Joshua Zink-Duda | Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer at Aurora Solar

2024–2025

Led backend initiatives focused on billing and customer retention

Dunning Process: Designed and implemented key components of a new dunning process, a system for managing overdue payments, to improve revenue recovery and customer retention

Python Next.js Zuora
Self-Serve App Integration: Built the integration for a new customer self-serve signup app, supporting a product-led growth initiative that drove 400+ new customer signups in 6 months

Ruby on Rails Packwerk
Credit Auto-Reload: Developed an auto-reload feature for a customer credit-tracking application, ensuring accurate billing for self-serve customers

Python AWS SQS Terraform

2021–2024

Drove projects around authentication and core product features

Single Sign-On Rewrite: Proposed and led a rewrite of the Single Sign-On (SSO) system to eliminate manual onboarding, enable self-service configuration, and improve customer autonomy, leading to a 90% reduction in engineering support for SSO

Ruby on Rails OpenID Connect PostgreSQL
Internationalization: Drove the effort to internationalize the backend codebase, delivering features 2 weeks early and accelerating company-wide translation efforts

Ruby on Rails rails-i18n Crowdin
Duplicate Detection: Automated duplicate project detection, reducing duplicates by 36% and saving customers $100k over 12 months while eliminating hours of manual support work

Ruby on Rails PostgreSQL
Project Milestones: Architected a milestones feature, collaborating with product and engineering to refine scope and deliver a streamlined MVP which improved customer reliability and trust

Ruby on Rails PostgreSQL
Interviews: Conducted 15+ behavioral and technical interview for candidates ranging from junior to staff levels

2016–2021

Developed and maintained enterprise applications supporting customer experience and operations

Lead Developer: Promoted to team lead in 2019, owning architecture, project management, and feature prioritization while continuing hands-on development and QA
API Development: Designed, developed, and deployed 200+ APIs for an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) handling 5+ million daily transactions, including integrations with Apple and Facebook for authentication and syncing customer data from Salesforce

WSO2 ESB Oracle SQL JMS Queues
Data Synchronization: Built scheduled Java services using Spring to ingest thousands of daily records from third-party vendors, such as customer surveys and order tracking, into internal Panera systems

Java Spring
Deployment Automation: Automated deployments of ESB and Java services using Ansible and Rundeck, increasing deployment speed and reducing manual intervention

Ansible Rundeck