A profile picture of Alex Bair smiling and wearing glasses.

Alex Bair

A profile picture of Alex Bair smiling and wearing glasses.

I'm a full stack software engineer with experience in JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, PostgreSQL, and React. I leverage my engineering and project management backgrounds to deconstruct complex problems and drive them to resolution.

When I'm not at the computer, I bake (usually tasty) cookies and lift (not usually heavy) weights.

Most recently, I built Willow, an open-source framework for creating change data capture pipelines.

Willow

Willow is an open-source, self-hosted framework for building log-based change data capture pipelines that update caches in near real-time based on changes in a database.

Willow abstracts away the complexity of setting up and configuring open-source tools like Debezium and Apache Kafka. Utilizing log-based change data capture, Willow non-invasively monitors changes in a user's PostgreSQL database and reflects those row-level changes in a user's Redis cache. Without requiring in-depth technical knowledge and expertise, data pipelines can be created or deleted using Willow's web user interface, simplifying setup and teardown.

Willow's architecture.

Other Projects

A screenshot of the Whirlpool user interface.

Whirlpool

Request Bin clone for collecting and debugging webhooks.

JavaScript, Express, React, MongoDB, Socket.io
A screenshot of the Media Watchlist user interface.

Media Watchlist

Web app for tracking media across streaming platforms.

Ruby, Sinatra, PostgreSQL, HTML/CSS