Willis Allstead

Director of Engineering at CharacterStrong.

I’m a full-stack engineer.

I lead two product engineering teams at CharacterStrong, building the systems behind curriculum products used by schools across the country.

On the side, I’m building Bonsave, a personal finance app trying to make sense of money one small observation at a time.

Now

Bonsave

bonsave.app

Grow your money. Intentionally.

A personal finance app built around one idea: attention compounds. Each morning Bonnie, the built-in AI, delivers a single focused observation about your accounts, spending, or goals. No dashboards full of noise. Syncs 12,000+ institutions via Plaid, tracks net worth, budgets, and subscriptions. iOS app shipping May 2026.

Work

CharacterStrong

· 4 yrs 1 mo

Director of Curriculum Engineering

Mar 2024 – Present

I lead engineers across two product engineering teams building the systems and tools that power our learning products. Stack: TypeScript, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, React. This work supports CharacterStrong's mission to create a more loving world through education.

Full Stack Developer

Apr 2022 – Mar 2024

Headed the Curriculum Development team. Built specialized, interactive curricula for schools nationwide in TypeScript and React, working closely with educators to ship what classrooms actually needed.

Noble Studios

· 4 yrs

Senior Web Developer

Jun 2019 – Apr 2022

Hired full-time after graduating from UNR. Shipped large-scale client projects across a wide range of web technologies.

Web Developer, Part-time

Aug 2018 – May 2019

Kept contributing through senior year at UNR after my internship wrapped.

Intern Web Developer

May 2018 – Aug 2018

First summer at Noble. Got dropped into real production work and learned more than any classroom could teach.

Education

University of Nevada, Reno

2015 – 2019

B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering.