MyCareer.NJ.gov: evidence for the next move
I led engineering from a 400-file prototype into a bilingual statewide decision service, built its program-level evidence, and led Credential Engine and CTDL interoperability.
Chelsea Kelly-Reif
Engineering leader for state and local public technology
I learned this work inside California government and carried it into statewide workforce services, transit data, housing, energy, utilities, and social services. I lead teams, set architecture, and write code for public systems that make decisions clearer and leave people with more agency.
Selected work
Social services, energy, and utilities
Resident services, caregiver background checks, regulatory energy data, certification workflows, licensing, and claims systems.
GTFS Scorecard (opens in a new tab)
Plain-language quality scorecards for more than 1,100 public GTFS feeds, drawn from a curated registry of more than 1,600 feed records concentrated in the United States and Canada with reviewed cohorts across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. It prioritizes rider-facing fixes, scores realtime only when a usable feed is configured, and publishes a read API, GitHub Action, and read-only MCP server. Feed records are not necessarily distinct agencies.
Permit Bearings: know the path in
I designed and deployed a California housing-permitting prototype that screens a bounded statewide ADU, JADU, and SB 9 baseline across 541 recognized jurisdictions and produces a printable handoff for local staff. Woodland remains the deep synthetic packet fixture; no applicant, planner, or jurisdiction has validated it.
Habitable: keep the repair trail in tenants’ hands
I designed and built a working local-first alpha that turns conditions, repair requests, responses, and captured media into a source-aware repair trail and deliberate review copy—without a project-operated tenant-case database. It has only synthetic examples and is not ready for real legal matters.
About
Leadership scale without losing the technical thread.
I came up inside California government and later led a 22-person engineering structure through three Directors. I’m looking for state, local, or mission-forward public-interest work where organizational leadership and hands-on technical judgment both matter. I am not considering federal contracting roles.
Writing
Notes from the work: engineering leadership, accessibility, public systems, and AI people can inspect.
Staying close without becoming the bottleneck
I moved from principal engineer to managing managers without wanting to leave the architecture behind. The harder lesson was how to stay accountable without making myself the route every important decision had to travel.
The score was the easy part
I built GTFS Scorecard to turn transit-data findings into repairs. It taught me that civic technology earns trust through explicit judgment, honest unknowns, preserved evidence, and proof that a change reached the source.
A new job title does not erase what you built
A career pivot cannot launder surveillance and military-AI work into moral authority or create a claim on anyone’s trust.
Hiring for state or local public technology?
I’m also open to mission-forward public-interest organizations. I am not considering federal contracting roles.