I build software for the public sector. For close to two decades I have worked with federal agencies on the websites, data, and infrastructure people rely on, mostly with Drupal, AWS, Azure, Terraform, and whatever the problem calls for.
I grew up in Ethiopia and moved to the United States toward the end of middle school. I studied computer science at the University of Tennessee and the University of Maryland, and have been at BLEN Corp since 2009, where I started as an application developer and now lead solutions architecture. I also write here about DevOps and the occasional story.
What I do
Most of my time goes to infrastructure work: migrating platforms to AWS, writing the CloudFormation templates and Ansible playbooks that run them, containerizing Drupal and the services around it, and keeping pipelines and upgrades moving across major Drupal versions. I still write application code too, most often React and D3 visualizations embedded in Drupal.
BLEN also builds its own products, and I have had a hand in several. Callr dialed you into conference calls straight from your calendar and was covered by TechCrunch. Moxit grew into an all-in-one platform for child care centers and was acquired by Wonderschool in 2021. AssetMan automates asset tracking for small and mid-sized companies. And Unfurlough.us went from idea to launch in five hours during the 2013 shutdown to connect furloughed federal workers with freelance work.
At BLEN I help our team ship for USPTO, DOI, VA, and USDA. Lately that means practical AI: we open-sourced USMDS, a React Native component library for building accessible government mobile apps, along with a set of MCP servers and agent skills for public-sector development.
Experience
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USPTO
USPTO.gov and the USPTO intranet
The agency's public website and intranet on Drupal. Moved the platform to AWS with CloudFormation and Ansible, carried the CMS from Drupal 7 through Drupal 10, containerized services with Docker, GitLab pipelines, and Fargate, and helped build the Static Generator module.
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USPTO
Open Data and Big Data
The developer hub behind USPTO's Open Data Portal, where the public finds patent and trademark APIs and bulk datasets. Built D3 and React visualizations embedded in Drupal through progressive decoupling.
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Acquisition management portal for the Interior Business Center, built with Drupal as the content and data backend, a Hono API layer, and a Next.js front end.
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GHG Quantification Mobile App USDA Farm Production and Conservation
Mobile application for quantifying the greenhouse gas outcomes of conservation practices funded under the Inflation Reduction Act.
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EnergyStar.gov ENERGY STAR
Redesign on Drupal with a custom installation profile, a migration module that consolidated content from several sites into one platform, and a responsive theme.
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Ed.gov and Data.ED.gov U.S. Department of Education
Migrated Ed.gov from Drupal 6 to 7 and maintained its WordPress blog. Built Data.ED.gov, a Drupal and MapBox platform for publishing grant datasets and performance metrics under the Open Data Initiative.
Open source
Most of my contributed code is Drupal modules on drupal.org, where I also mentor new contributors.
- Static Site Generator: generates a complete HTML copy of a Drupal site so it can be hosted without PHP or a database. Co-maintainer since 2018.
- CSS/JS Aggregation Retention: restores time-based cleanup of CSS and JS aggregates, which Drupal 10.1 removed and static generators depend on. Author and maintainer.
- Gov Analytics Dashboard: a Drupal implementation of the 18F analytics dashboard. Sandbox project, 2016.
- OpenData Publisher: one of the first Drupal modules for publishing open data catalogs, from 2011. Sandbox project, with source on GitHub.
On GitHub I keep smaller tools and examples, mostly Terraform and Ansible for AWS, and send the occasional patch upstream to projects like DDEV.
Hackathons
- VA Veterans Health Make-a-thon, Tampa, May 2026. Our team took first place for the second year in a row and was selected for the Veterans Health Venture Studio Accelerator.
- Vibecon at Y Combinator, San Francisco, November 2025. Picked from more than 2,000 applicants as one of 250 builders in the room. Our team finished in the top three of our pod.
- VA Veterans Health Hackathon, Tampa, August 2025. Attended with our team, which took first place for the second year running.
Credentials
- B.S. in Computer Science, University of Maryland
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect
- Acquia Certified Developer, Drupal 8
