Chris Laffra

As a Senior Principal Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase, I act as a technical leader in the Athena platform, a powerful and flexible tool for financial analytics and data. With over four thousand users of the platform, my mission is to make them as impactful, productive, and happy as possible. I do this by improving training, developer community, documentation, and the adoption of features available in the platform. I also work with dozens of stakeholders to optimize the platform to their needs, focusing on modernization efforts that include cloud migration, devops, and performance. I have over 25 years of experience in software engineering, spanning various domains, industries, and roles. My core competencies are developer productivity, communication skills, and software engineering leadership. I have a PhD in Computer Science and multiple certifications and publications on technical topics. I am passionate about helping engineers discover the right path for their professional and personal development, and I facilitate the monthly in-person Communication for Engineers masterclass with my colleagues whenever I visit a JP Morgan office across the world. I also learn by teaching, and I recently authored the first book written entirely using ChatGPT, on the topic of developer productivity.