· 4 min read
Conflicted about using AI
I want to be proud of what I build, but I couldn't have built this site in a day without Claude. Here's how I'm making peace with that.
- ai
- claude
- career
- opinion
Montréal, QC
Michel Georges Najarian
Full-Stack Software Engineer
I build customer-facing web platforms and the services behind them. Currently at Arctic Wolf.
About
Full-stack software engineer with 5+ years building customer-facing web platforms and the backend services behind them in React, Angular, TypeScript and Go. At Arctic Wolf I redesigned the core threat-investigation workflows in the portal used by 10,000+ organizations and am helping launch its replacement, Aurora. Before that I grew from Frontend Developer to Lead Developer at Nintex, building recruiting software integrated with Workday, Taleo and PeopleSoft.
Languages
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Go
- PHP
- C
- HTML
- CSS
Frontend
- React
- Angular
- MUI
- Bootstrap
- Vite
- Nx monorepos
- Component libraries
- Playwright
- React Testing Library
- ESLint
Backend & data
- Node.js (Koa)
- REST and SOAP APIs
- Microservices
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- DynamoDB
- GORM
- Hibernate
Cloud & DevOps
- AWS (Lambda, Cognito, API Gateway, DynamoDB)
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD
- Snyk
- Git
Education
Georgia Institute of Technology
MS, Computer Science (part-time)
Starting Jan 2027
University of Waterloo
BASc, Computer Engineering
Honours, Co-operative Program, Graduated with Distinction
2016 – 2022
Experience
Arctic Wolf
Security operations platform protecting 10,000+ organizations · Waterloo, ON (remote)
- Developer IISep 2024 – Present
- Redesigned the Tickets, Security Investigations and Custom Alerts pages of the customer portal used by 10,000+ organizations.
- Rebuilt the alert investigation view and cut urgent production pages to on-call engineers by 70%+, from 5–8 per week to 2 or fewer.
- Security Champion: fixed 300+ high and critical dependency vulnerabilities and raised test coverage from ~80% to 98% with Playwright component tests.
- React
- TypeScript
- Go
- MUI
- Nx
- Playwright
- Snyk
Nintex
Recruiting software, via the acquisitions of Inflight and Skuid · Kitchener, ON (remote)
- Lead Software DeveloperNov 2022 – Sep 2024
- Frontend DeveloperJan 2021 – Nov 2022
- Led an Angular job application app connected to employers’ HR systems (Workday, Taleo), used by 20+ large employers to process 10,000+ applications a month.
- Built a mobile-friendly Angular front end over PeopleSoft’s dated hiring pages, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA, plus serverless AWS backends (Cognito, Lambda, DynamoDB).
- Promoted to Lead in under 2 years and mentored 4 junior developers.
- Angular
- TypeScript
- Node.js (Koa)
- AWS Lambda
- Cognito
- DynamoDB
Earlier experience
International Financial Data Services (IFDS) · Architecture R&D Full-Stack Developer (internship)
Toronto, ON · Sep 2019 – Dec 2019
- Built proofs of concept with Angular, Spring Boot and PostgreSQL running in Kubernetes containers.
- Designed and built the backend, RESTful APIs and web portal, including the database structure and change auditing.
- Presented the finished proofs of concept to stakeholders and clients.
Angular · Spring Boot · PostgreSQL · Kubernetes
Government of Canada, Health Canada · Software Developer
Ottawa, ON · Jan 2019 – Apr 2019
- Converted MATLAB code to C++ and wrote Fortran simulators and analyzers for radiation and cosmic-ray data.
- Built a user interface for choosing simulation parameters.
C++ · MATLAB · Fortran
SITAONAIR · Full Stack Developer, OSS/BSS team (2 internships)
Montréal, QC · May 2017 – Dec 2017 · May 2018 – Aug 2018
- Refactored a PHP web service backend, cutting processing time by 50%, and fixed SQL injection vulnerabilities with prepared statements.
- Updated an old web app with JavaScript and jQuery, decreasing load times by 70%, and built a modern UI with Bootstrap.
PHP · JavaScript · jQuery · Bootstrap · SQL
Projects
- My personal site: a statically exported Next.js app with shadcn/ui and Tailwind CSS, deployed to GitHub Pages with a preview of the latest changes.
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- shadcn/ui
- Our University of Waterloo ECE capstone: a smart ring that monitors biometrics and sends readings over Bluetooth Low Energy to a phone. I led the React Native app (Redux, native Bluetooth module) and built the AWS backend for accounts and data storage.
- C
- BLE
- React Native
- Redux
- AWS
- Recursively renames the episode files in a TV series folder into clean show and season folders, matching them against The Movie Database (TMDb) API.
- Java
- Maven
- TMDb API