Aidan Feldman

Technology Committee Chair, PHNDC

Leading a group within the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council that works to identify opportunities for improving the functioning of the non-profit through process design and use of technology.

Lecturer, Columbia University

• School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) — Python for Public Policy: Introduces students with little to no programming experience to software development and data analysis though code. Covers the basics of command line, Python, Jupyter Notebooks, Pandas, and data visualization by working with open data. python-public-policy.afeld.me/en/columbia/

• SIPA — Computing in Context: Co-instruct a course introducing students from various backgrounds the fundamentals of code, then teaching them how that applies to their discipline. I teach the Policy Context. computing-in-context.afeld.me/

• SIPA — Advanced Computing for Policy: Building and teaching a follow-up course to Computing in Context, the two of which form the core sequence for the new Data Science for Policy program. The course will give students a better understanding of computer science fundamentals, learning how data works in a broader context. They will learn and use APIs, databases, cloud services, and other technologies, processes, and considerations that go into complex data systems. docs.google.com/document/d/14hGiU8LP0vosSnaT2z_3BYIQM1S4stPN/edit

• School of Professional Studies (SPS) — Operations Management in IT: Taught an introduction to technology for business people, also known as "Technology Foundations". It was a survey course, providing a holistic introduction to tools, roles, and processes of technology and technology organizations. courseworks2.columbia.edu/courses/198128

Freelance technologist, self-employed

Helping government and non-profit teams improve their technology and processes.

• VoteAmerica: Expanded integrations between the voting registration tools, states, and schools. Also helped document systems and practices internally, while cleaning up unused code and applications. voteamerica.com/

• Cal-ITP: Helped streamline the process for transit riders in California to qualify for and receive discounts. Worked on indentity verfication, integrations, infrastructure, security, and privacy. calitp.org/

• Reinvent Albany: Have done a couple projects: one crawing the Empire State Development website to identify tables trapped in PDFs that should be released as machine-readable open data, the other pulling and preparing New York Senate bill and resolution data for analysis of changes in throughput. reinventalbany.org/

• Colorado Behavioral Health Administration: Improving DevOps and DataOps processes around the agency's data warehouse. Working through the Colorado Digital Service (CDS). oit.colorado.gov/colorado-digital-service

Organizer, EmpireConf

One of the organizers for the annual EmpireNode/EmpireJS/EmpireConf JavaScript conferences.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, New York University (NYU)

• School of Professional Studies (SPS) — Advanced JavaScript: After redesigning the curriculum, taught the Advanced JavaScript course for twelve consecutive semesters, helped students gain an in-depth understanding of the language while teaching best practices for modern front-end development. The course material, which is fully available to the public online, became the showcase class for GitHub's Education program. advanced-js.github.io/syllabus/

• Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) — Building for Learning: Created and taught an interdisciplinary graduate-level course around building interactive educational tools, while also covering front-end web development. In addition to rapid prototyping of physical and digital learning materials, also brought in experts from the educational technology to give students an understanding of taking projects from concept to product. github.com/bfl-itp/syllabus

• Wagner Graduate School of Public Service — Python Coding for Public Policy: (See same course at Columbia University) python-public-policy.afeld.me/en/nyu/

• Wagner Graduate School of Public Service — Big Data Analytics for Public Policy: This class gets students to apply new techniques to analyze social problems using and combining large quantities of heterogeneous data from a variety of different sources, through machine learning, data mining, and data science. wagner.nyu.edu/education/courses/advanced-data-analytics-and-evidence-building

Open source contribution

Have contributed to many open source projects, including Ansible, Backbone.js, Canvas LMS, Cloud Foundry, ConcourseCI, Conda, CONSUL, Dep, Docker, Great Expectations, Homebrew, Hubot, Jekyll, Packer, pandas, Terraform, TravisCI, and Vagrant.

Adjunct Faculty, The New School

Developed a class on Working with APIs and AJAX for the Open Campus Web Design and Development certificate.

Technology Director, Technology Transformation Services (TTS)

GS-15. Supervisory Information Technology (IT) Specialist in Information Security (INFOSEC). Led the Technology Portfolio, a team within the General Services Administration (GSA) that oversaw, managed, and coordinated everything technology-related that cut across TTS, as well as anything technology-related that would affect TTS from the outside. Particular focus on security, compliance, infrastructure, and tech policy.

• FAS Systems Governance Committee (FSGC) — Voting Member: Helped decide on and steer budgets for IT projects in the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS). Drove the Committee from accepting multi-million-dollar budget requests to a phased funding process that encourages agile practices of being user-centered and delivering value quickly. gsa.gov/about-us/organization/federal-acquisition-service

• Mac Working Group: Served as a primary stakeholder representing 400 Mac users across the agency, advocating for the workstation needs of technical team members.

• Authorizing Official: Was responsible for the security risk of ten systems across TTS, including cross-agency platforms like data.gov, Federalist, and search.gov.

Freelancer, Upsolve

Improved development workflows and backend features of the site that helps people file for bankruptcy.

Advisory Board Member, Brooklyn Rail

Helped improve the infrastructure, workflow, and software use of this non-profit arts publication.

Data Engineer, xD

GS-15. Helped to "build experimental data products for the public good" with federal agencies from this startup within the Census Bureau. Worked with the CTO and Standards Working Group on a Bureau-wide Open Source Policy and various software approvals and process changes.

