Operations and technology case study for FrontierBuild, a student technology builder program and hackathon competition.
FrontierBuild was an intensive student builder program and competition engineered to foster rapid prototyping, technical mentorship, and peer collaboration among student engineers and designers. Executing a seamless competition required dedicated digital infrastructure for registration, project submission tracking, mentor routing, and judge scoring distribution.
I served as the Director of Operations & Technology for FrontierBuild. In this leadership and engineering role, I was individually responsible for:
- Registration & Participant Management Systems: Designed and maintained the participant intake workflows, team matching pipelines, and communications automations.
- Submission & Judging Workflow: Developed automated routing scripts to distribute submitted projects across judging panels based on track criteria.
- Website Architecture & Operational Tools: Built event portal landing pages, schedule dashboards, and live announcement notification systems.
- Mentor & Partner Coordination: Engineered scheduling tools for mentor office hours and sponsor booth interactions.
To maintain clear technical transparency:
| Component | Responsibility & Platform |
|---|---|
| Custom Automations & Python Scripts | Personally Built: Submission distribution logic, team matching intake scripts, scoring aggregation. |
| Event Website & Dashboards | Personally Built: Frontend structure, participant schedule view, track information portal. |
| Team Operations & Logistics | Personally Led: Venue logistics, mentor onboarding, schedule execution. |
| Marketing & Graphic Assets | Teammates: Brand graphics, social promo media, promotional copy. |
| Third-Party Platforms | Integrated Systems: Discord (communications), Typeform/Airtable (raw participant data storage). |
[ Participant Registration ] ──► [ Intake Verification & Team Matching ]
│
▼
[ Competition & Mentorship Phase ] ◄── [ Mentor Scheduling Dashboard ]
│
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[ Project Submission System ]
│
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[ Automated Judging Distribution Engine ]
├── Track Classification & Conflict Checking
└── Score Aggregation & Normalized Ranking
│
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[ Final Presentation & Winner Announcement ]
- Challenge: Manual judge assignment for dozens of project submissions across distinct tracks led to scheduling bottlenecks.
- Solution: Engineered a Python script that processed submission metadata, checked for judge conflicts of interest, and auto-generated balanced evaluation queues.
- Outcome: Streamlined judging evaluation cycles, enabling final scoring verification within 45 minutes of submission deadline.
- Automation Reduces Event Friction: Automating administrative queues frees event leaders to focus on direct participant support and mentor engagement.
- Clear Role Scoping: Defining exact operational boundaries between engineering tools and team coordination ensures smooth multi-track event execution.