Alex Volcy
Senior Software Engineer
Specializing in back-end development and distributed systems at scale. Currently building event-driven payment infrastructure at Capital One. Previously at Microsoft and AT&T
About
I've been a Software Engineer for 6 years. Early on, I was heads-down completing tickets without much context, shipping code without really understanding the business behind it. That changed at Capital One, where I got a more intimate exposure to systems at scale. Once I understood what it meant to build infrastructure that handles millions of requests and billions of dollars in transactions daily, I was hooked. I became more intentional about my work, speaking up in sprint planning, seeking out high-impact projects, and always asking why. I also have a cat named Coco.
Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Capital One
Oct 2024 – Present • New York, NY
- ▹Lead engineer on Wire payments infrastructure processing $1B+ in daily transaction volume, built on Apache Kafka and AWS to support high-throughput payment pipelines at scale
- ▹Led development of a Business Rules Engine and API that introduced a configurable validation stage into the event-driven Wire processing flow, enabling teams to dynamically pause processing for specific payment channels
- ▹Orchestrated a security overhaul across Wire services, migrating 30+ credentials from HashiCorp Vault to AWS Secrets Manager across 6 production APIs, centralizing secret management and enabling automatic rotation
- ▹Led DevOps practices for Wire Services, establishing a CD pipeline for weekly zero-downtime deployments with real-time observability. Serve as monthly on-call engineer, triaging alerts and resolving production incidents.
Software Engineer
Microsoft
Jun 2022 – Sep 2024 • New York, NY
- ▹Contributed to Prebid Server, the open-source server-side ad auction engine powering real-time header bidding at 100,000+ requests per second across web, mobile, and CTV
- ▹Optimized GZIP compression of outbound bid requests using Go Sync Pools, reducing memory allocation by 99.9% and cutting average operation time from ~100ms to ~15ms
- ▹Maintained and contributed to ad infrastructure powering MSN.com, one of the web's highest-traffic default homepages, including a security refactor of the MSX ad auction platform that upgraded 10+ vulnerable dependencies to eliminate platform-wide vulnerabilities
Software Engineer
AT&T (Xandr)
Mar 2020 – Jun 2022 • Los Angeles, CA
- ▹Software Engineer on the ad tech team (later acquired by Microsoft), contributing to Prebid Server
- ▹Implemented integration type propagation across auction, event, and vtrack endpoints, enabling publishers to pass and default integration metadata through the full auction pipeline
- ▹Served as Co-Programs Lead for the Black Resource Group at Xandr, coordinating an Art Showcase featuring works from Black artists
Projects
SetMate
iOS application providing real-time professional tennis scores, player statistics, betting odds, and live win probabilities
- ▹Developed and launched SetMate, an iOS application providing real-time professional tennis scores, player statistics, betting odds, and live win probabilities for ATP, WTA, and Grand Slam tournaments
- ▹Built full-stack application using Swift/SwiftUI frontend with Python Flask backend and PostgreSQL database, deployed on AWS infrastructure achieving 50+ downloads in first week post-launch
- ▹Led cross-functional team of 3 (designer and engineer), managing end-to-end product development from conception to App Store release in August 2025