• Recalls: Worked with regulatory agencies and large companies to improve the quality, consistency, and delivery of federal recall data through their APIs. usa.gov/recalls

• Census Self-Response Red Team: To test the fraud / suspicious response detection systems for the 2020 Census, helped develop various scenarios and then create synthetic data to represent them. fedtechmagazine.com/article/2019/03/census-bureau-boosts-cybersecurity-efforts-ahead-2020-count

• FISMAtic: Led a project to reduce the amount of time spent authoring, reviewing, and editing the security compliance documentation leading up to an Authority to Operate (ATO). github.com/uscensusbureau/fismatic

Consultant, NYC Planning Labs

Helped the Labs group within New York City's Department of City Planning improve their DevSecOps practices.

• Discovery: Helped the team identify security threats andconcerns around their software development, deployment, and operation. We then looked at the underlying problems and possible solutions for each. Tasks were then prioritized based on the ranking of the corresponding concern. medium.com/nycplanninglabs/devops-and-security-on-a-small-team-8709cfc5b0aa

• Infrastructure as code: Automated the hardening and configuration of their servers, while finding ways to minimize the operational burden. github.com/NYCPlanning/labs-infrastructure

Adjunct Faculty, Cornell Tech

Taught the Startup Systems course, which covered web development from HTML to APIs to servers. The class covered the basics of JavaScript, Python, Terraform, Ansible, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for students with a broad range of experience levels.

Innovation Specialist, 18F

GS-15. Was a federal employee in the General Services Administration (GSA), working with internal and external government agency partners to modernize technology practices through multiple engagements. Served as a subject matter expert in development of custom web applications, DevSecOps, ATOs, and open source. Participated and led multiple user research sessions.

• eQIP — Frontend Lead: Rebuilt the extensive form used for federal employment and contracting background investigations. github.com/18F/e-QIP-prototype

• DevSecOps Working Group — Technical Lead: Helped GSA systems migrate to the cloud by developing reusable components and processes around logging, monitoring, deployment, operating system hardening, automated testing, etc. This helped systems to incorporate operational best practices, while streamlining their security assessments. Helped build the DevSecOps-driven GRACE infrastucture-as-a-service (IaaS) platform through hybrid cloud + on-premise network design and infrastructure as code. tech.gsa.gov/guides/dev_sec_ops_guide/

• CIO Liaison: Worked with GSA's Office of the Chief Information Officer to ensure 18F got the support it needed for its business while maintaining compliance. Regularly engaged with the GSA Security team and other stakeholders to find compromise between security, compliance, and operational efficiency. Helped create the FedRAMP Tailored baseline to make it easier for tech companies to work with government.

• Project Boise — Project Lead: Led a team to research software security compliance (Authority to Operate, or ATO) processes across the federal government, to understand how they vary across agencies, and how they could be streamlined. Managed budget of $165,000, staff, and project direction, while interacting with Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), the Nation Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), vendors, the White House, and more. boise.18f.gov

• ATO Sprinting/Streamlining Team: Helped 18F projects achieve FISMA compliance by writing documentation and providing hands-on assistance with improving their application security and completing compliance documentation, while ensuring DevSecOps best practices. We were able to reduce the time to ATO from six months to one. before-you-ship.18f.gov

• cloud.gov: Helped build a Platform as a Service for the federal government, specifically focusing on reducing friction to adoption. Wrote user documentation, built services, and provided training. cloud.gov

• OpenControl / Compliance Masonry: Helped create tooling and community around improving the security compliance process by encouraging structured compliance data, reuse, and automation. open-control.org

• C2 — Technical Lead: Built a business process automation tool for streamlining purchase approvals, while providing better auditing capabilities. github.com/18F/C2

• Engineering Facilitator: Supervised a team of engineers, providing mentorship, soliciting peer reviews, mediating conflicts, etc.

Instructor, City University of New York (CUNY)

Designed curriculum and was lead instructor for the NYTech program, which helped seniors and graduate students build practical skills necessary for joining startups based in New York City, such as version control, web development, and resume writing. The culminating project was a class-wide collaboration to build a new site for a non-profit.

Education Hacker, GitHub

Company building tools for software development workflows. Worked to understand students' and teachers' obstacles to using professional software development practices in their classes, and conducted trainings on collaborative coding internationally. Was responsible for the system accepting and processing educational user upgrades, as well as determining best practices for classroom workflows.

Software Engineer (Contract), Artsy

Online fine art marketplace. Full-stack web development on the site and APIs, as well as building an open source business statistics reporting framework.

Instructor, General Assembly

Taught JavaScript as part of the Front-End + Rails curriculum at this school for digital skills.

Founder, Hacker Hours

Created a meetup group to provide mentorship for individuals learning to code, which reached over 8,000 members across seven states.

Senior Web Developer, Jux

As the only full-stack web developer at the small (now defunct) blogging startup, touched all pieces of the application, including social features and integrations of the site, layout templating, navigation, the image processing pipeline, and much of the API, as well as helping guide vision for the product.

Web Developer (Contract), American Express Publishing

Contractor building content management tools for FoodAndWine.com, as well as promotional micro sites for advertising partners.