Chelsea Kelly-Reif

Chelsea Kelly-Reif

Engineering leader for government digital services

Director of Engineering, CiviForm · Exygy

I've built and led engineering for benefit applications, a statewide career platform, Medicaid and CHIP reporting to CMS, and California's energy-data filings. I learned the work inside California government, and I still write code.

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Government programs I've led and shaped

What each program is, who it serves, my role, and what the public record shows. Results belong to the teams that built them; my part is stated as scope.

  • Exygy · 2026–present

    CiviForm

    Open-source software that lets a government offer one application for many benefit programs, reusing what an applicant has already entered.

    Who it serves
    Residents applying for benefits from the four city and state governments that run it in production, including Seattle and Arkansas.
    My role
    Director of Engineering since August 2026, leading engineering for the platform. The four-person team ships on a biweekly release train.
    Record
    • In my first month: a security posture audit, cloud cost actuals, delivery metrics, and a team assessment with a staffing recommendation.

  • Coforma · 2022–2026

    MyCareer.NJ.gov

    New Jersey's statewide career and training platform, in English and Spanish: career exploration, training programs with their outcomes, and job search.

    Who it serves
    New Jersey residents exploring careers, comparing training programs, and looking for work.
    My role
    Engineering lead and principal engineer from an early prototype to a statewide service, and primary engineer across its three production codebases.
    Record
    • 1.8 million active users recorded since December 2023.
    • I did the 2023 data modeling that began the state's move to Credential Engine's CTDL standard. Its training programs are live in the Registry today.

  • Coforma · 2025–2026

    Medicaid and CHIP Data Collection Tools (MDCT)

    CMS's open-source suite of seven applications that states and territories use to report Medicaid and CHIP program data.

    Who it serves
    State Medicaid and CHIP agencies reporting to CMS, and the CMS staff who use that data to monitor the programs.
    My role
    I owned engineering for the suite within Coforma's healthcare portfolio: direction, standards, and the conditions for delivery. Feature leads did the hands-on build.
    Record
    • The team took a new CMS Rural Health Transformation application from zero to first production in about eight weeks.
    • All seven applications shipped production releases in 2026 while I led the portfolio.

  • Coforma · 2025–2026

    Medicaid Drug Programs (MDP)

    The CMS system behind the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program. Drug manufacturers report product and pricing data through it, and CMS uses that data to calculate the rebates owed to state Medicaid agencies.

    Who it serves
    About 780 participating drug manufacturers, the state Medicaid agencies that receive the rebates, and CMS.
    My role
    Oversight within the same healthcare portfolio. A partner's technical leads ran implementation.

  • California Energy Commission · 2019–2022

    Data Submission Portal (DSP)

    The Energy Commission's secure, cloud-based portal for filing regulatory energy data, starting with petroleum and quarterly fuel-and-energy reports.

    Who it serves
    Companies that file petroleum and fuel-and-energy reports with the commission, and the analysts behind California's energy-demand forecasts and Integrated Energy Policy Report.
    My role
    Lead Software Engineer. I architected and shipped it on AWS and helped lead the commission's cloud modernization.
    Record
    • The commission later expanded the platform across the agency and into residential solar-permit reporting.

How I lead

I lead managers and senior engineers, and I stay close enough to the architecture to answer for it.

People in my engineering reporting structure at Coforma, with five direct reports, three of them Directors
22
Engineers promoted within that structure, four to Director or Principal
9
Voluntary departures from that structure in three years
3

Practices I put in place

  • Engineering practices for planning, hiring, delivery, and growth across that structure.
  • Accessibility, security, and bilingual parity as part of the release path on MyCareer.NJ.gov, where automated test coverage went from zero to 93–96% and security vulnerabilities fell 94%.
  • Delivery across organizations: a government, research, design, and delivery partnership in New Jersey, and a cloud migration worked through with petroleum operators, power-plant operators, and commission leaders in California.
  • At CiviForm, supervision of two Google.org fellowship workstreams alongside the engineering team.

Read the full leadership record

Public projects I build and run

Independent work on my own time, built in the open on public data. The status beside each one says how far along it is.

Live products

Open-source scorecards and validators

Every project, with its evidence

Working on state or local public technology?

I am glad to talk about public systems, the standards under them, and the evidence behind the claims made for them. I do not take on federal contracting work.

Contact me