Software Engineer & Builder

Ben Makusha

Ben Makusha

Software Engineer, Designer & Creative Thinker

I build robust applications for my day job and explore my fascinations in Machine Learning and AI by night

Career

My Journey

The path that brought me here, one chapter at a time.

2026 - present

Senior Software Engineer

Bloomberg Industry Group (INDG)

As a Senior Software Engineer, I was responsible for the implementation of new features on the workpapers application (bedrock app for Bloomberg Law)

2024 - 2026

Senior Software Engineer

First American Title Insurance

As a Senior Software Engineer, I modernized and scaled core reconciliation systems by increasing throughput from 200 to 5,000 requests per minute via asynchronous SQS processing, applying LLMs to boost reconciliation efficiency by 55%, eliminating database operational costs through platform migrations, and fully automating file matching to remove all manual client intervention.

2023 - 2024

Hiatus

n/a

Taking a break ๐Ÿ–๏ธ

2022 - 2023

Software Engineer II (Data Platform)

Toast Inc.

As part of the Data Platform team, I drove performance, cost, and data-quality improvements by reducing S3/DynamoDB cache latency by 10%, delivering over $800K in annual AWS cost savings, and building scalable financial data ingestion pipelines that powered ML-driven profit margin insights across the Toast restaurant ecosystem.

2020 - 2022

Software Engineer I

GrubHub Inc.

At Grubhub, I led high-impact backend initiatives that improved restaurant autonomy and platform reliability | Streamlining order processing to boost throughput by 80%, building shared data infrastructure, ensuring tax compliance at scale, and supporting production systems through a multi-service on-call rotation.

2017 - 2020

Software Developer - Java

American Well

Explored the consumer market by joining a telehealth company that offered provider services to users like you and myself anywhere, any place, anytime via mobile or web. I delivered user-facing and platform improvements by resolving over 95% of customer feature requests, modernizing the web client with a ReactJS migration that cut page rendering time by 30%, building a Twilio-powered IVR that increased visit intake by 28%, and optimizing Lucene search to improve query response times by 40%.

2014 - 2017

Junior Software Engineer

General Electric

My first job in engineering and I was designing and builing my first API microservices for industrial companies.

Portfolio

Selected Work

Projects I've built, designed, or contributed to.

Incomatic iOS AppFeatured
iOSSwiftSwiftUI

Incomatic iOS App

A U.S. and U.K. take-home pay calculator for iOS. The app allows users to enter their earnings and accounting for federal and state tax, with pre-tax benefits; returns a breakdown showing exactly how your gross pay looks like after those deductions.

Beyond Work

Things I Love

What keeps me curious, creative, and grounded.

โšฝ๏ธ

Manchester United

I love that I support the greatest football club in the world! I'm a diehard United fan and travel to Old Trafford whenever I can from the Americas. I'm a true Mancunian at โค๏ธ

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Travel

I love to travel and finding enriching experiences in different parts of the world is invigorating and humbling! Just know if I have enough PTO days, I'm off to country that tickles my fancy.

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Formula One

I love to watch Formula One and enjoying taking in the drivers on the grid. My favorite constructors team is Ferrari and I'm a huge supporter for Lewis Hamilton.

Writing

Latest Thoughts

Generallnkd.in โ†—
Nov 14, 2026ยท5 min read

I attended AfroTech

What an incredible week at AFROTECH! As a first-timer, I was deeply inspired by the sessions on AI product engineering, data visualization, and building at scale. Hearing from leaders like Stacey Abrams and Andrew Yang made the experience even more unforgettable. Connecting with such a visionary community has reinvigorated my ambition in tech. I cannot wait for the next one!

Read on lnkd.in โ†—
Get in Touch

Let's Create Something

Whether you have a project in mind, want to collaborate, or just want to say hi โ€” I'd love to hear from you.

Say hello โ†’