Hi, I'm Travis Allen. I'm a Staff Engineer specializing in distributed systems, high-throughput data pipelines, and infrastructure observability. I was a founding engineer at Gala Games, where I've spent six years building the platform infrastructure that processes nearly a million orders for 4 million users.
My work spans backend systems, AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes cluster administration, and observability tooling, including migrating our stack from Datadog to a self-hosted OpenTelemetry/OpenObserve solution. I also build AI-assisted tools in my own time, including a RAG pipeline that automates job fit evaluation against live postings.
Before software engineering, I spent a decade in leadership in the airline industry and served seven years in the Army National Guard. Both shaped how I operate under pressure and communicate across teams.
When I'm not coding, you can find me spending time with my wife and two daughters, rolling dice in D&D campaigns, perfecting BBQ recipes, jamming on my guitar, or working out in my home gym.