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About Me

Headshot of Jesse Porch

Technology should enhance our humanity, not distort it. As an experienced software developer, my goal is to create and disseminate quality software that respects the whole person of its users and truly makes their lives better. Such work should be polished, humane, effective, and dependable. As such, I hold myself to a high standard of competence in academic study, personal research, and professional performance. My attention to detail and conscientiousness are both driven by a commitment to excellence and integrity in everything I do.

Both as a professional developer and a research fellow, I have always sought to integrate all elements of my life. My studies in the realms of anthropology, literature, and philosophy, stem from the idea that the most effective developers must cultivate a strong interest in many things outside math and technology. A life well-lived is an integral part of who I am as a software professional, and I value my non-technical skills just as highly as my professional expertise. Because of this I am well-prepared to focus on the details of implementation while maintaining a firm grasp on the broader meaning of the tasks I undertake.

Supported by my technical proficiency and commitment to healthy relationships, I aspire to grow in leadership responsibility so that I can contribute to both the creation of exemplary software and to the development of a sustainable culture that supports it.

Work Experience

2021-2026 At SimpliSafe I worked as a backend engineer for the Core Platform and User Systems teams. Our primary remit was maintaining core legacy JavaScript and TypeScript services that supported user and subscription services. We also pursued multiple modernization initiatives migrating functionality from the legacy monolith to a microservices model, primarily in Rust. We were one of the primary adopters of the internal events bus architecture, working to bring processes from server orchestration flows to event-driven ones built on top of Apache Kafka.

2016-2021 At Harvard Law School I served as part of the Business Solutions team within Internet Technology Services department. My role supports the planning, development, maintenance, and ongoing support of a stable of internal applications supporting major elements of the school's day-to-day operations. Here I work alongside other departments to ensure the systems provided support their business needs as a part of the greater HLS community. Specific responsibilities include: hls.harvard.edu: Ongoing support and enhancement of the school's primary public website. (Wordpress/PHP) Faculty Bibliography: a new initiative to provide an indexed and searchable interface for accessing HLS Faculty scholarship. (PHP/JSON/Elasticsearch) Agresso: Internal Student Information System database administration as well as support of a custom API layer developed to expose the underlying database to numerous internal systems. (C#) HELIOS: Internal portal that provides access to numerous campus resources for staff and faculty. (C#/ASP.NET)

2016-Present I originally joined Haywire(www.haywiremag.com) as a contributor, writing a monthly column that examined various topics through the lens of videogames. Playing For Real ran from April 2016 to July 2017, at which point I stepped down as a monthly columnist. My present role includes providing assistant editorial support for current writers and general technical assitance for setup and customization of the magazine's WordPress installation.

2015-2016 As a Research Fellow at TFA, I pursued self-guided research under the guidance of Dr. Syman Stevens and Dr. Laura Cook-Kenna. My focus was the anthropological role of play in human society and its applications in the development of videogames. I produced a written thesis and supporting essays published at the online videogame criticism journal First Person Scholar as well as the games and culture webzine Haywire Magaine. Along with my own research, I served in a writing group with two other Fellows, providing significant feedback, brainstorming, and proofreading for their own research theses. On a weekly basis I served as support staff for the Osprey Point Retreat and Convention Center, learning to develop my hospitality and servant leadership skills under the General Manager, Roger Valentine. This work is a fully integrated part of TFA's vision for developing the character and attitude needed to truly be a great leader in any field. I also helped to provide this same hospitality and service to lecturers and guests visiting TFA, acted as Logistics Coordinator for three major weekend conferences that the TFA Fellows hosted, and oversaw all work shift scheduling for the year.

2011-2015 At InterSystems I worked under Benjamin Spead on the Application Services team, using ISC technology to develop and maintain tools for use within the company. Much of my day-to-day efforts were dedicated to supporting multiple mission-critical applications used throughout the company. My tasks ranged from triage and categorization of newly reported bugs to meeting with end users to develop specifications for requested features and enhancements. Projects that I contributed to include InterSystems' change control and workflow management application, a facilities management ticketing and issue tracker, a Customer Relations Managment application, and a contractor directory and workflow manager. I worked extensively with InterSystems technologies such as Caché , Ensemble, ObjectScript, Zen, and Caché Server Pages (CSP), as well as standard web development technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for client-side functionality and DOM manipulation. InterSystems' Change Control Record, a workflow and version control management application I helped develop during my time there, was named the best use of Perforce Helix in Medical Technology (for its use with InterSystems TrakCare) at the 2016 Versionary Awards, presented during the Perforce MERGE conference.

2009 As part of Grove City College's Sweezy Fellowship Research Experience for Undergraduates program, I worked with a team of three other students alongside Dr. Christiaan Gribble pursuing research in ray tracing. The project involved significant experience coding, both within a conventional UNIX environment and for specialized DSP hardware (SPI's Storm-I). Our efforts saw the successful creation of a fully-functional ray tracing engine to facilite research in both fixed and floating-point environments, as well as a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Graphics, GPU, and Game Tools and a poster at ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics High Performance Graphics. (See Portfolio) My personal contributions involved working on the fixed-point mathematics libraries needed to facilitate our work the the DSP, as well as contributions to the design and implementation of the core ray-tracing engine. I also contributed to the writing and editing of the JGT article.

Education

2015-2016 Weekly rotation of guest lecturers speaking on a variety of topics such as psychology, theology, political philosophy, social justice, and environmental stewardship. The curriculum coordinated by Dr. Syman Stevens, and included a range of respected speakers such as Dr. Os Guiness, Andy and Catherine Crouch, and Curt Thompson. Each fellow was responsible for a year-long independent research project on a subject of their choosing, and a written thesis and multiple supporting essays. Parts of my writing have been published at First Person Scholar (Portfolio)

2007-2011 ABET-accredited Computer Science department headed by Dr. William Birmingham. Advised by Dr. Christiaan Gribble. In addition to classes required for graduation, I pursued additional mathematics classes (Linear Algebra, Statistics Theory), summer research in mathematics and computer graphics (also under Dr. Gribble) published in the Journal of Graphics, GPU, and Game Tools. In addition to my Computer Science and math classes, I studied electives such as Technical Management, Creative Writing, and Fantasy Literature.

Portfolio (RSS)

Review: Back Again from the Broken Land

Playing For Real: Decks to Dust | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Sweatin' Pixels | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Hashtag the World | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Freedom of Choice | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: A Tale of Two Calamities | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Cheap As Free | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Not With a Bang but a Winter | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Slaying Dragons | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Holding Out for a Hero | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Play As You Like | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Gotta Glitch 'Em All | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Reality, Augmented | Haywire Magazine Free to be Useless | First Person Scholar Playing For Real: The Content Factory | Haywire Magazine Playing For Real: Let There Be Play | Haywire Magazine Book Review: Beyond Choices | First Person Scholar

Sheathing the Sword: Akira Kurosawa and the Virtue of Meekness | Christ and Pop Culture Filled, Not Emptied | Trinity Fellows Academy Week 31 Light in the Darkness | Trinity Fellows Academy Weeks 16 and 17 Strengths and Silence | Trinity Fellows Academy Week 3

Integer Ray Tracing | Journal of Graphics, GPU, and Game Tools, vol. 14, no. 4, 2009 Toward Stream Filtered Ray Tracing on a DSP | Poster, ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics High Performance Graphics, June 2010

Tangere Integer Ray Tracer This site by Jesse M. Porch. Valid HTML and CSS.
Photo copyright Karena Dixon. All other content copyright Jesse M. Porch, 2026.