Welcome!

Hello, I'm Jeremy Bell! I'm a Software Engineer based in Seattle, currently working for Amazon.

About Me

I grew up in the great state of Maryland! I fit many Maryland stereotypes including my love for Old Bay and having various state flag themed items.

I went to the University of Maryland in College Park and graduated in 2019 with a bachelor in Computer Science. During my studies, I was also a part-time developer for the school's Center for Advance Transportation Technology Laboratory.

In 2018 I took on a summer internship with Amazon's internal Continuous Deployment team. The following year, I graduated and joined the Continuous Deployment team full-time.

Hobbies

I am an avid board gamer. I organize weekly board games with my co-workers. I tend to enjoy hidden role social deduction games such as One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Avalon, and Spyfall. I also organize online video games with my co-workers as well.

I am a huge fan of bubble tea (or boba)! My favorite weekend activity is to travel to a new neighborhood in town to try the boba offerings. I have even made my own tapioca pearls at home from scratch! And for sick days, I have microwave bubble tea in my freezer.

I am a huge fan of Pokemon, and specifically, the competitive scene. I can talk hours on end about different strategies that I want to employ. It's like a complex chess game! I have even scraped a few Pokemon tournaments for a school data science project (it's not my best work, but it was a lot of fun)! My favorite Pokemon is Murkrow due to its witchy design and it carrying my favorite ability, Prankster.

My Passion for Software Engineering

I first introduced myself to the field when I was in 8th grade. I was generally interested in graphic design previously. I loved creating graphics for the MMORPG forums I was a part of, including signatures and avatars. I made many graphics for myself and others, but some forums introduced HTML user content. I learned HTML and CSS on my own and fell in love. I gradually started learning JavaScript and PHP before getting formal education.

When I was a high school upperclassman, I learned about C++, Python, Django, and Java at a vocational school in my county. Because of this, I was able to ace my AP Computer Science exams. What drew me further into the field were the fractals that we created with the Turtle library and the text-based adventures we could create with Java Scanners.

My work at the Center for Advance Transportation Technology Laboratory (CATT Lab) made me extremely passionate for the career. CATT Lab introduced me to the agile process and how we build something from the ground-up. We had a Flash to React migration which broke ground when I joined the team, and I was proud to write the release notes three years later when we finished that project. Additionally, CATT Lab showed me how my engineering skills impact the world. Our product helped many state governments manage their highways by tracking data such as congestion.

At Amazon, I was suddenly operating at a larger scale. There was so much to learn about architecturing a project and following up with the implementation. I was also introduced to the AWS ecosystem which is incredible. Your capabilities go beyond just your programming skills. My team does release automation, also known as Continuous Deployment, and we manage over 50k customers. Customer engagement is something I take a strong interest in. While it is satisfying to do 'cool' things with your engineering skills, I think it is ultimately rewarding to see the impact it has on your end-users, especially if there's tens of thousands of them.

These days, I'm trying to expand my depth of knowledge. I've been looking into WebAssembly in addition to using AWS as an external customer to accomplish projects like this website!