Senior software engineer

Tayden Flitcroft

I’m a Software Engineer.

I’m a senior software engineer at Best Buy, building customer-facing web and mobile products. I work through complex problems, make technical decisions, and help my teams deliver reliable experiences at scale.

6+years in engineeringWeb and Mobile Applications
Summa Cum LaudeMaster of ScienceSoftware Engineering Management
1stBest Collaborative ToolBest Buy Hackathon
100+students taughtSoftware Development, AI Fundamentals, 3D Design, and Best Online Safety and Privacy Practices

Best Buy · 2021 to now

From associate engineer to senior engineer.

I joined Best Buy as an Associate Engineer in 2021. Since then, I’ve grown through four roles while working on customer-facing web and mobile products used by millions of people.

Sep 2026 — now

Best Buy

Senior Software Engineer

Promoted to Senior Software Engineer after progressing through three engineering roles at Best Buy. I help turn complex requirements into technical plans and guide work from early decisions through delivery.

Feb 2023 — Sep 2026

Best Buy

Software Engineer II

Owned Trade-In and Fulfillment features across BestBuy.com and the mobile app, using React, React Native, and TypeScript to help customers trade in devices and receive their orders.

Feb 2021 — Feb 2023

Best Buy

Associate Engineer → Software Engineer I

Learned the realities of a large production codebase: shipping in small pieces, reviewing carefully, testing the edges, and working across teams without losing sight of the customer problem.

After-hours projects

Things I’ve made on my own time.

Some solve problems in my life. Some started as a joke. Others were to broaden my expertise. All of them gave me a reason to learn something new and actually ship it.

Published iOS app

Tabletop Pal

01

I built Tabletop Pal to keep game night focused on playing instead of managing score sheets. Players can track scores, rounds, and standings, join the same game by link or QR code, and return to saved games without creating an account. It also brings together dice, timers, and optional scanning to help count points from supported cards and dominoes.

What made it interestingShipped on the App Store, bringing shared scorecards, guest players, saved games, and game-specific scoring into one product. The challenge was keeping those features easy to use in the middle of a game.

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • TypeScript
  • Socket.IO

API platform

Global Backend

02

A Node.js and TypeScript API I built to support several personal projects, including an earlier version of this portfolio and a Pokédex. It gave those projects a shared place for server-side features instead of rebuilding the same setup each time.

What made it interestingLearned where a shared backend saves work, and when a project is easier to maintain with an API of its own.

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • REST
  • AWS

Interactive travel utility

License Plate Tracker

03

A road-trip app for recording license plates spotted across the United States. An interactive map shows the states you’ve found, while sighting dates, history, and counts keep a record of each trip.

What made it interestingBuilt persistent trackers that players can return to by ID, turning a familiar travel game into a record they can keep adding to.

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Firebase
  • React Simple Maps
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Vite

Real-time product

D&D Session Tools

04

A companion for weekly D&D sessions, with dice outcomes and a shared initiative tracker backed by Firestore. Players can sign in and keep track of the same session together.

What made it interestingBuilt around an actual weekly game, where readable turn order, saved state, and small interaction details matter during play.

  • React
  • Firebase
  • Auth
  • Realtime data

Published Chrome extension

Owen Wilson Buttons

05

A Manifest V3 browser extension that adds an Owen Wilson “wow” and a burst of confetti to button clicks across the web.

What made it interestingTurned a playful idea into a working extension published through the Chrome Web Store.

  • JavaScript
  • Chrome Extensions
  • Web Audio
  • Canvas

Home infrastructure

Plex Dashboard

06

A Dockerized dashboard for checking the services running on my home media server in one place.

What made it interestingBrought scattered service status into a single view so I could see what was running and spot failures more easily.

  • JavaScript
  • Docker
  • APIs
  • Self-hosting

Native macOS utility

Caffeinate

07

A native macOS menu bar app for timed, custom, or indefinite keep-awake sessions, with a live countdown, pause and resume, and separate display and system sleep controls.

What made it interestingBuilt a focused utility using native power-management APIs, with remembered preferences and universal builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

  • Swift
  • AppKit
  • IOKit
  • GitHub Actions

How I work

What it’s like to work with me.

01

Start with the person using it

I start by understanding who is using the product, what they need to do, and what gets in their way. That context helps me make better technical decisions.

02

Build for the next change

I care about clear boundaries, useful tests, and performance we can measure—but mostly I want the next engineer to understand what I left behind.

03

Share the context

I write things down, ask direct questions, review with care, and mentor without gatekeeping. Good work moves faster when nobody has to guess.

Recognition and community

A few things I’m proud of.

A hackathon win, a second-place engineering competition finish, and time spent teaching kids the fundamentals of technology.

Best Buy Hackathon · 2023

1st Place — Best Collaborative Tool

Built a mentor-matching tool that connected early-career engineers with experienced people who could help in the areas they wanted to learn.

Algorithm competition · 2023

2nd Place — Engineering Cup 4.0

Finished second in Best Buy’s annual engineering competition by solving algorithm problems against the clock.

2022 — present

Instructor — Geek Squad Academy

Taught more than 100 students about online safety, privacy, password security, and digital citizenship.

The résumé

The details, on paper.

6+ years building enterprise web and mobile products. I also graduated Summa Cum Laude for both of my degrees, including an M.S. in Information Systems (Software Engineering Management) in September 2026.

Tayden FlitcroftSenior Software Engineer
6+ years product engineering

Start a conversation

Get in touch.

Have a role, a project, or a difficult engineering problem in mind? Send me a note. I read everything myself.

San Antonio, Texas