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seanhelvey/README.md

Sean Helvey

Software engineer with fifteen years of experience, mostly in Python and Django on Google Cloud.

For the past five years I've been the lead developer at Koinonia Family Services, maintaining the Django application social workers use to care for foster families. It supports thousands of placements and roughly 200,000 days of care a year. The application runs on Kubernetes and App Engine, and I manage EHR integrations, HIPAA compliance, and the GitLab CI/CD pipeline I built to test and deploy it.

I'm looking for my next role now, somewhere mission-driven where software helps people or the planet: climate, health, education, social services, civic tech. I'm open to any awesome humans doing good things. Please feel free to reach out!

What I work with

  • In production now: Python, Django, JavaScript, jQuery, PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud (GKE, App Engine, Tasks), GitLab CI/CD, LLM agent harnesses (Claude Code, Copilot)
  • In production earlier: React, Vue, Angular, Node.js, Go, Flask, Jupyter, pandas
  • On side projects: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Strawberry GraphQL, TypeScript, RAG (embeddings, hybrid search, reranking, evals)

Open source

I've contributed to Django itself. Lately my time has gone into writing and small projects of my own.

Most of my work is closed source, but here are some public repos:

  • Secondhand Plastic (source) matches secondhand food containers with people who'll use them, instead of the bin. Server-rendered FastAPI and Jinja2 on Supabase Postgres, no frontend build step.
  • The Mullet Stack (source) is a field guide to wiring modern Python and JavaScript together, built around one feature shipped across both. The frontend's types are generated from the backend's OpenAPI schema, so the two ends can't drift. FastAPI, Pydantic, React, TypeScript, Vitest.
  • RAG in context (source) is a notebook refreshing my own understanding of retrieval-augmented generation and connecting it to the older ideas it rests on: searching by meaning and by keyword, why you want both, rank fusion, a reranker, and 18 labelled questions to check the whole thing against. No API keys, runs offline on a laptop.
  • whos-got-the-ball tracks current owner, pending action, and handoff history for clean energy contracts. Flask, SQLAlchemy, Strawberry GraphQL, React, TypeScript.
  • coloft is an events calendar for a Humboldt collective, a static site with a JSON-driven build and test pipeline.
  • playground is a habit tracker in Go and SQLite, installable as a PWA, deploying itself to Fly.io.

Outside of code

I like helping people feel welcome in communities. I founded Central Coast Python, co-chaired contribution sprints at DjangoCon US in 2025, and co-organized BoulderJS before that. Earlier I spent two years as a lead instructor at Galvanize.

I'm a surfer, meditator, and permaculture practitioner. I earned a certification in abundant food forests at OAEC and completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training.

me@seanhelvey.com · seanhelvey.com · LinkedIn · Bluesky · Mastodon · Goodreads

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  1. mullet-stack mullet-stack Public

    JavaScript in the front, Python in the back — a short field guide to modern Python and JavaScript, backed by a working FastAPI + React app.

    HTML 4

  2. secondhandplastic secondhandplastic Public

    Neighborhood marketplace for passing on used food containers instead of binning them. Server-rendered FastAPI + Jinja2, Postgres, no build step.

    Python

  3. rag-in-context rag-in-context Public

    A refresher on retrieval-augmented generation, connected to the older ideas behind it. Runs offline, no API keys.

    Jupyter Notebook

  4. whos-got-the-ball whos-got-the-ball Public

    Who has the ball on a clean-energy contract? Tracks the current owner, the pending action, and the full handoff history. Flask · SQLAlchemy · Strawberry GraphQL · React · TypeScript.

    Python

  5. coloft coloft Public

    Community events calendar for a Humboldt collective, static site with a JSON-driven build and test pipeline

    HTML

  6. playground playground Public

    Habit tracker (Go, SQLite, PWA) with a daily-log to weekly-check-in flywheel, auto-deploys to Fly.io

    Go