Engineer. Mom.
Builder.
I'm Yesenia M. Perez — a Lead Backend Engineer and mom of 3. I went back to school for my CS degree while bartending and pregnant with my second, landed my first engineering role at 28, and made it to Lead Engineer — 2× Q1 Performance Excellence Award winner, building distributed systems that process $5.2T in assets.
I build real apps at 11pm while my kids sleep. I run custom hooks that block me from breaking my own code, a memory system that survives session resets, and 30+ slash commands I built myself. I didn't just learn to use Claude Code — I built a professional system with it.
Now I teach others to do the same — non-technical women who want AI to run their business without losing their voice, and builders who know the tools but can't finish. No gatekeeping. No vague tips. The actual architecture.
The path wasn't linear.
AUA on Platform
Orion trade execution systems
Perf. Excellence Winner
Nominated Q1 '24 · Won Q1 '25
Kids
Default parent, full-time builder
Build time
When the house is finally quiet
How I got here.
Dropped out of school
Left the chance of a biology degree behind. I'd regret this decision for a while.
Went back to school
Started my CS degree while bartending and pregnant with my second. Textbooks between shifts. A lot of cold coffee.
First engineering role at 28
Degree in hand. First full-time engineering job. Non-traditional timelines work.
Lead Engineer
Promoted to Lead Backend Engineer at Orion. Architecture decisions, code reviews, cross-team coordination — the whole picture.
Q1 Performance Excellence Nomination — Visionaries
Nominated by my manager for leading trunk-based branching strategy adoption, owning high-risk security and library updates others avoided, and being the person people call when production is on fire. One of the best nominations I've ever read — I didn't win the category but I kept the letter.
Q1 Performance Excellence Winner
Won. Nominated by my manager for leading OMS Volumes 2 & 3, opening a new Orion line of business via the Cheetah integration, and resolving a compliance crisis for client Cetera while managing 12+ concurrent projects. Client called out the experience specifically.
Build con Chispa
Launched the free community. Started teaching what I actually do — not theory, the real workflow. AI makes it possible to bring real engineering thinking to people who need it, without requiring them to become engineers first.
What colleagues have said.
“When the stakes are high and the changes are risky, she steps in like a deployment ninja — calm, confident, and always in control.”
Direct Manager, Orion Technology
Q1 Performance Excellence Nomination · Orion Technology
“She exemplifies what a visionary contributor looks like. Someone who sees beyond their defined role, rises to meet challenges that others cannot, and elevates everyone around them in the process.”
Direct Manager, Orion Technology
Q1 Performance Excellence Nomination · Orion Technology
What I'm building right now.
Build con Chispa
Free bilingual community for women using AI to run their business, and builders who need accountability to actually ship. Two tracks, one community.
Visit →Versus
Product research platform comparing Amazon, TikTok Shop, and Alibaba. Fuzzy matching and perceptual image hashing to find market gaps.
ChispeandoHQ
Content intelligence dashboard — scrapes 5 platforms to surface top hooks, topic gaps, and timing data for both tracks.
Fokas
Multi-tenant SaaS dashboard for coaches. Unifies Calendly, Stripe, and social analytics into one interface.
I took the long way into software engineering and I'm proud of how I got here.
I spent a decade in hospitality before going back to school for Computer Science. While I was finishing that degree I was bartending, working multiple jobs, paying down debt. A lot of sleepless nights. I got through it, landed my first engineering job, and kept going. What that background gave me didn't come from any course: I know how to talk to people who don't share my technical context, how to make decisions when I don't have everything I need, and how to stay level when production breaks and there's real money involved.
I also run Build con Chispa, a free bilingual community I started because I kept seeing the same two things. Women running real businesses who wouldn't touch AI because they assumed it wasn't for them. Developers who knew all the tools but couldn't seem to finish what they started. Both problems felt solvable. So I show up, I build the curriculum and the tooling and the community itself, and I do most of it after the kids are asleep.
for employers
8+ yrs · Lead Engineer · FinTech · 2× Q1 Performance Excellence Award · .NET · Java · AWS · Distributed Systems