Senior Forward Deployed Software Engineer at Postman

I build systems that turn complex data into decisions.

I build data and AI systems for enterprises, deployed in the environments where people actually use them.

View my resume LinkedIn
mail@kellend.comGitHubOakland, CA
EngineerResearcherBuilder
Portrait of Kellen Donohue

Google, Palantir, now Postman.

Since 2013
10+years shipping software
9industries served
1 TB/daypipeline scale
4,000+daily flights optimized

01 / Experience

Work that runs in production.

Aviation operations, healthcare platforms, industrial fault tracking, now API tooling. Knowing the domain is most of the work.

Postman

Oct 2025 – Present

Senior Forward Deployed Software Engineer

I design enterprise deployments and build the integrations that pull APIs, production traffic, product usage, contracts, and customer conversations into one place.

  • Built a multi-cloud API Gateway integration that turns production traffic into realistic developer mocks.
  • Created an AI agent using RAG and vector search to surface customer insights through Slack.
AI agentsAPI platformsData systems

Palantir

Jul 2015 – Apr 2025

Forward Deployed Software Engineer

Led engineering teams delivering data processing, analysis, and operational decision systems across nine industries.

  • Tracked 4,000+ daily flights across 200+ airports in a real-time optimization system.
  • Reconciled millions of records in an entity resolution pipeline ingesting 1 TB/day across 60+ sources.
  • Built systems for healthcare engagement, industrial fault tracking, and secure platform access.
StreamingEntity resolutionOptimization

Google

Jul 2013 – Jul 2015

Software Engineer, Helpouts & Hangouts

Shipped secure messaging, consent workflows, and a unified notification system spanning iOS, Android, SMS, web, and email.

JavaJavaScriptConsumer products

02 / Education

Three degrees, two departments.

I studied political science alongside engineering, which turns out to be useful when the hard part of a deployment is the org chart.

2013

M.S. Computer Science & Engineering

University of Washington

2012

B.S. Computer Engineering, Cum Laude

University of Washington

2012

B.A. Political Science, Cum Laude

University of Washington

03 / Research

Research and invention.

A paper on automated program analysis, and a patent from a regulated healthcare build.

Publication / ICSE 2014

Case Studies and Tools for Contract Specifications

With Michael Ernst and Todd Schiller, I adapted the Daikon invariant detector for C# and other .NET languages, to generate contracts automatically through binary instrumentation.

Read the paper View the code

Patent

Integrated data authentication system with an interactive user interface

Invented while building a regulation-compliant member engagement platform for a major U.S. healthcare payer.

View patent Patent record

Contact

Interested in the work?

Send me an email Download resume