive Board Member & Co-founder at Civ.works** (Nov 2016 - Present)
  Advising and assisting as needed with strategy and networking.
  
  Glad to serve on the board with George Polisner and co!
- **Sr Software Engineer at Turquoise Health** (Jan 2025 - Jan 2026)
  Creating transparency in health care pricing!  Designing data models and pipelines to make the best use of domain-specific Agentic AI.
- **Sr Software Engineer at 3Box Labs** (Mar 2022 - Oct 2024)
  Watching the bytes go by.
  
  I do observability.
  
  Specifically
  \- ceramicnetwork/observability package, produce weekly metrics for executive meeting, on-call and support for decentralized node operators.
  
  Have worked with growth team, diagnosing issues with performance, onboarding flows for operators.
  
  Typescript, python, terraform, ansible.
  
  Some rust.
- **Sr Software Engineer - Data Platform at Uber** (Jan 2021 - Nov 2021)
  Order Platform Team
  \- data pipes!
- **Sr Software Engineer - Risk at Postmates Inc.** (Jul 2018 - Jan 2021)
  Fighting the bad guys
- **Sr Software Engineer at Crowdpac** (Oct 2015 - Apr 2018)
  Designed and led implementation of a pandas-based pipeline for cleaning, normalizing and resolving campaign finance data and donor features.
  
  Also ML/analysis. Stack: Python/pandas/MySQL on AWS/ Flask/Google APIs
- **Sr Software Engineer at Junyo** (Jun 2013 - Oct 2015)
  Data and analytics.
  
  Designed event data processing system to pull events from Moodle and perform real-time reporting with strong privacy protections.
  
  Also Django-based system for gathering educational objects and mapping to multiple curricula. Stack: Django/ MySQL/ Nginx; Django Rest Framework; scrapy
- **Founder at Internet WorkShop** (Jan 1995 - Jan 2014)
  Internet Workshop, a search technology company.
  
  Licensee and developer of Webglimpse and Glimpse local search engines.
  
  Lectured, created websites, administered servers for approx 100 clients.
  
  Created customized search and document management solution for National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade.
  
  Led projects of 2-5 programmers for various client projects.
  
  Perl, PHP, MySQL, Javascript primarily.
  
  Some Java.
  
  Innovated techniques using compressed bit vectors to speed up category browsing and searching.
  
  Wrote freelance articles for Linux Journal, Wall St & Technology and Semantic Report.
  
  "The Searchable Site"
  \- https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8379
- **Head of Platform at AttorneyFee.com** (Nov 2012 - Jun 2013)
  Implemented spider/votes system for aggregating data from disparate sources.
  
  Scraped, cleaned, normalized and imported approximately 1M attorney data points from individual bar associations and other sources.
  
  Stack: Django/MySQL, Highcharts
- **Sr Software Engineer, contract at Oracle Corp** (Mar 2012 - Nov 2012)
  Tucson, AZ
  Designed and implemented REST interface in Perl for management of large scale data storage systems (SAN/NAS)
- **Data Engineer at Factual, Inc** (Jan 2011 - Mar 2012)
- **Contractor at Pillar Data Systems** (May 2010 - Jan 2011)
- **Head of Engineering at Disruptive Logic, Ltd** (Jan 2008 - Aug 2010)
  a New York based startup company in the area of personalization and recommendation systems.
  
  Managed team, wrote backend for recommendation system in Java and Perl using RESTlet framework.
  
  Wrote "poor man's classifier" to do sentiment analysis using configurable rules in XML.
  
  Retrieved mashup data using Eventful, Yelp, Amazon APIs.
  
  Debugged issues with YUI-based Javascript front end.
  
  Designed architecture for producing optimized recommendations for combinations of friends in a social network.
  
  Wrote PRD and SOW documents for clients.
  
  Wrote small Facebook application.
- **volunteer at US Council for Burma** (2006 - 2007)
- **Software Engineer at CompuRAD** (Jan 1996 - Jan 1998)
  user interface in C++ for imaging application.
  
