Sahara Tijol

Junior software engineer

Austin, Texas

Open to junior roles

U.S. Navy veteran

Hey, I'm Sahara. I build backends in Java and Spring.

See what I'm building Say hi

About me

I spent four years in the Navy, working on catapults and then on pilot survival gear: parachutes, flight equipment, survival systems. I inspected and repaired it, and I trained the sailors who came in after me.

After I got out I worked retail and tech support while I learned to code. That got me to Accenture, where I spent almost two years as a Java and Spring developer on a Medicaid and WIC eligibility portal used by Texas, Ohio and Kansas.

Then I went back to school and finished my B.A.S. in Software Development this past May. Now I'm looking for a junior engineering role in Austin, somewhere I can keep learning from people further along than me.

Career

  1. 2026

    B.A.S., Software Development

    Austin Community College · graduated May 2026

    Went back and finished the degree. Data structures and algorithms, operating systems, Java, Python, C++, and one machine learning class that stuck with me.

  2. 2021–22

    Application Developer

    Accenture · Austin, TX

    My first developer job. Java and Spring on the benefits portal that Texas, Ohio and Kansas use for Medicaid, WIC and childcare. Huge legacy codebase, and most of what I know came out of it.

    • Moved legacy SOAP services over to REST APIs for the web portal and mobile app
    • Built the eligibility pre-screening for WIC and Medicaid: input validation, benefit estimates, application reports
    • Rebuilt UI components that hadn't been touched since the early 2000s
    • Java
    • Spring
    • Oracle SQL
    • Maven
    • Jenkins
    • WebLogic

  3. 2019–20

    Technical and customer support

    BigCommerce, then Blackbaud via Robert Half

    Phones, email and chat for an online store platform and a school database system. Two years of explaining technical things to people who were already having a bad day.

  4. 2012–16

    Aircrew Survival Equipmentman

    United States Navy · Lemoore, CA

    Parachutes, flight gear and survival systems for carrier aircrew. Inspect it, test it, repair it, put your name on it. Deployed at sea doing it.

Tools I work with

Languages
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • C
Backend
  • Spring Boot
  • Spring MVC
  • REST
  • SOAP
  • JUnit
  • Mockito
  • Maven
Databases
  • Oracle SQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
Frontend
  • React
  • Tailwind CSS
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap
Tools
  • Git
  • Jira
  • Linux
  • Jenkins
  • WebLogic

Projects

  1. Personal Finance Tracker

    In progress

    Reads my bank's CSV exports, sorts transactions into categories, works out credits against debits, and charts spending against a budget.

    • Python
    • Pandas
    • Django
    • JavaScript
    • Chart.js

    Code (soon)

Outside work

Fishing

I get out on the water whenever I can.

Hiking

Hiking and the outdoors, mostly around Central Texas.

Training

Running and lifting heavy. Nothing competitive.

Games

Fallout 4 and Factorio at the moment.

Say hi