About
The longer story — where I'm from, what I've done, and what I'm actually like to work with.
I grew up in Minneapolis and I'm at Purdue now, finishing a data science degree with an economics minor, graduating December 2026. The degree says data science; the honest version is that I like building systems and then finding out what they do under pressure — a model, a pipeline, a game server, it's the same instinct.
The professional short version: I spent this past summer as a data science intern at Archer Aviation, where I built user telemetry into the internal Python tooling used by a hundred-plus engineers — the interesting part wasn't the collection, it was making adoption free for the people being measured. Before that I tracked and visualized user behaviour at LeagueOS, and once upon a time I rebuilt school-district networks for Edina Public Schools, which taught me more about legacy infrastructure than any course has.
The rest of the time at Purdue went to things with people in them. I was president of my chapter of Triangle, a STEM fraternity — a year of running a house, a budget, and every disagreement that comes with both — and philanthropy director before that. On the Purdue Aerial Robotics Team I led the business side: a team of students handling marketing, finances and events for a 200-member organization, where restructuring how we applied for grants brought in a record amount of funding.
How I work
- Decide the hard part first. Most of my mistakes have been building the easy half beautifully.
- Assume it's broken until I've watched it work. Passing tests are evidence, not proof.
- Ship it small, to real people, early. Five friends using a thing teach you more than a thousand imagined users.
Elsewhere
- cadenedam@gmail.com — the reliable way to reach me
- linkedin.com/in/cadenedam
- github.com/Riftor — including the code for this site