Michael Bessey
About Michael Bessey
Michael Bessey is a Senior Data Science Software Engineer at MassMutual in New York, with extensive experience in software engineering, data visualization, and application development.
Current Role at MassMutual
Michael Bessey currently holds the position of Senior Data Science Software Engineer at MassMutual in New York, United States. In this role, he leverages his extensive experience and expertise in data science to lead the development of various innovative applications. His responsibilities include overseeing projects that involve crafting complex and insightful visualizations to tell stories of fraud, risk, consumer preference, and investment performance.
Previous Industry Roles
Prior to his current role, Michael held several significant positions. He served as the Head of Data Visualization at MassMutual Financial Group from 2016 to 2021 in New York City. Before that, he was the Director of Software Architecture at Showtime Networks from 2010 to 2016. Michael also worked as a Programmer/Analyst Middleware Infrastructure at UCLA from 2008 to 2009, and as a Web Application Engineer at Novell from 2004 to 2008. His early career included a brief stint at emWare as a QA Engineer and Documentation Technical Writer in 2003, and at the Certified Career Institute as a Programming Instructor from 2002 to 2003.
Educational Background
Michael Bessey has an extensive educational background that complements his professional experience. He earned a Master of Science (M.S.) in Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University, completing his studies between 2011 and 2015. Additionally, he holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Computer Science from the University of Utah, which he obtained over a six-year period from 1998 to 2004. Michael has also earned two certificates in Data Visualization from New York University, one in Fundamentals and the other in Design, both completed in 2014.
Technological Expertise
Michael possesses extensive expertise in a wide range of technologies and programming languages. His skill set includes HTML, CSS, SASS, Gulp, Webpack, Javascript, TypeScript, React/Redux, D3.js, WebGL, Python, Numpy, Pandas, Flask, Django, REST, JSON, XML, SQL, and many more. Additionally, he is proficient with tools and platforms like PyCharm, MicroStrategy, Sketch, AWS, Vertica, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Redis, Kafka, Okta, Jira, Git, and Git-Flow. This comprehensive array of skills enables him to lead and execute complex software engineering projects effectively.
Leadership and Development Contributions
Throughout his career, Michael has demonstrated strong leadership and development skills. At MassMutual, he led the development of a General Investment Account Portfolio web application used by management to support investment decisions. He also built an application that tracks security threats across the organization, and a portal that tracks the department's data science models and advanced analytics applications and dashboards. Currently, he is spearheading the development of a Design System at MassMutual, which provides guidelines and user interface components for custom web application development. Michael also plays a significant role in mentoring through code reviews and training sessions.