Chelsea Kelly-Reif

Senior Director of Engineering

Chelsea Kelly-Reif

I build public-interest technology — in workforce and health — that people can trust, and the teams that sustain it.

For a decade I've built secure, accessible, high-impact public services — inside government and as a partner to it.

Davis, California · Remote / Hybrid

About

I'm a Senior Director of Engineering at Coforma, an 8(a)/SDVOSB civic-technology firm, where I lead a 53-person engineering organization — behind more than $100M in awarded federal contracts — and own the company-wide healthcare portfolio. As engineering business-development lead I helped win $74M in a single year at a 70%+ rate, and through a period of company-wide change my teams stayed and grew, with eight engineers promoted into senior and leadership roles. I still own architecture end to end.

I've been the engineering lead and principal engineer for MyCareer.NJ since day one — New Jersey's statewide workforce platform, used by 1.7 million residents, and the state's first major workforce modernization in over twenty years. It's a connected, fully bilingual suite spanning career-change recommendations, a 3,800-program training explorer, industry pathways, a statewide job board, and support services, and it's been recognized by Fast Company, the Harvard Kennedy School's Project on Workforce, and the Royal Statistical Society. On it I took a 400-file prototype to a ~330K-line production system and independently designed and built a six-branch applied-AI portfolio on AWS Bedrock — including a grounded, proof-of-concept career coach that can't invent a program, a price, or a promise. A fifty-state scan found no equivalent.

On the health side, my teams own the CMS systems states use to report Medicaid and CHIP data — covering programs that serve tens of millions of beneficiaries — and I lead Coforma's specialization in FHIR and health-data interoperability. It pairs with the workforce side through one throughline: standards-based, open data — CTDL for credentials, FHIR for health — so public-sector data stays comparable and portable instead of trapped in silos. I came up inside California state government — at CDSS, the Energy Commission, and the CPUC — building for residents before I ever did it as a vendor, and that public-servant lens still drives how I work.

What I'm looking for

I'm an engineering leader and people manager who has spent a decade building public-interest technology — leading a 53-person organization behind $100M+ in federal health contracts today, and before that architecting California's energy, utilities, and social-services systems. Here's the kind of work I want next, and the range I'm open to.

The role

  • Engineering people-management leadership — VP, Head of Engineering, Director, or Senior/Principal Engineering Manager. I lead and grow engineers, and I stay close to the architecture.
  • Open to lateral moves and even a slight step down in title or scope. What's non-negotiable is that the role is engineering people management and leadership — that's the work I'm best at and care most about.

Where I want to do it

  • Sustainability, energy, climate, and utilities — I architected California’s energy-data and utilities-regulation platforms (the CEC’s AWS Data Submission Portal, the MAEDbS appliance-efficiency system, and the CPUC’s carrier and telecom-access portals), and I’d love to return to climate- and energy-impact work.
  • Public health, Medicaid, and health-data interoperability — FHIR, the CMS MDCT and Medicaid Drug Programs portfolios, and systems serving tens of millions of beneficiaries.
  • Civic tech, workforce, and economic mobility — statewide platforms like MyCareer.NJ.gov that residents actually rely on, and grounded, responsible AI in public services.
  • Public safety and social services — mission-critical government systems like the ones I built at CDSS: caregiver registries, criminal background checks, and benefits delivery.

If your mission lives in any of these areas — or somewhere adjacent — and you want an engineering leader who grows people and stays close to the work, I'd like to talk.

Get in touch

Experience

  1. Apr 2025 – Present

    Remote

    Senior Director of Engineering

    at Coforma

    I lead a 53-person engineering organization (grown from 39; 22 direct reports from Directors to mid-level ICs) and own Coforma’s company-wide healthcare engineering portfolio and strategy. I retained and grew the team through a period of company-wide turbulence - uniquely high retention I attribute to leading with trust, psychological safety, and clear ownership - and promoted 9 engineers into senior and leadership roles, including 4 to Director/Principal.

    As Engineering Business Development lead, I helped win $74M in 2024 BD at a 70%+ win rate across the VA, CMS, and IRS, authoring Shipley-method technical volumes and solution architectures on IDIQs including GSA OASIS and the VA’s CEDAR and SPRUCE; I carry delivery responsibility behind $100M+ in prime federal contracts awarded.

    My teams own engineering, federal compliance, and delivery for the CMS MDCT suite - the React/TypeScript serverless applications on AWS that states and territories use to report Medicaid & CHIP data to CMS (enrollment, CHIP coverage, managed care, Money Follows the Person, quality measures, and home- and community-based services), underpinning federal oversight of programs serving tens of millions of beneficiaries. In 2026 so far the team merged 400 PRs - including a new Medicaid reporting app taken from zero to production in ~14 weeks - alongside portfolio-wide React 19, security, and accessibility work.

