Samuel Cole

Experience

• 6

  Lemontree

  CTO

  Transformed a handful-a-day NYC helpline into a food-access system helping over a million people in 11 regions in 2025. Owned technology strategy, budget, and infrastructure; hired and managed a 3–5-person global team, mentored a junior engineer, and advised on org-wide personnel decisions. Architected the platform across Twilio, Postgres/AWS, and Vertex AI. Built a Gemini Flash–orchestrated flagging system that enriches resource data with client ground reports and automated web research, escalating to Deepgram-transcribed calls. The team cleared 68% more flags per week and shrank the backlog monthly. Closed out with my context in markdown so future contributors can ship by prompting without losing it.

  2021 – 2026
• 5

  ActBlue

  Senior Software Engineer

  At the Democratic fundraising platform: rewrote the main donation-form server (Ruby Sinatra → Node; ops later lifted it to AWS unchanged) and the company's PCI tokenizer. Solo, built a new embed from scratch (100% test coverage) that powered the Biden presidential campaign, the NAACP, Everytown, and more, as contributions scaled from ~$1B to over $8B.

  2017 – 2021
• 4

  Abacus

  Full-Stack Engineer

  One of 5 engineers building tools for enterprises to manage employee spending. Shipped receipt view, a redesigned search and faceting system, automated flight metadata, and trip-level grouping. Acquired by Emburse.

  2015 – 2017
• 3

  Jukely

  Lead Web Engineer

  Employee #8 at a live-music subscription startup. Built the client-side app from scratch in React / webpack / Reflux; contributed to the Rails API and Stripe integration. When the CEO announced a Canada launch a week out with no code written, shipped full-stack currency and localization, on time.

  2014 – 2015
• 2

  Kickstarter

  Software Engineer

  Employee #12, one of the first two full-time engineers. Owned the client side as Kickstarter scaled from $28M in annual pledges to crossing $1B cumulative (March 2014). Built the front-end of the multistep project editor (still the basic shape of today's flow), site search, custom text editors, creator messaging / backer tools, admin tooling, and the first mainstream video player to default to HTML5.

  2010 – 2014
• 1

  Patch

  Front-End Web Engineer

  First front-end engineer; joined before the company had a name. Built the CMS and front-end architecture that scaled to hundreds of small-town news sites across America, plus bespoke neighborhood maps. Acquired by AOL.

  2008 – 2010

Skills

Core Stack

TypeScript·Node.js·Next.js·React·Ruby on Rails

Infra & Data

Postgres·Prisma·Redis·AWS (RDS, ECS)·Vercel·GitHub Actions·ETL pipelines

Platforms & AI

Google Cloud·Vertex AI (Gemini)·AI SDK·LLM agents·Twilio·Mapbox