Hi, I'm Michael 👋
Software Engineer, Writer and Maker. I love traveling the world with April & writing software that makes our world just a little bit better.
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About

In January 2024, I left my job at Cedar AI to fulfill my dream of traveling the world and writing my first book, Journey to the East. I graduated from college in three years and after a few years in the workforce, made a strategic decision in 2017 to enter the world of software engineering. It's worked out really well! Random piece of housekeeping - while my last name is Litchev, I'm in the process of changing it to Nightingale; my mother's anglicized maiden name.

Work Experience

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Expatria

December 2024 - Current
Founder, CEO + CTO
What started as a project to make a simple & re-usable template for React projects turned into a paid research tool for digital nomads and expatriates to understand where in the world they could settle down in. Inspired by my mother expressing an interest in retiring abroad, it came to encompass every sanction-free destination in the world with immigration programs for seventy different countries that offer investment visas or naturalization through entrepreneurship or real-estate investment.
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Cedar AI

Sep 2021 - Jan 2024
Software Engineer
Armed with the unnoficial title of 'Mobile App Emperor', I built, launched and maintained the Flutter mobile application on iOS, Android and web. Our users were industrial, blue-collar railroad workers working in rough conditions. I traveled onsite to railroads in four different states to build custom functionality, responded directly to customer feedback, participated in sales calls as a technical advisor & served on-call more or less continuously. Also did work on React front-end codebases & Python REST APIs when needed.
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Pandemic Career Break + Open Source Work

January 2020 - April 2020
Software Engineer
The pandemic was, after the dust settled on the initial lockdowns, the best time to travel. You could stay at a Hamptons Suites for $30 a night, it was absurd. At the same time, I was leading development of Paret0, an open-source project that of 30 contributors that was designing an socially competitive multiplayer habit tracker and software developer learning resource.
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Unloop

October 2019 - July 2020
Lead Instructor, Software Engineer
Unloop was (is?) a non-profit coding bootcamp for people who are incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated, and I was hired as the Lead Instructor for their in-person cohort at their Seattle headquarters. At the time, I was running a business selling some innovative (in my opinion) learning materials for learning programming, and the executive director recruited me to work there full-time & licensed my IP to white-label it for the students. Working with that population, while also contributing code to dev projects that the non-profit secured as part of its funding source, was a classic example of taking on more than I could chew. The pandemic blowing up in everyones faces, forcing us to adapt to a digital-only reality, was difficult to say the least, especially working with people who were incarcerated, in work-release, attending rehab or otherwise not the standard California techie. It was a very valuable experience.
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Revercare (YC 17)

May 2019 - August 2019
Software Engineer, Loudest Person in the Hacker House
I was hired for a three month consulting gig to build a full-stack MVP for a new YC startup called Revercare, focusing on connecting the caregivers of the elderly to trusted service providers. I love my grandma, so I really enjoyed building this out with React & Node microservices hosted on Lambda - I even moved down to Palo Alto for two of the three months, to get the experience of working in a hacker house, shared with two other startups in the same cohort. Needless to say, I enjoyed my time greatly, but was relieved to move back to Seattle for an office with stable air conditioning after the MVP launched.
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Digital Nomading + Career Transition

January 2017 - May 2019
Software Engineer In-Training
I like to think that I was a digital nomad before it was cool. Yeah, sure, the pandemic took it mainstream, but the real sickos were attending Eastern-European Go(pher) Meetups in September of 2017. Like most self-taught software engineers, I started with the small stuff. I made a website for my mom, consulted for a friend's Amazon FBA business, and worked my way up to more interesting and technically demanding projects. I built a prototype of a freelancer marketplace in Uganda for a client on Upwork, worked on Know-Your-Customer (KYC) software for a startup in Trinidad & Tobago, and a few other things besides that put some money in my pocket.
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Onvia

July 2015 - January 2017
eCommerce Marketing Specialist
After my misadventures in politics, I realized I had to make money. Onvia seemed like a great fit - I had a degree in Political Science, and they were a tech company selling access to a comprehensive database of government contracting data. Working within a sort of skunkworks, I worked on a new team of three on a new product and was blessed with autonomy, varied duties, direct communication with customers, a supportive and helpful manager and the opportunity to learn from every part of the company. I was effectively a junior product manager that also owned customer support for 500 customers, gathered requirements from them & contributed to product marketing. Among other things, I started and hosted the company podcast, before moving on to the next step in my career. I grew frustrated with the glacial pace of software development, and my customers unceasing torrent of complaints about the same bugs over and over again, and I decided to learn how to write some code myself to better contribute across an organization.
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US House of Representative, CA District 17

