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.

Get in touchSee the programs

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 governments that run it in production: Seattle, Charlotte, Bloomington, and Arkansas.
    My role
    Director of Engineering since August 2026. I manage four direct reports, own the team’s reviews, releases, and client relationships, and own CiviForm’s engineering relationship with Seattle, Charlotte, Bloomington, and Arkansas.
    Record
    • Stepped into the critical path on the two features governments most needed: scored answers, and repeating sections for household members.
    • Set up a security process that cleared a backlog of vulnerability reports and got the fixes to every government.
    • Gave leadership its first measured picture of engineering delivery and cost, and turned the new business direction into a staffed engineering plan.
    • Direct the Google.org Fellows building tools that let a government see CiviForm working with its own programs, starting with a demo generator that is running now.

  • Coforma · 2022–2026

    MyCareer.NJ.gov

    New Jersey's statewide career and training platform, in English and Spanish. Three connected tools: Training Explorer to compare approved programs and their outcomes, Career Navigator to turn a résumé into personalized directions, and Career Pathways to map a career in a growing industry. Around them: the In-Demand Occupations list, support services, and tuition assistance and training funding.

    Who it serves
    New Jersey residents exploring careers, comparing training programs, and looking for work.
    My role
    Engineering lead for the project, with Fearless as prime contractor. Principal engineer from an early prototype to a statewide service, and primary engineer across its three production codebases.
    Record
    • 1.8 million active users since December 2023. About 26,000 people use it every month, according to Fearless's case study.
    • Won the Labor Market Information Institute's 2026 Best State LMI award for New Jersey's Department of Labor, and was a 2025 NASWA Workforce Innovation Awards nominee. Both recognize the project, not me personally.
    • Launched by Governor Murphy in March 2024 and backed by a statewide ad campaign, with coverage in Fast Company, Harvard's Project on Workforce, and the Royal Statistical Society's Real World Data Science.
    • Career Pathways shipped under my engineering leadership, and I did the 2023 data modeling that began the state's move to Credential Engine's CTDL standard.

  • 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. The team cut the rebate calculation cycle from two weeks to a three-day production run, built the enforcement tools for CMS’s 2024 drug-misclassification rule, and is moving the annual Drug Utilization Review survey into the application.

  • 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.

Practices I put in place

  • At CiviForm, four direct reports, the team’s reviews, releases, and client relationships, and direction of the Google.org Fellows.
  • At CiviForm, a security process with a private reporting channel, a fix process, and a named owner, and the first measured picture of engineering delivery and cost.
  • Previously, at Coforma (2022–2026): engineering practices for planning, hiring, delivery, and growth across my engineering organization.
  • Previously, 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%.
  • Previously, 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.

Read the full leadership record

Public projects I build and run

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

Public data products

Open-source scorecards and validators

Everyday apps and sites

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