Ross Kahn

Madison, WI · Open to remote (USA)

Ross Kahn

Full-stack software engineer, 12+ years in healthcare and education

I build production software people depend on, from patient-safety systems at Epic to AI-powered survey analytics for K-12 schools at Panorama. Lately that means building AI features people can trust, using AI tools to dig into hard reliability and debugging problems, and writing down what I learn so the next person moves faster.

rosstkahn@gmail.com LinkedIn

Selected work

Things I've shipped

Panorama Education · AI

AI Survey Insights

One of Panorama's first user-facing AI features. It pulls the most useful findings out of large survey datasets, compares them to national benchmarks and past results, and links each one back to its source data. Prompt quality was the big unknown, so I got a working version into staging early and reviewed output with Product, Data Science and Design for accuracy and neutral tone while the rest was built.

Won over several large district clients that had been wary of AI.

Panorama Education · Reliability

Reporting stability

Our integration layer for Qlik, a third-party analytics platform, was causing urgent sev-1 incidents more than four times a month. As incident commander, I used AI to quickly learn how both the integration layer and Qlik worked under the hood, then stabilized it by combining redundant requests, cutting unnecessary traffic, and optimizing call ordering.

That kind of incident stopped entirely, buying the team time to move to a more stable data layer. Engineering leadership called it out as an innovative use of AI.

Epic Systems · Clinical

Vaccine inventory rebuild

A major clinic customer was considering uninstalling Epic's vaccine inventory tool. I researched the options, proposed rebuilding it on Epic's more robust pharmacy inventory system, and pitched the plan to leadership on both teams. Then I led and mentored a growing team through the rebuild and wrote the data conversion and rollback tools myself.

Shipped February 2022, during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The customer praised the improvements, calling them "incredible."

Epic Systems · Clinical

Medication record, legacy to web

I was project lead for moving the outpatient medication administration record, one of Epic's largest projects, from a legacy front end to the web. I reworked data loading so each screen needs a single database call, speeding up load times, and designed and ran the usability study.

Planned the QA process that caught 93 issues before release, and owned the fixes.

Career

Where I've worked

2022 – 2026

Panorama Education · Lead Software Engineer

K-12 analytics platform. Rails, Vue and TypeScript on the flagship survey reporting product, including co-leading Enhanced Survey Reporting, a full rebuild across two teams, and leading the move to a new Malloy data layer. Also AI feature work and playbooks used across all of engineering to onboard tech leads, roll back safely, and debug with LLMs.

Senior ICFull-stack lead engineer

2014 – 2022

Epic Systems · Senior Software Engineer

Safety-critical clinical software across the stack, from M (MUMPS) database code to C#/.NET and TypeScript/JavaScript web front ends. Led usability studies and design reviews, and received Epic's 2020 Vision award for COVID-19 vaccination work.

2013

Insight Lab · Assistant Director

Managed lab staff, rebuilt the lab's science-education software, and built a staff management web app.

2012

Goodrich ISR · Software Engineering Co-op

National-defense software under strict security procedures.

2014

Rochester Institute of Technology · B.S. Software Engineering

Usability focus, magna cum laude. Minors in Psychology and Game Design. CAPM (PMI), 2016.

How I work

What I care about

Close to real users

My degree is in usability, and I've run usability studies for clinicians and tested AI output with the people who'd act on it. I do my best work when I can see who it's for.

Leaving things better documented

When I figure something out the hard way, I write it down. I write the playbooks and set up the processes that help teams ramp up faster and solve problems on their own.

Work that matters

Twelve years in healthcare and education wasn't an accident. I look for teams where the software makes a real difference to someone's day.

Toolkit

Skills

Code

  • Ruby on Rails
  • TypeScript, JavaScript
  • Vue 3, Ember, Angular
  • C#, .NET, Java, Python
  • M (MUMPS), SQL

AI / LLM

  • AI feature development
  • Prompt engineering
  • LLM output evaluation
  • Cursor, daily
  • Claude Code, Copilot

Engineering

  • Systems architecture
  • Pinia, TanStack Query
  • Qlik, Malloy
  • Docker, AWS, Codespaces
  • Observability tooling

Leadership

  • Cross-team tech lead
  • Mentorship
  • Incident command
  • Usability testing

Off the keyboard

Golem Craftworks

  • Dice
  • 3D modeling
  • 3D printing
  • Laser engraving
  • CNC
  • Woodshop

Golem Craftworks is my small Madison shop for handcrafted dice and tabletop gaming accessories: dice, hardwood dice vaults, Yahtzee sets and boxes, plus the 3D models and prints behind a lot of them.

The shop keeps me close to the software, too: modeling parts, writing and tuning G-code, building fixtures, and setting up a webcam feed so I can watch long cuts remotely. Before that, I ran a small sourdough bread business.