    I also hold portfolio oversight for the CMS Medicaid Drug Programs system behind the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program (Coforma prime; a delivery partner leads day-to-day engineering), and I lead the firm’s specialization in FHIR and health-data interoperability.

    My flagship engineering work - MyCareer.NJ.gov and its grounded AI portfolio - spans my full Coforma tenure (below).

  2. Mar 2023 – Apr 2025

    Remote

    Director of Engineering

    at Coforma

    Grew from principal engineer into engineering director while remaining the primary engineer on MyCareer.NJ.gov. As the organization more than doubled, I established the delivery practices, ownership models, and technical standards that now span our healthcare and workforce portfolios - and built the hiring, mentoring, and promotion foundation that later scaled to a 53-person org.

  3. Sep 2022 – Mar 2023

    Remote

    Principal Software Engineer

    at Coforma

    Joined as principal engineer on the MyCareer.NJ.gov project owning full-stack architecture end to end - from the PostgreSQL schema and FastAPI recommendation engine to the React/Next.js front end and CI/CD - and set the engineering standards the platform still runs on.

  4. Jun 2022 – Sep 2022

    Career break

    at Bereavement

    Focused on my full-time professional education and bereavement/caretaking for my passing mother with family rather than full-time work. She was an enormous inspiration to my own career and made this all possible.

    In memory of Joyce Kelly-Reif (opens in a new tab)

  5. Apr 2022 – May 2022

    Berkeley, California · Hybrid

    Application Development Lead

    at University of California, Berkeley, School of Education

    Led development of the 21CSLA HUB - the equity-focused digital platform for the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy (21CSLA), the State Center housed at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education in partnership with UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies and the California Subject Matter Project. 21CSLA is a ~$12–13M multi-year California Department of Education initiative - the state’s first statewide leadership academy in over 20 years - delivering no-cost, equity-centered professional learning to thousands of public-school leaders across seven regional academies statewide, with an explicit focus on improving outcomes for English learners, students with disabilities, low-income students, and other historically marginalized students. The HUB put that professional learning, coaching, and resources within reach of district, site, and teacher leaders across California, and supported the academy’s role in the state’s Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) rollout.

  6. Aug 2021 – Apr 2022

    Sacramento, California · Remote

    Lead Software Engineer

    at California Energy Commission

    Led cloud modernization of California’s energy-data infrastructure across two tenures (around a 2021 engagement at the CPUC). Architected and shipped the Energy Commission’s Data Submission Portal - a secure, cloud-based (AWS) platform for electronically submitting regulatory data to the commission - engineering its petroleum-industry (PIIRA) and quarterly fuel-and-energy (QFER) reporting, built and ready at launch; the data it carries underpins California’s statewide energy-demand forecasts and Integrated Energy Policy Report (IEPR), and the commission scaled the platform agency-wide after my tenure and has since extended it to residential solar-permit (SB 379) reporting.

    Maintained and operated the Modernized Appliance Efficiency Database System (MAEDbS) - the statewide certification system of record for California’s Title 20 appliance-efficiency program, whose standards save consumers roughly $14.7B per year - which manufacturers, third-party labs, and retailers rely on to verify which products are legal to sell in California; I kept it running reliably, supported certification submitters, and safeguarded data integrity.

    Built ETL pipelines and policy-facing analytics dashboards for statewide energy data, and drove the commission’s move to the cloud - building cloud-migration consensus across petroleum operators, power-plant operators, and commission leaders.

  7. Feb 2021 – Aug 2021

    Sacramento, California · Remote

    Principal Software Architect

    at California Public Utilities Commission

    Set org-wide architecture standards balancing innovation, compliance, and budget, and directed two statewide Salesforce/AWS platforms. The Transportation Carrier Portal (TCPortal - Salesforce/AWS/Snowflake), the CPUC’s online licensing system launched in June 2021 during my engagement, is used statewide by charter-party passenger carriers (TCP - limousines, charter buses, and sightseeing operators) to apply for and manage operating permits and certificates and update driver and equipment records in real time.

    I also architected the Electronic Claim and Application Portal (eCAP) - a Salesforce-based interface to submit, track, review, and resolve claims for the Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program (DDTP) and, under the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), broadband grantees submitting payment requests - which the CPUC launched in 2023, after my tenure, replacing paper-based submissions.

