About


Hi! I'm Marissa Shaffer. I am a Full-Stack Web Developer and Software Engineer currently working for F&G Life & Annuities as a Software Engineer. A little back story about me:

I did not start my carreer right away into web development and software engineering but everything helped me along my journey. I actually went to college for graphic design, marketing, and business. I took a couple of classes in web design but it did not dawn on me how much I enjoyed coding until later in my marketing and design career! My first design job was a graphic designer for Mittera Creative in Des Moines, IA in 2015. After about two years, my husband's job transferred him to Minnesota. My life was turned upside down for a few months.

After moving to Minnesota in 2017, I job searched for three months. I got a job at Maurices as a part-time stylist and worked in retail for a couple of months. I soon found out I was pregnant with my first child and needed help finding a better job, so I turned to a recruiting agency, The Creative Group. In about a month, I finally landed a tempory job working through the Creative Group and Edney Distributing as a Marketing Communications Specialist. It lasted three months until they hired someone else full time. I was back job hunting again and starting working for Maurices for a month while interviewing for a different creative job. I gave up creative job hunting as I was getting closer to my third trimester with my baby on the way. Then I started working for Target in one of their stores as Beauty Team Member until I had my baby girl in December of 2017. She was born on Christmas Eve and again my life turned updside down. I went on unpaid leave until I could come back to work after 8 weeks. Coming back to work after having a baby was one of the hardest things I have had to do but we did not have enough money for me to stay at home any longer. So, I went back to work at Target in February 2018.

A few more months went by as a worked hard at Target. I did not mind it and it was a very active job. Then the Vice President of Edney Distributing reached out to me on LinkedIn and wanted me to come back to work for them in May 2018! I was so happy that she asked and I agreed to work for them again as a Marketing Communications Specialist on contract to hire Full-Time through The Creative Group. I was back to doing creative and marketing work again which was what I thought I wanted. I helped them with many large projects including a website redesign and a rebrand. While working through the website redesign, it had me thinking that I need to learn web development! I wanted to know how things worked and how to build functionality. I already knew HTML and CSS, so it just made sense to me to take it a step further. In September 2019, I signed up for a coding bootcamp through Lambda School for Full-Stack Web Development to start in December. Then I hit another obstacle. I found out that I was pregnant with my second child that October. I decided to stick with my commitment since I would be able to go on a medical leave from school to take care of myself and my baby when I needed to. I wasn't going to let anything stop me completely from my goal of becoming a web developer.

Then I get one month into my coding school, and once again, another obstacle in my life hit not only me but the whole world in January 2020. Covid-19 struck. I was pregnant, already a mother of a small child, working full time, and going to school part time. It was just another challenge for me to take on and I did not let it hold me back. I put everything else aside when it came to class time with the help of my husband. He would take care of our daughter every night that I had class or homework. Thankfully my class was online so nothing changed there but I started working from home in February 2020 as a health precaution. I felt stuck in my house for months until it was time to have my second baby in July 2020. I took a leave from school and work for a few months and came back after about 8 or so weeks. This time it was paid 100% and far less stressful of a time to bond with my baby minus needing to go back to the hospital for a post-partum heath complication. I was ready to come back to work in September and coding school in October 2020. My school work was already paying off with my job at the time. I had helped so much with the web redesign project planning and working with the third party developers in the implementation process, I was offered a promotion as a Marketing Communications Manager. I accepted and began overhauling the web redesign project and built a small content design team.

It was a fun time to be working on the website redesign project and leading my team of two content specialists. I also wrapped up my coding school and graduated in May 2021! Finally! After all that time I had achieved an endorsement or certification with Lambda School in Web Development. I was able to build UI and frontend with html, css, and Javascript and also the backend with JavaScript, Node, and SQL. I was ready to take on my new career. After job searching, networking, several interviews, and a lot of rejections, I landed a job with Culligan Ultrapure as an IT Backend Developer in September 2022! Persitence, patience, and practice is key to how I arrived at this part of my developer journey. At Culligan Ultrapure I was working with Netsuite Suitescript.js, SQL, and Python. As of November 2023, I am working for F&G as a software engineer and learning Oracle Database, PL/SQL, Java, and advancing my SQL skills. I am learning so much still every day and can't wait to see what else I can build!


Hobbies & Interests