January 2015 - June 2015
Intern
Ah, the humble intern. I was a fresh graduate, armed with the highly profitable and respected BA in Political Science, and thought it made some sense to get a job in my chosen field. I walked into California's 17th district, then run by Mike Honda, what was a complete tirefire that was mercifully put out the following election cycle by Ro Khanna. In the 6 short months that I was there, the honorable Congressman fell asleep in front of a CSPAN camera during a hearing on the war in Afghanistan & was formally brought under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for his District Office staff breaking rules regarding acceptable political activity involving his campaign. All the while, constituents called into the office to complain about the VA losing their files, USCIS statuses remaining unchanged over the years, or simply calling to talk to someone because they were just lonely. I saw a vision of what the future could be, and decided to move in another direction. I was time to get a real job.

Education

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Western Washington University

2011 - 2014
BA Political Science, Minor in Philosophy
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International Baccalaureate

2009 - 2011
IB Diploma

Skills

React
Flutter
Typescript
Node.js
Python
Next.js
Postgres
MongoDB
Serverless
UX
CI/CD
My Projects

Check out my latest work

I've worked on a variety of projects, from simple websites to complex web applications. Here are a few of my favorites.

Expatria

A SaaS platform to help people from around the world retire earlier by retiring abroad. Includes immigration programs, real-estate investment research, taxation information and more.

Next.js
Typescript
PostgreSQL
TailwindCSS
Stripe
Vercel
Supabase
Website

Journey to the East; Post-COVID China

My travelogue over 60 days in China, with an overview on modern culture, technology & a complete introduction to Imperial History from the Zhou to the Qing Dynasties.

Pen
Paper
Keyboard
Scrivener
Apple Pages
Website

Paret0

An open-source, collaborative platform for technical education. Originally a solo passion project, it became an open-source repository with 30 different contributors.

React.js
Typescript
MongoDB
MaterialUI
Stripe
Amazon Web Services
Lambda
Website
Source

Full-Stack Starter Pack

An interactive workbook that has over 20 interactive excercises to teach aspiring software engineers the fundamentals of system design, scrum-based sprint methodology, ux design & product management. It includes cheat sheets for JavaScript Array methods, TypeScript and more.

Pen
Paper
Keyboard
Scrivener
Apple Pages

Oracle of Changes

Built in a week, this is a representation of the Yi Jing, the Book of Changes, an oracular predictive system for reality which originated in China 3000 years ago. It uses the Yarrow Stick algorithm, one of the oldest if not the oldest algorithms in the world, and returns one of 64 hexagrams based on your question.

React.js
Typescript
Website
Source
Leadership & Community

I like organizing things

Since I was university, I have enjoyed organizing events and building community wherever I have the fortune to be. Whether organizing neighborhood cafes, a JavaScript meetup or a Model UN conference, I am reminded of the phrase that to go far, go alone. To go far, go together.

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    Broadview Coffee

    Broadview Seattle, WA

    April & I love our neighborhood, and we organize get togethers on our front-lawn to bring our neighbors together for a communal cup of coffee. Community is key to a balanced life, thriving community or successful workplace.
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    Meetup Organizer (Full-Stack Apprenticeship)

    Seattle, Washington

    Organized monthly, six-hour long Meetups on Saturdays and Sundays for JavaScript engineers & apprentices to learn from each other & collaborate on projects. Our community built a web and mobile app (React Native) to organize our work.
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    Executive Vice-President, Alpha Kappa Psi (Omega Beta Chapter)

    Bellingham, Washington

    In my junior year, I served as the Vice-President of Administration at Western Washington Universities Alpha Kappa Psi Chapter, which is a co-ed professional business fraternity. My duties included the management of the Committee Chairs, organizing a weekly meeting for the seven different committies to chart strategy and provide structure and accountability.
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    Organizer, Northwest Model United Nations (NWMUN)

    Seattle, WA

    While I'm not going to pretend I was anything close to the driving force behind the organization, I served in progressively higher responsibility positions in the conference to help provide a forum for college students in the Northwest to gain diplomatic and public speaking experience.
Contact

Get in Touch

Want to chat? Just shoot me an email.

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