  Interfaced with code from 4-5 other engineers providing image processing, database interface, printer interface.
  
  Had dumb idea to create the UI as a DTD, implemented that way instead of using a RAD tool.
  
  Project was successful anyway.
- **Support Engineer at Artisoft** (Jan 1992 - Jan 1994)
  LANtastic networking assembly code.
  
  Specialized in tracing bugs in NetBIOS layer.
  
  Worked closely with test engineering group and provided in-house beta testing for new versions.
  
  Managed relationship with the vendors for Lantastic for Macintosh and our OEM'd TCP/IP stack. Supervised small development project of a user interface/installation program.
- **System Administrator and programmer at Caltech** (Jan 1991 - Jan 1992)
  Sun workstation and wrote scripts to use DNA and protein sequence matching algorithms.
  
  Also wrote small application 'GeneBook' in DBASEIII+ on Windows to manage sequence repository.
- **Programmer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory** (Sep 1990 - Feb 1991)
  Wrote C code to do real-time imaging on OC-300 processing board.

## Skills

### Technical
- Django REST Framework
- Eclipse
- Git
- Go (Programming Language)
- golang
- HTML
- jQuery
- Kubernetes
- OS X
- PostgreSQL
- REST
- Ruby
- Solidity
- Terraform
- web3
### Other
- Agile Methodologies
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Analytical Skills
- Ansible
- Apache Kafka
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Big Data
- Business Strategy
- Business-to-Business (B2B)
- C/C++
- C++
- C++ Language
- CEOs
- Cloud Computing
- Communication
- Community Engagement
- Community Management
- Computer Science
- CSS
- Data Analysis
- Data Analytics
- Data Engineering
- Data Pipelines
- Data Processing
- Databases
- Design Patterns
- Developer Relations
- Django
- Drupal
- Engineering Management
- Entrepreneurship
- Executive Coaching
- Executive Management
- Fraud Detection
- Fraud Prevention
- Full-Stack Development
- Generative AI
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Growth Strategies
- High Performance Computing (HPC)
- Infrastructure
- JavaScript
- LAMP
- Large Language Model Operations (LLMOps)
- Large Language Models (LLM)
- LLaMA
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Understanding
- Negotiation
- Network Protocols
- Node.js
- OOP
- Open-Source Development
- Pattern Recognition
- Perl
- PHP
- Problem Solving
- Professional Mentoring
- Programming
- Project Management
- Prompt Engineering
- Public Speaking
- Python
- Real-time Data
- Reliability
- Research Skills
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Risk Analytics
- Shell Scripting
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Software Design
- Software Development
- Solution Architecture
- SQL
- Strategic Communications
- Strategic Planning
- Strategy
- Systems Design
- Team Leadership
- Team Management
- TypeScript
- User Interface Design
- Web Applications
- Web Development
- XML

## Credentials

- Python Coding and Making LinkedIn Certificates from LinkedTrust Badges... — LinkedTrust (Jul 2025) https://live.linkedtrust.us/certificate/124283
- Advising Distributed Teams — LinkedTrust (Aug 2024) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l29_znaGtXwFgOfWzdCUjH9pT48c5WKT/view
- Certificate of Completion — Community Sponsorship Essentials (May 2024) https://learn.sponsoressentials.org/certificate/MTE5MDQxXzE4MzM2MjY
- Verified Human — NotABot by IDPartner (Jan 2024) https://notabot-linkedin.idpartner.com/certifications/_cbz1kg-F5

## Education

- **University High School** (1987)
  Activities & Societies: United States Physics Olympiad Team, alternate

## Involvement

### Volunteering
- FosterEd (Jul 2016 - Present)
  educational champion
  Advocate for a young man in foster care in terms of his academics and educational resources.
  
  Also get on him to study and stay out of trouble.

## Links

- linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldavelez