Samuel Branham

Professional Summary

Senior software engineer and technical lead with 13 years building production enterprise, government, and retail systems. Full-stack architect with deep hands-on expertise across C#/.NET, React, and Angular on Azure and AWS. Led the AWS modernization of DC's unemployment insurance platform during the COVID-19 surge and currently driving engineering for a commission and performance platform serving 6,600+ employees at a national scale retail operation. Established team-wide patterns for AI-assisted development using Claude; active Azure certification track with AZ-104 earned and AZ-305 Solutions Architect Expert in progress.

Core Competencies

Languages & Frameworks: C# / .NET 8–10, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Angular, SQL, Visual Basic

Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure (Functions, API Management, App Service, Storage, DevOps), AWS (EC2, Lambda), Docker

Architecture & Patterns: REST / OpenAPI, microservices, event-driven, domain-driven design, 3-tier, CI/CD

Data: Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Entity Framework Core, relational design, federal compliance integrations

AI-Assisted Development: Claude, GitHub Copilot — established team patterns; building agentic AI pipeline for SaaS

Leadership: Scrum Master, 10-person support team lead, mentorship, technical interviews, code review governance

Professional Experience

Software Engineer III & Scrum Master

Jun 2025 – Present

Victra — Verizon Authorized Retailer

Raleigh, NC (Hybrid)

Lead engineer and Scrum Master for a team of 8 (6 devs, 1 QA, 1 PO), shipping 5+ major features and a flagship platform launch in first year — supporting 1,500+ Verizon-authorized stores nationwide.
Lead engineer on Contribution Matrix — new platform calculating performance contributions that drive commission payouts for 6,600+ Victra employees company-wide.
Architect and ship features for Metric Management Center (MMC) — handling millions of sales transactions across the store network: commission overrides, coupon overrides, sales adjustments, and inventory sync via REST APIs.
Drove POS-agnostic architecture: re-engineering integration layers so Victra's applications are decoupled from any specific point-of-sale platform — preserving optionality on a multi-million-dollar vendor decision.
Led migration of Azure Function App from .NET 8 to .NET 10 with zero downtime. Established team-wide patterns for AI-assisted development using Claude, driving 3-5x productivity gains on boilerplate, refactors, and test scaffolding.

Senior Software Engineer

Apr 2018 – Apr 2025

DC Department of Employment Services

Washington, D.C. / Remote · Promoted to Senior Engineer · Mar 2020

Core engineer on the AWS-based modernization of DC's unemployment insurance platform — owned Angular frontend, .NET middle tier, and AWS Lambda backend services processing hundreds of thousands of claims. Stack: Angular, AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, SQL Server, REST APIs with queue-based messaging.
Owned end-to-end delivery during the COVID-19 surge when daily claim volume jumped 10x overnight; worked 14-hour days enabling tens of millions in benefit payments to DC residents when they needed it most.
Integrated with multiple federal systems (IRS, SSA, US DOL) via REST APIs for compliance data exchange, validation, and benefit eligibility verification.
Led a 10-person support team handling production incidents and on-call response for both the legacy .NET platform and the AWS modernization running in parallel — kept critical incidents to single-digits/month at full population scale.
Mentored 3 junior engineers into mid/senior promotions, establishing code review patterns and engineering standards still in use after my departure.

Software Engineer

Jul 2016 – Mar 2018

Clear Info, LLC

Annapolis, MD

Built backend services and REST API integrations using .NET, C#, and SQL Server for enterprise clients.
Designed and implemented relational data models supporting multi-system integrations.

Junior Software Engineer

Jul 2014 – Jun 2016

Rockwell Collins

Annapolis, MD

Developed C#/.NET applications and backend services for avionics and defense systems in a regulated, high-reliability engineering environment.
Worked across the full stack with relational databases, REST services, and integration testing.

Software Engineer — Intern

Sep 2013 – Jun 2014

Agnik LLC

Columbia, MD

Built data processing components in C#/.NET for a distributed analytics platform.

Education, Certifications & Projects

BS, Computer Science University of Maryland, College Park · 2014

Microsoft Azure Certifications AZ-104 Administrator Associate (2026) · AZ-900 Fundamentals · AZ-204 Developer Associate (Jun 2026) · AZ-305 Solutions Architect Expert (in progress)

Additional Certifications (15 active) CompTIA Security+ (CE) · AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Specialization · DevOps on AWS · Architecting Solutions on AWS · and more

StrataReport AI — Personal Project Multi-tenant SaaS generating AI-narrated reports. Stack: React, .NET 10, Azure Functions, PostgreSQL, Anthropic Claude API, agentic AI pipeline.