Tom Betthauser

Software Engineer / Visual Artist

Location:Bay Area / Northern California

About Me

I'm a software engineer as well as an educator and practicing visual artist. Since 2020 I've had the privilege of working at one of the world's most competitive and inclusive software bootcamps both as a fullstack engineer maintaining our internal platform and tools as well as a lead instructor responsible for taking cohorts of 100+ students from their first day to their first jobs in the industry over the course of an intensive 6 month curriculum.

Before transitioning to my career as a software engineer I taught painting, life drawing, art history and multimedia arts at a number of colleges in Northern and Southern California for the better part of a decade. Prior to this I worked as a TA at Yale School of Art where I received my MFA and at the San Francisco Art Institute where I received my BFA.

Although I have been very happy with my experience in my current position, I am actively looking for new opportunities to continue expanding as a software engineer and as a member of the larger tech community.


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Work Experience

Lead Cohort Instructor / Software Engineer

App Academy – Software Engineering Bootcamp

June 2020 – Present


  • Assisting in maintenance of internal company platform built with Ruby on Rails.
  • Developing and maintaining internal tools written in python and Node.js interfacing with API from separate team.
  • Designing and developing stand-alone student-facing demonstration projects focused on React / Redux, Express, Flask, Heroku, AWS S3, Docker as well as Data Structures and OOP principles in Python and Javascript.
  • Mentoring and assisting students in designing and building fully functional web platforms for their portfolios.
  • Acting as the primary manager and mentor for groups of 50-100 students from admission to graduation.


Adjunct Professor – Lecturer / Multimedia Arts Instruction / Gallery Director

College of Marin, West Valley College, Bakersfield College & Cerro Coso College

Spring 2013 to May 2020


  • Instructed students in building mobile-responsive JavaScript-heavy front-end websites in non-CS courses to showcase their portfolios.
  • Directed campus gallery organizing and managing 10+ employees and volunteers for installation of multimedia and digital artwork for 6 annual exhibitions and public visiting artist lectures regularly exceeding 150 attendants.

Exhibit Technician – Basic IT Maintenance / Digital Exhibit Installation & Fabrication

Exploratorium Museum & The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Spring 2006 to Fall 2016


  • Maintained operation of servers responsible for exhibits during nights and weekends in place of normal IT staff.
  • Took lead on teams of 3+ technicians during installation, repair and fabrication of 100+ interactive and digital exhibits.

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Ongoing Software Projects


2019 Arts Survey Data Webpage

A data visualization JavaScript project using the D3 library and Webpack to implement Object Oriented ES6 syntax. The results from an annual community-developed survey for visual artists.

Live Site     GitHub


2019 Arts Survey Database Explorer

A desktop application built in Python with TkInter and SQLite. Specifically to help artists, gallerists etc. explore the results from a census-style survey for visual artists and learn basic SQL. Check out the download link to use the tool!

Download Tool     GitHub


Arts Database Creator / Webscraper

A tool built with Python and Selenium for automating a search for all galleries, museums and art schools in a given city. Search attempts to find website, email and physical addresses.

GitHub


Arts Map Webpage Creator

A Python-based tool intended to provide a way for artists, galleries and arts institutions to make and host free fully interactive and mobile-friendly map websites to assist in promoting arts events like open studios.

Download Tool     GitHub