Rick Balsano

About Rick Balsano

I thrive in the stage just after an MVP launch or other rapid growth stage—when your product starts gaining traction and delivery inefficiencies emerge. At that point, you need a versatile engineer who can tackle a wide range of technical challenges without requiring niche hires to solve each of them. That’s where I come in. My strength lies in scaling the technical side of organizations—building internal tools, unblocking engineering and integration teams, and contributing directly to the codebase—to drive growth without ballooning headcount.While I’ve worked in focused software development roles, I’m a technology generalist with experience across web and backend development (recently Ruby on Rails/React, occasionally Python/FastAPI), scripting, databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL), AWS (EC2, S3), software and network architecture, and some people management. With a background in physics and math, I bring strong problem-solving skills and a passion for mentoring and thoughtful code review.

Experience

1. Senior Software Engineer

   Kraken

   Sep 2025 — Present · Northern Virginia, VA, US

Education

• Princeton University

  Ph.D., Physics

  1995 — 1998

• Oberlin College

  BA, Physics, Mathematics

  1989 — 1992

Skills

• Software Development
• System Administration
• Databases
• Database Administration
• Data Analysis
• Agile Methodologies
• Analysis
• Saas
• Ruby
• Security
• Programming
• Web Development
• Sql
• Unix
• Java
• Software Engineering
• Linux
• Perl
• Mysql