Hello, I am

Christopher.

I code with my bare hands

I’m an enthusiastic software developer who loves solving problems and sharing knowledge with others. I believe great things happen when people work together.

Christopher McClain profile image

About Me

Christopher McClain profile picture

I am a software engineer with a passion for helping people. I have a background in privacy and security software, and an interest in network technologies and distributed computing.

I currently work at Awardco.com in Lindon, Utah, where we are developing a program that helps individuals recognize the positive in others and incentivize performance. My role focuses on shifting our monolithic application to a distributed system so individual components can scale and change without affecting others.

Outside of work, I enjoy playing around with different technologies in my home lab.

Here are a few technologies I've been working with recently:
  • C#
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • Azure
  • Python

Experience

Software Engineer 3 - Awardco
October 2025 - Present

I’m currently one of the first engineers on a new incentives product being built out from the ground up, currently in early alpha access. Selected for the role based on prior experience with containerization and Kubernetes, I was the first backend engineer pulled onto the team and have also taken on infrastructure work, establishing core architectural patterns as the product takes shape, from Kubernetes deployment strategy to backend event handling.

Responsible for:

  • First backend engineer pulled onto a new product, also taking on infrastructure work based on prior experience with containerization and Kubernetes
  • Created a pattern and reusable production pipeline for running new modules in Kubernetes, establishing a path for the broader codebase to migrate off the monolithic architecture; the pattern has since been adopted by one other team
  • Built lifecycle event handling for programs in the codebase, including rule evaluation and real-time notifications, using Azure Service Bus to automate program state transitions
  • Served as an onboarding buddy and mentor for two new engineers, one on my previous team and one on my current team
Software Engineer 2
December 2024 - October 2025

As a Software Engineer 2, I played a key role in Awardco’s first mobile application, leading development of Biometric Authentication and building the interoperability protocol and notification delivery system that powered it — taking the app from concept to app store launch in six months. I also contributed to integrations embedding the Awardco platform into tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Outlook.

Responsible for:

  • Building and maintaining integrations that embedded the Awardco platform into external tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack
  • Contributing to development of the Microsoft Outlook add-in integration, delivered in two months — the fastest integration shipped by the team
  • Leading Biometric Authentication development for Awardco’s first mobile application, taken from concept to app store launch in six months
  • Designing and building an interoperability protocol enabling fast communication between the Awardco mobile app and native mobile system operations
  • Architecting a scalable notification delivery system for the mobile application
Software Developer 2 - OpenText
March 2023 - December 2024

Promoted to Software Developer 2, taking on greater ownership of backend feature development and internal tooling, while continuing to support infrastructure automation efforts for the SRE team.

Responsible for:

  • Working with a team to create new features and integrate multiple back end components together
  • Building an in-house Golang automation tool to simplify Infrastructure as Code development and eliminate repetitive manual tasks
  • Working with a team to create a continuous integration test environment for Infrastructure as Code deployments using Jenkins
  • Generating Infrastructure as Code repository releases and migration documentation for monthly SaaS releases
  • Providing engineering support for Site Reliability Engineers
Software Developer 1
November 2021 - March 2023

Transitioned from QA into a full-time development role, focused on modernizing the application architecture and building out cloud infrastructure automation.

Responsible for:

  • Working with a team to separate a monolithic application into microservices
  • Developing Infrastructure as Code used to deploy ArcSight Detect into an Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment using Elastic Kubernetes Service, EC2, Lambda Functions, CloudWatch, and other services
  • Implementing processes to streamline the monthly SaaS release process
Software Engineer Quality Assurance Intern
January 2021 - November 2021

Started as an intern supporting the ArcSight ESM/Detect development team, building both API features and the automated tests that validated them.

Responsible for:

  • Developing new Java REST APIs for ArcSight ESM/Detect
  • Developing automated tests for ArcSight ESM/Detect
  • Testing patches to reported bugs
  • Coordinating testing efforts with full-time developers
Research Assistant - Brigham Young University
April 2020 - August 2021

As a research assistant, I contributed to the Let’s Authenticate project, developing and maintaining backend services that powered authentication for both websites and a mobile application.

Read the research paper.

Responsible For:

  • Developing and maintaining a NodeJS backend for websites used in a Research Study
  • Developing and maintaining a Golang x509 Certificate Authority used in a Research Study
  • Implementing and testing new features with a team of Research Assistants
  • Documenting the web APIs developed by our team
  • Maintaining the backend servers used for the project

Education

2017 - 2022
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with an Emphasis in Software Engineering
Brigham Young University
GPA: 3.69 out of 4.0

I helped contribute to a paper published in the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium.

Get in Touch

My inbox is always open. Whether you have a question or just want to say hi, I’ll try my best to get back to you!