Staff Full-Stack Engineer

Exchange-grade product systems for teams that need speed without fragility.

I lead full-stack engineering across real-time platforms, cloud infrastructure, and legacy modernization - turning architectural bottlenecks into systems teams can ship with confidence.

17 yearsEngineering production systems
10M+Daily requests on cloud platforms
500msTarget latency for live exchange data
Positioning

A senior technical partner for systems that cannot afford vague ownership.

Michael Ragan brings staff-level execution to fintech, enterprise SaaS, and cloud infrastructure work: designing APIs, building frontends, operating distributed services, mentoring engineers, and moving teams from cautious release cycles to daily delivery.

Selected Work

Recent systems with direct business impact.

MEMX · Lead Software Engineer · 2025-Present

IPO auction administration platform

Architected and built the backend and most of the React frontend for a greenfield platform that books, controls, and monitors live auction data against existing order book and quoting APIs.

  • Delivered in 4 months while leading the broader application portfolio.
  • Designed WebSocket streaming for auction lists, order book updates, and auction metrics.
  • Implemented Okta-backed RBAC with JWT validation, caching, and standardized API errors.
Convera · Lead Full-Stack Engineer · 2024-2025

Payment modernization and compliance workflows

Led an 8-person pod extracting payment functionality from a monolith into microservices and shipping the MVP two weeks early without major production issues.

  • Built React and TypeScript dashboards for transaction, KYC, and sanctions workflows.
  • Designed Node.js and AWS Lambda APIs handling 50K+ requests per day.
  • Improved throughput 45% by tuning PostgreSQL queries and Python data scripts.
Oracle · Principal Software Engineer · 2017-2024

Cloud platforms, support automation, and enterprise identity

Led monolith-to-microservice efforts, operated Kubernetes workloads at scale, and built systems that reduced support burden while helping product teams deploy independently.

  • Maintained production OCI Kubernetes clusters serving 10M+ requests per day.
  • Built backend automation that cut common customer support tickets in half.
  • Mentored 15+ engineers through architecture, delivery, and code review practices.

Capabilities

Full-stack leadership from interface to infrastructure.

01

Distributed Product Systems

System design, real-time data flow, WebSocket streaming, API contracts, concurrency, and reliability.

02

Modern Frontends

React, TypeScript, Next.js, Redux/RTK, user workflows, data-heavy dashboards, and pragmatic testing.

03

Cloud Architecture

AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, GitLab CI/CD, EKS, ECS, Lambda, capacity planning, and release automation.

04

Identity & Access

OAuth, SAML, JWT, RBAC, Okta integrations, enterprise SSO, and backend request validation.

Proof Points

Measured outcomes across scale, quality, and delivery.

3xFaster feature shipping after breaking monoliths into independently deployable services.
99.99%Uptime maintained on production Kubernetes clusters through planning and chaos testing.
70%Processing time reduction after data model and query optimization on large datasets.
75%Bug count reduction after pushing Jest and Playwright coverage into team delivery habits.

Side Projects

Practical tools built around data, systems, and hiring workflows.

JSON-to-PostgreSQL Schema Generator

Python analyzer that reverse-engineers JSON contracts into indexed PostgreSQL schemas.

Resume & Application Tracking System

Next.js, Go, and PostgreSQL application for lifecycle tracking, reminders, and JWT-authenticated APIs.

Real-Time Metrics Dashboard

FastAPI and WebSocket dashboard handling 1,000+ events per second with sub-100ms latency.

Contact

Build the system, unblock the team, and leave the platform stronger.