Hi, I'm Kevin Kempf

I stumbled into software engineering as part of my graduate work in Geography. I never did finish that masters degree, but I found a career.

I was most recently a Software Engineer at AWS, on a team in the Proserve org that develops and maintains internal tools for AWS Prescriptive Guidance and Portfolio Migration. My day-to-day work was writing IaC and application code for React web applications with Node.js Lambda microservice backends.

Highlights of my time at Amazon include:

  • Migrating a database from AWS Aurora MySQL to Amazon DynamoDB.
    • I wrote a new data access package using the repository pattern to ease the transition and abstract the database implementation from the application layer
    • To discourage table scans I did not include the scan functionality in the package at all.
    • I re-modeled the existing relational data model for the site to use a Single Table design on DynamoDB.
    • To physically move the data from one database to the other I used Amazon DMS, which doesn't have a higher-order AWS CDK construct, so I wrote that, too.
    • The repository package is now the canonical way for the team to do data access in DynamoDB
    • The AWS CDK construct is the canonical way to build the IaC infastructure for migrating from Aurora MySQL to DynamoDB for the team.
  • Writing a javascript retry wrapper for asynchronous external calls
  • Serving as an "AI Champion" to promote and support use of Amazon Q Developer (now named Kiro) within our team; we held and maintained a 100% adoption rate during the transition period

If you'd like to know more about my work, check out my LinkedIn linkedin and GitHub github profiles.

My Blog

Making a Hono API using Claude Code - the Wrong Way

How I developed a Hono API from scratch with Claude Code

Read More →

My Webring

My internet friends and family both inspire me to professional greatness and tolerate my less professional moments in my downtime. They're all good people and I am in awe of their work.

  • Timothy Kempf is my talented and deeply intelligent brother who is an incredibly skilled software engineer nearly entirely focused on the front end. Unlike me he actually remembers what browser has implemented the feature he wants to use (I just ask him).
  • Daniel Wolfe is a journalist specializing in dataviz, motion graphics, and illustrations. He's also a whiz at using geographic tools to tell deeper truths in his stories.
  • Eun Bi Chang is a producer and art manager whose work includes managing film and game pipelines, vendor partnerships, and cross-disciplinary teams across creative production. Her art is diverse and stunning.