- About Me

Personal

I was born in Mexico and raised there until I was 16 years old. Then my family and I moved to Texas. Lived a very humble life in Mexico - reason to move to Texas. Went to high school then college. I met my beautiful wife while in college and now have been happily married for 10 years. No kids yet. My wife is my engine, she is my everything.

We love outdoor activities - my favorite is going paddle boarding. We go camping every time there is a chance. I enjoy cooking for my wife while camping... I am trying to master cooking carne asada. I have two dogs (Bella and Kelso). Bella is a terrier mix and probably weights around 15 pounds. We rescued Bella when she was 2 years old. She is now 9 years. She is super loving and loves her own space. Kelso is a poodle and saint bernard mix. He is 2 years old. Kelso is super active and loves the water. They both love riding with us in our Jeep.

There is three things that I love doing and probably wont stop doing them any time soon. Traveling, playing indoor soccer, and making music. I find joy traveling and experiencing new cultures around the world. Soccer has been one of my passions since the day I was born probably. If I was not in tech, I would probably be a music producer and DJ (techno music baby!).

Education

My education journey has not been the most exciting one. I went to high school right after I moved to the US. Pretty exciting time in high school since I was pretty involved in sports. But never cared about school. Had to learn English because I knew not a single word... I learned a couple words in English by the time I graduated from high school. Even though I did not care much about school, I decided I wanted to go to college and get a bachelors in something to make my parents proud.

I went to college blind. I knew nothing about what college really was or what it involved. I was the first one to graduate high school in my family and the first one to go to college. So not a lot of guidance. Had an amazing time in college (I miss the parties). Somehow I managed to graduate college with a bachelors in computer information systems.

Once I graduated college, I realized that I hated what I studied. Decided to become a software engineer instead. I taught myself how to code. Built mobile apps and websites. Fell in love with building websites and went a lot deeper into learning the ins and outs of building production level web applications. and now, building web application is my focus and what I truly love doing. Oh along the way, I found automation fascinating so decided to focus on that too. Now, I find myself always learning something related to my field.

Professional

Work life started pretty young for me. Probably at the age of 10 in Mexico, my brother and I would help my dad collect recyclable materials from stores around the city (like tons of material), so we could then sell to recycling companies $$. It was kind of like a side hustle for my dad... but no really because we saw that the necessity drove him to it. Learned the importance of work from a young age. At the age of 12, i'd say, I got my first actual 'job'. I worked at a local grocery store where I would help the owners sell fresh orange juice to the nearby office workers. I was finally making some money :)

The move to the US came, since the town where we lived when we moved here was super small (1000 people), there was not a lot of options for me to choose from when it comes to work. There were only cow feed yards, pig farms, and crop growing fields. I worked in cow feed yards in the weekends through high school and some college. While in college, I knew it was time to try something different. Started at Lowe's as a cart pusher, then dish washer at a restaurant, then cook, and then as a server.

Luckily, I had good friends and one of them told me about an internship at the electricity company that he worked at as network and systems analyst. I guess the manager liked me and gave me the internship. That job is where I learned one or two things about computer networking and linux. When I graduated college, I made the critical decision to shift my focus into software engineering and decided that moving to Denver, CO was a good choice.

My decision to move to Denver was the correct one, even though I struggled at the beginning, everything came to place. I got my first job right out of college as a DevOps Engineer (place where I felt in love with software automation). Then Raytheon technologies where I had the opportunity to work in the front end and back end of applications being developed. General Electric reached out and decided to make the move. In GE, I learned everything about deployments, infrastructure, security, etc. Microsoft reached out and seemed to like what I had done and so I decided to make the move and moved to Seattle WA.