Liza Moran
Murrysville,PA
Summary
- Accomplished Staff Engineer specializing in backend development and microservice architecture.
- Transitioning from a successful career as a pastry chef has fostered a unique blend of creativity and analytical thinking, enabling a fast-rising engineering career over the past six years.
- A strong foundation in engineering principles complements a people-centric approach and entrepreneurial mindset, focused on building resilient systems and high-performing teams that excel under pressure.
- Applies real-world product design and delivery experience to creating enterprise-wide development standards and practices as a founding member of a six-person architecture team.
- Committed to driving innovation and efficiency, ensuring every project meets or exceeds expectations.
Overview
6
6
years of professional experience
Work History
Staff Engineer
Computer Services, Inc
Remote
03.2023 - Current
- Technical lead and application architect for two development squads, managing nine open banking microservices and over thirty legacy core banking applications.
- Sets company wide development standards as founding member of the API Guild. Builds proofs of concept, internal development tools, and writes comprehensive and clear documentation.
- Facilitates onboarding, training, and professional development for new hires and junior developers through mentorship, code reviews, and targeted skills development.
- Completed multiple third party FinTech integrations including Plaid, Zelle, and FDX with deposits, lending, investment, and payment applications.
- Championed automated unit and functional testing initiative within new YAML CI/CD pipeline templates, replacing manual deployment and testing processes with automation.
- Coordinated redesign and execution of Identity Server and MFA integration with core banking platform to meet PCI auditing standards under tight deadlines.
- Collaborated with SecOps, DevOps, DBAs, and third-party SaaS support to establish a unified PCI logging and auditing framework across the enterprise.
- Led team to secure second place in 2025 hackathon competition, using automation and AI solutions to tackle tech debt and modernization.
Software Engineer III
Computer Services, Inc
Remote
01.2022 - 03.2023
- Worked on Cloud Transformation initiative to redesign legacy, on-premises applications into containerized, event-driven, cloud hosted microservices.
- Explored new technologies and presented findings to senior leadership and key stakeholders to support informed decision-making.
- Analyzed system architecture and planned enhancements to improve scalability and reliability of services.
Software Developer
PNC Bank
Pittsburgh, PA
03.2021 - 01.2022
- Backend Java developer in the Account Opening Platform Center of Excellence
- Managed the Platform Stability team working to minimize business disruptions through careful planning, improved error handling and logging, synthetic monitoring, self-healing, and vulnerability remediation
- Owned the transition of twelve retail banking development teams from legacy architecture to microservices using a new Jenkins CI/CD pipeline and PNC's internal development toolkit to adhere to organization and industry standards
- Trained new developers on the GitOps workflow, trunk based development, CI and CD repository setup, automated deployments of Java full-stack applications involving Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, MongoDB, and other technologies via OpenShift, Jenkins, Docker, and Artifactory
- Helped maintain and improve roughly two dozen high traffic, RESTful applications used in the account opening workflow for twelve retail banking products
- Supported product teams having trouble with core services in lower environments and during production releases
Software Developer Associate
PNC Bank
Pittsburgh, PA
08.2020 - 03.2021
- Full Stack developer using Java and Angular in the API Center of Excellence which specializes in microservices, standards creation and enforcement
- Built and maintained development tools consumed internally by other PNC software developers, including a drift management system, custom support intake forms, a project generator, and a synthetic monitor management tool
- Wrote documentation on internal tools and PNC best practices and methodologies including Dynatrace synthetic monitoring, Dredd contract testing, error handling and logging standards, and migrating from a custom OAuth 2.0 solution to Ping Identity
- Rewrote a legacy service as a BIAN-compliant microservice that serves an average of 18 million requests each day
- Proposed a solution to an architectural design conflict between service layers to senior leadership which was successfully implemented in roughly fifty applications
- Supported other PNC developers through pair programming and training sessions as they used the internal toolkit created by the API Center of Excellence
Education
Certificate -
Tech Elevator
Pittsburgh, PAAssociate of Arts -
The Restaurant School At Walnut Hill College
Philadelphia, PACoursework in Biology -
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MASkills
- Object-Oriented Programming - C#, NET, Java, Spring Boot
- Microservice Architecture
- Event-Driven Design
- Web Development - RESTful APIs, Swagger, OpenAPI, SOAP
- Containerization - Docker, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, Azure Cloud, AKS, Azure Container Apps
- CI/CD Pipeline Automation - Azure, Jenkins, Groovy, YAML
- Monitoring and Resilience - Dynatrace, App Insights, Splunk, ELK Stack
- NoSql - MongoDB, CosmosDb
- Relational Databases - SQL, PostgreSQL
- Access Control - OAuth 20, IdentityServer, OpenId Connect, RBAC, Entrald, JWT, Ping
- Front-End Development - JavaScript, Vuejs, Angular, HTML
- Vulnerability Management - Veracode, Archer
- Testing - Functional, Unit, Integration, Contract, Mutation
- FinTech and Open Banking - FDX, BIAN, Plaid, Zelle
Timeline
Staff Engineer
Computer Services, Inc
03.2023 - Current
Software Engineer III
Computer Services, Inc
01.2022 - 03.2023
Software Developer
PNC Bank
03.2021 - 01.2022
Software Developer Associate
PNC Bank
08.2020 - 03.2021
Certificate -
Tech Elevator
Associate of Arts -
The Restaurant School At Walnut Hill College
Coursework in Biology -
Boston College
Additional Experience
- 6+ years of retail sales management experience
- 6+ years in professional kitchens, including 4 years in leadership roles
- Responsible for training new hires on all operations and procedures
- Wrote new POS training guides for two stores
- Conducted cooking classes and product demonstrations
- Coached staff in sales techniques and product training to maximize store profitability
- Managed up to 15 employees per shift in fast paced kitchens and retail outlets
- Ran a customer outreach program using proprietary CRM software
- Used Sales-i CRM software queries to maximize sales and retain customers
- Managed accounts receivable for 20+ food service establishments as Chef's Warehouse sales associate