Hey!
Who am I?
I'm Tristen, a software engineering student at RIT graduating Dec 2026. I'm currently at M&T Bank building a Java test orchestration platform from scratch. I care a lot about process and ethics in software. The why behind what we build is really important to me, and I want to make sure that what we build is accessible to all kinds of people, is maintainable, and secure.
Outside of that: I am a cat dad of two, have a Rimworld habit that I couldn't be paid a million dollars to break, do amateur photography, and pretty much any craft I can get my hands on.
Industry Experience
I've interned at a few places while at RIT, including:
M&T Bank — Buffalo, NY
Software Engineering InternBenco Dental — Virtual
Frontend Software InternInnovative Systems, Inc. — Pittsburgh, PA
Full-Stack Software InternM&T Bank — Buffalo, NY
Frontend Software InternCasey K. HQ — Virtual
Web DeveloperM&T Bank — Buffalo, NY
Technology InternProjects
Contrax
Senior Project with MindexSenior capstone with Mindex as sponsor. React Native fantasy football app where I'm PM and frontend dev. Restructured how we broke down tasks and doubled sprint velocity. Also refactored a messy legacy frontend and wrote a Go script to seed test users for stakeholder demos.
Undergrad research project for WGST-225 looking at citational bias in avian behavioral biology. Built citation network graphs from 105 papers using the Semantic Scholar API, NetworkX, and ForceAtlas2. Found the same-sex behavior literature was notably less connected, with the most-cited paper being a review calling for more data.
Personal Website
Personal ProjectMy personal portfolio site, built in SvelteKit with Tailwind and GT Walsheim. Still a work in progress.
Slack-Discord Bridge
Personal ProjectMirrors messages between a Slack channel and a Discord channel in both directions, in real time. Three separate processes (Slack listener, Discord bot, Flask server) running in parallel to relay messages across platforms.
Contact
I'm graduating Dec 2026 and looking for full-time roles. Feel free to reach out!