Avin Zarlez

Mother, Advocate, Staff Developer Evangelist at Arm

Download resume as PDF View profile on LinkedIn

Avin Zarlez

Software engineer and developer advocate in developer relations, focused on solving complex problems, building production-ready solutions, and making technical concepts clear, practical, and impactful. I have lead projects from design through architecture, implementation, and delivery, with experience in scalable systems, DevOps practices, and high-quality engineering across teams. I apply that foundation to developer enablement, building demos, prototypes, and technical content, and engaging developers through conferences, workshops, and online communities while driving feedback into product and engineering teams.

Experience

Arm — San Jose, CA

Staff Developer Evangelist
October 2024 to Present

  • Represent Arm to the developer ecosystem through technical talks, workshops, webinars, hackathons, and hands-on education across in-person and online channels.
  • Design and build technical demos, software tools, and example implementations that showcase Arm capabilities and help developers adopt Arm compute platforms.
  • Act as a feedback conduit between external developers and internal product, engineering, and strategy teams by identifying technical gaps, ecosystem trends, and adoption barriers.
  • Combine application software expertise, technical storytelling, and developer enablement to strengthen Arm’s presence in the broader software community.

Microsoft — Mountain View, CA

Senior Software Engineer
July 2018 to October 2024

  • Delivered 3-to-12-month engineering engagements for strategic customers and partners, taking projects from architecture through implementation, automated CI/CD deployments, and production rollout.
  • Built maintainable enterprise-ready solutions across customer-preferred stacks including Python, C#, Java, and TypeScript, in cloud services such as Azure functions, web services, Kubernetes, authentication, data management, DevOps, machine learning, conversational chat bots and modern AI/LLM systems.
  • Improved cost, user experience, functionality, and operational efficiency for customers across many industries such as manufacturing, retail, healthcare, media, and entertainment.
  • Mentored developers during technical events such as Microsoft’s OpenHack series and contributed functional press-ready demos for new products and services including HoloLens 2.

Senior Technical Evangelist
March 2017 to July 2018

  • Partnered with developers to solve technical challenges, guiding projects from prototype to production using Microsoft tools, services and cloud platforms.
  • Presented technical content to thousands of developers and students through conferences, workshops, and online training, driving platform adoption.
  • Created and maintained open-source projects, code samples, and documentation for Azure, cognitive services, DevOps, and application development.

Technical Evangelist
August 2013 to March 2017

  • Represented Microsoft platforms and technology to game developers, college students, and professional developer communities across the United States and Canada.
  • Produced technical blog posts, training videos, podcasts, and social content.
  • Coordinated meetups, hackathons, and conference participation to grow developer engagement.

PlayPerro — San Jose, CA

Founder / Game Developer
November 2012 to October 2024

  • Company for my solo game development projects.
  • Most known for “#DanceTogether” featured at IndieCade 2016 and the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference 2017.

Yobonja — Los Altos, CA

Co-Founder / Game Developer
November 2009 to September 2013

  • Co-founded an independent game studio and wore every hat across software engineering, design, marketing, customer support, and business operations.
  • Best known for Blast Monkeys, a physics-based puzzle game that became the #1 free Android app in 2011 and surpassed 12 million downloads in its first year.
  • Nominated for “Best Mobile App for Consumers” at the 2012 Global Mobile Awards at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Core Strengths and Skills

  • Developer Relations & Community Leadership — Driving engagement and adoption through conferences, workshops, hackathons, and technical content for large developer audiences.
  • Software Architecture, Cloud & DevOps Delivery — Designing and shipping production systems across Python, C#, Java, and TypeScript with deep expertise in git, automation, virtual networks, scalable system design and cloud platforms such as Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
  • Developer Enablement & Technical Leadership — Building demos, prototypes, tools, and documentation that empower developers and accelerate successful outcomes.
  • Engineering Excellence & Technical Versatility — Strong code quality practices including testing, code reviews, and version control, combined with rapid learning across new technologies and domains.
  • Cross-Functional Enablement & Mentorship — Partnering with product, engineering, and external developers while mentoring teams to improve collaboration, feedback loops, and overall impact.

Education

Cogswell Polytechnical College — Sunnyvale, CA

Bachelor of Science, Software Engineering

Bachelor of Science, Digital Arts Engineering

  • Graduated Summa Cum Laude with two bachelor’s degrees.
  • President of the Game Development Club and Improv Club, and an associated student body board member.
  • Hired by the school as a C programming tutor and Student Ambassador.