Full stack — POS back-office

AshyrHelton

I write the back-office configuration systems behind point-of-sale in 100,000+ seat stadiums and arenas — software venue staff configure and rely on, not something fans in the stands ever see, and it has to be right anyway. Most days I'm the only engineer on the team in a US timezone.

Role
Full Stack Software Engineer
At
MyVenue
Based
Clearwater, FL
Ashyr Helton, Full Stack Software Engineer

02 / The system

What actually runs behind the register

Every point-of-sale terminal in a venue runs off configuration nobody in the stands ever thinks about — pricing, menus, tax rules, hardware mappings — and it has to hold up the moment gates open at a 100,000+ seat stadium. There's no maintenance window mid-event: the terminals need to be right before doors, and the sales data feeding back has to stay accurate in real time while thousands of transactions run concurrently.

I build and maintain the pieces that make that possible — the application logic driving configuration, the queries that keep live sales numbers trustworthy under load, and the cloud infrastructure it all runs on, provisioned and versioned rather than hand-maintained, so a bad deploy or a dead node doesn't become a multi-hour incident during a sold-out show. As the only engineer on the team working US hours, that responsibility doesn't stop at code review — it's disaster recovery late at night, technical calls with clients who need an answer now, and travel on short notice when a venue needs someone on-site.

100,000+ seats · real-time load · zero downtime tolerance

03 / Work

Six years, one arc

  1. Jun 2024 — present

    Full Stack Software Engineer

    MyVenue — Hybrid — mostly remote

    On the back-office configuration engineering team for a POS company that runs some of the world’s most renowned stadiums and arenas. Upgraded an aging .NET application — C# backend, Angular frontend, SQL Server / BigQuery / Firebase — and wrote the SQL and BigQuery queries that surface real-time sales data across large-scale venue databases without tipping over performance or load. Manage infrastructure across AWS, Google Cloud, Firebase, Cloudflare, and Buddy via Terraform. As the only engineer on the team based in the US, day-to-day work also means owning infra during off-hours, running technical calls with US clients, disaster recovery when it comes up, and travel on short notice.

  2. May 2021 — Jun 2024

    Point of Sale Technician

    Point of Sale Upgrades — Travel

    Contracted across multiple POS companies for installation and on-site event support — mostly large arenas and stadiums, some restaurant deployments. Trained venue staff on hardware and software under live-event time pressure.

  3. 2018 — 2024

    Vice President

    H&S Builders — Springfield, IL

    Ran a family-owned construction business — client relations, hiring and managing staff, and the books.

  4. 2018 — present

    Custom Computer Technician

    Self-employed — Clearwater, FL

    Full-package custom PC builds and tuning for clients, balancing aesthetics against getting the hardware to its actual ceiling.

  5. 2016 — 2019

    Pro Shop Assistant

    Countryside Country Club — Clearwater, FL

    Merchandise sales, tee-time management, and customer service alongside the head golf pro.

  6. 2015 — 2016

    Database Specialist

    Illinois Association of Park Districts — Springfield, IL

    Digitized decades of physical records into managed databases — Microsoft Access at the simple end, MySQL and Oracle for the rest.

04 / Projects

Off the clock

  1. 01 / 06

    Matching-algorithm dating app

    Full stack build with a matching algorithm comparable to what the major dating platforms run — frontend, backend, and the scoring logic in between.

    • React
    • TypeScript
    • C#
  2. 02 / 06

    x86 OS feature development

    Feature and custom driver work on x86-based operating systems, down at the level where you’re debugging against the hardware, not a framework.

    • C
    • C++
    • x86
  3. 03 / 06

    Self-hosted homelab

    Linux services hosted from home, exposed securely over Tailscale, run in Docker containers and orchestrated with Kubernetes at small scale.

    • Linux
    • Docker
    • Kubernetes
    • Tailscale
  4. 04 / 06

    3D graphics from scratch

    Scenes built by hand in OpenGL — matrices, shaders, the pipeline — plus modeled and rendered scenes in Blender.

    • OpenGL
    • C++
    • Blender
  5. 05 / 06

    SimpleHealthBar

    A Minecraft plugin, one of several mods and plugins built in Java over the years for fun.

    • Java
    • Minecraft
  6. 06 / 06

    Custom PC builds & tuning

    Ongoing side business — full custom builds tuned to a client’s actual workload, not just parts that look good in a case.

    • Hardware
    • Client work

05 / Stack

Drawing legend

Frontend

TypeScript · JavaScript · React · Angular · HTML · CSS

Backend

C# · .NET · Java · C / C++ · Python

Data

SQL Server · BigQuery · Firebase · MySQL · Oracle · XQuery

Infra

Terraform · AWS · Google Cloud · Cloudflare · Docker · Kubernetes · Buddy

06 / Education

  • B.A. Computer Science

    University of Colorado — Boulder, CO

    2019 — 2024

  • Associate of Arts

    St. Petersburg College — Clearwater, FL

    2018 — 2019

  • Diploma, engineering magnet

    East Lake High School — Tarpon Springs, FL

    2018 · 3rd in class GPA rankings

Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) · Autodesk Inventor CAD Specialist