Founding Engineer & Distributed Systems Architect

Matthew Hotchen is a highly experienced engineer with 17 years of professional experience, including a founding engineer role at YC-backed Pelago Health where he built a well-structured backend, data pipeline, and multi-region HITRUST certified platform. He also built and scaled engineering teams, implemented CI/CD, test infrastructure, strategic refactors, security practices, and checklist-driven development, enabling multiple daily releases. He was instrumental in defining company culture and was voted most committed to the mission. Prior to this, he led the API team for World First, an FX brokerage, playing a key role in their technology success and global expansion. He is proficient in software design, data modeling, efficient access patterns, distributed systems, event-driven systems, and AWS Lambda. His expertise extends to rapid delivery, team building/hiring, CI/CD, pipelines, and workflows. While primarily a backend engineer, he has extensive frontend experience (React Native, web, Flash). He is currently taking a break but is actively programming with LLMs, working on an open-source GitHub Copilot alternative. Matthew is seeking non-permanent contractor roles, ranging from days to months, ideal for founders needing a temporary CTO or a dependable engineer to deliver rapidly and provide strategic insights.