  8. Feb 2019 – Feb 2021

    Sacramento, California · On-site

    Lead Software Engineer

    at California Energy Commission

  9. Oct 2016 – Feb 2019

    Sacramento, California · On-site

    Software Engineer

    at California Department of Social Services

    Built out and operated a legislatively mandated public-safety platform - California’s public Home Care Aide Registry under the Home Care Services Consumer Protection Act (AB 1217; operative 2016) - joining shortly after its initial registration-and-search launch to build the renewal system and own ongoing maintenance and operations, letting families verify the registration and background-check status of 170,000+ registered caregivers by name and HCA ID before hiring (ASP.NET / SQL Server, two-factor auth, DOJ/FBI Live Scan integration, PII protection, online fee payment).

    Engineered enhancements to the legacy .NET desktop application Caregiver Background Check Bureau analysts used to process California DOJ and FBI fingerprint-based criminal background checks - adjudicating state and federal RAP sheets, Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) results, criminal-record clearances and exemptions, and subsequent-arrest (“rap-back”) notifications - for people working in or around licensed care facilities; CDSS later replaced this legacy system with the vendor-built “Guardian” solution (2021).

    Built the PCI DSS-compliant Community Care Licensing fee-payment portal where 140,000+ licensed facilities (child care, adult/senior, and residential care) pay annual fees, bridging a secure modern web interface to a legacy Natural/ADABAS mainframe.

    Across the broader CHHS portfolio: helped build the Legislative Analysis System (LAS, ASP.NET MVC / Angular) used by analysts across the California Health & Human Services Agency to track the bills and regulations affecting county-administered programs; contributed to the OCAP State Children’s Trust Fund donations portal, Independent Adoptions, and Refugee Resettlement; administered web portal and ActiveBatch scheduling that automates JCL batch runs across Windows servers and Natural/ADABAS mainframes for WIC and TANF county distributions; and delivered Power BI analytics for CalFresh analysts.

Skills

  • Engineering leadership

    • Org design & scaling (39→53)
    • People management (22 reports)
    • Hiring, mentoring & promotion
    • Trust-based, trauma-informed leadership
    • Retention through change
    • Federal delivery ownership

  • Federal business development

    • Shipley-method volumes
    • Solution architecture
    • IDIQs — GSA OASIS, VA CEDAR/SPRUCE
    • Capture & proposals
    • ATO delivery

  • Languages

    • TypeScript
    • JavaScript
    • Python
    • C#
    • SQL
    • Java

  • Frameworks & web

    • React / Next.js
    • Node / Express
    • FastAPI
    • Flask
    • Django
    • .NET Core / ASP.NET MVC
    • REST
    • GraphQL
    • Server-Sent Events

  • Cloud & DevOps

    • AWS — Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito, Bedrock, S3/CloudFront, KMS, WAF
    • GCP
    • Azure
    • Terraform
    • AWS CDK
    • Docker
    • CI/CD — GitHub Actions, CircleCI
    • PM2

  • Data, AI & ML

    • PostgreSQL / Aurora (pgvector)
    • Snowflake
    • DynamoDB
    • Redis
    • OpenSearch
    • RAG & NLP
    • Recommendation & econometric models
    • Responsible-AI red-teaming
    • Bedrock — Claude, Titan Embeddings
    • ETL
    • pandas / NumPy
    • Tableau / Power BI

  • Health IT & interoperability

    • FHIR & health-data interoperability
    • CMS MDCT (Medicaid & CHIP)
    • Medicaid Drug Programs (MDP)
    • Credential interoperability (CTDL)
    • MACPro
    • CMSDS

  • Security & compliance

    • FedRAMP
    • StateRAMP
    • FISMA
    • HIPAA
    • PCI DSS
    • Section 508
    • CCPA
    • OWASP
    • SAST — CodeQL, bandit
    • KMS / AES-256-GCM
    • Cognito / Auth0 IAM
    • Prompt-injection & SSRF defenses
    • ATO delivery

  • Quality, accessibility & integration

    • WCAG 2.2 AA
    • USWDS / NJWDS / CMSDS
    • TDD — Jest, RTL, Cypress, Playwright
    • Lighthouse & coverage CI gates
    • Figma
    • Salesforce
    • Dynamics 365
    • MuleSoft
    • Natural/ADABAS modernization
    • Agile — Scrum / Kanban
    • ITIL

Recognition

Work on MyCareer.NJ has been recognized by:

  • Fast Company
  • Harvard Kennedy School, Project on Workforce
  • Royal Statistical Society
  • NASWA Workforce Innovation Award (nominee)

Press

Selected outside coverage of the public work I've led.

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Get in touch

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