Jay Michels

Born and raised in Overland Park, KS I've always had a strong passion for sofware and technology. I picked up web design from a young age to build websites for most of my hobbies from magic to school clubs. As I grew up, I used those skills in a more entrepreneurial approach by building websites and doing computer/network/iPhone repair for a variety of companies and individuals throughout KC.

My passion for entrepreneurship and technology led me to the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln) where I attained my degree in computer science. The knowledge and skills gained there opened the doors to many valuable career experiences.

After graduating, I gained valuable software leadership and development experience at an ecommerce startup called Spreetail in Lincoln, NE. I've since moved back to the KC area to continue my career as a software engineer. I spent a couple of years as an engineer and squad leader at a small and innovative bank named nbkc. While there I helped with a variety of projects, but I took most pride in my efforts to build effective onboarding applications that customers used to quickly and easily apply for loans and bank accounts. My passion to learn new things has since led me to my current role at Sifted. At Sifted, I’ve taken on a more senior role in the data ingestion team where I’ve assisted with a company merger, deployed production Node.JS and .NET applications, gained more architecture experience with cloud service providers (AWS), and really helped drive planning and decision making within the team.

All in all, my time as a software engineer has been a whirlwind of technical and personal growth. I'm both a better developer and leader since this journey all began. Yet, I continue pushing myself to make a bigger impact all the time. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you think you can help me continue on this path!