Charlotte Brandhorst-Satzkorn

charlotte@catzkorn.dev • github.com/catzkorn • catzkorn.dev • Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Canada

Personal Profile

I am a meticulous, user-experience driven engineer, focusing on producing high quality features, drawing on my non-technical background to improve understanding of user pain points. I identify issues across the business and lead initiatives to improve both customer outcomes and employee satisfaction.

Experience

Sabbatical (July 2024 - present)#

Took a short professional break to focus on personal health and wellness goals, including working with professional trail running coaches and completing my first three day trail running stage race.

Tailscale (March 2021 - July 2024)#

Senior Software Engineer#

Go, Typescript, React, SQLite, Postgres, REST, OpenTelemetry, among others

Joined as an early engineer, working across the product from the Tailscale client through to the control servers backend and frontend development.

  • Designed and delivered the Custom OIDC feature, a generic OIDC authentication integration from prototype to General Availability, ahead of time, allowing the onboarding of large new customers.

  • Delivered flagship features such as Tailscale’s Mullvad VPN integration, HTTPS certificate automation, MagicDNS General Availability, and App Connectors, significantly increasing the ARR of the business.

  • Performed multiple major database schema migrations across disparate database technologies, minimizing downtime and ensuring data consistency through extensive preparation and testing.

  • Introduced and led the integration of OpenTelemetry and HoneyComb to improve observability of internal services, significantly expediting the identification and diagnosis of service and user issues.

  • Championed engineering and business policy initiatives from proposal to completion, most notably the user focused SSO tax removal from the pricing model.

  • Took ownership of the Tailscale Reddit community, developing it into a flourishing community, building customer relationships with new market segments.

  • Mentored multiple university interns leading to offers of employment.

  • Worked closely with the support team to engage directly with customers to gain feedback, better the product, and improve user outcomes.

  • Contributed blog posts and documentation to the tailscale.com website and knowledge base.

  • Integrated third-party integrations, such as Stripe, Postmark, Mullvad, among others.

  • Worked across teams to improve internal tooling such as testing, logs- and support infrastructure.

Open Source Contributions#

net/http - Content-Length parsing for js/wasm#

  • Corrected parsing of Content-Length header in the net/http library for the js/wasm HTTP client.

pkg.go.dev - Link to latest module version#

  • Contributed code allowing users to see a link to the latest version of a module.

Education

Makers Academy Bootcamp (2020)#

  • Built applications in variety of languages, including Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, SQL (PostgreSQL, ActiveRecord) and Go.
  • Deployed to, and interacted with, cloud platforms including AWS, GCP and Heroku.

University of Southampton (2014 - 2019)#

PhD Candidate, NERC CDT in Oil and Gas#

Base and Heavy Metal Mobilisation during Hydraulic Fracturing of Black Shales

  • Exploring fluid-rock interactions and metal mobilisation to inform regulation and best practices for shale exploration onshore in the United Kingdom.
  • Solely responsible for project management and direction, designing and executing experimental procedures simulating hydraulic fracturing conditions in a laboratory setting.
  • Presented research at internal and international conferences.
  • Withdrew from the program prematurely in 2019 due to illness.

University of Portsmouth (2011-2014)#

Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Environmental Science#

Acid Mine Drainage and Toxic Metal Contamination from Abandoned Mine Tailings in Adak, Northern Sweden

  • Researched scientific literature to find follow-up research opportunities.
  • Evolved prior research methodologies to account for improvements in analytical technologies.
  • Awarded Best Presentation 2014 for research findings and presentation.

Interests

My personal interests include outdoor sports such as trail running, mountaineering, skiing and mountain biking. I am currently training to run a trail ultra marathon. I enjoy reading fiction and non-fiction books, watching movies, playing board games, listening to music of all genres, and I have been a lifelong fan of motorsport. I continue to have a personal interest in global environmental issues and actively keep up-to-date on the latest science.