Resume

Upstatement is a design and engineering studio that works with clients on everything from research and strategy, to branding, to complete transformations of their online presence.

• Acted as Technical Director on several projects, frequently juggling more than one project at a time.
• Worked across many different stacks, from PHP to Node to Ruby on Rails, to VueJS and React, to WordPress and Craft CMS, to using Google Docs as an API. Wrote Documentation and Technical Briefs, gave technical walkthroughs, and contributed to Statements of Work and Creative Briefs.
• Participated in the creation and trial run of a mentorship program, mentoring 3 developers at different skill levels.
• Gave company-wide presentations / talks on VueJS and context switching, lead a standardization project on our SCSS usage.
• Took the initiative to build a robust Starter Kit for Craft CMS that has saved hundreds of developer hours.
• Client projects have included: Tito’s Vodka, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Trace, PBS Newshour, the American Thoracic Society, Covid Protocols, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Earth Alliance, and many more.

I joined Traackr as the first specifically Front-End developer on a small team, tasked with being a bridge between Development and Design, and introducing more modern technologies to our Influencer Marketing Management platform.

• Introduced ES2015 support (transpiled via Gulp), Jasmine for front-end unit testing, and the VueJS Framework, and constantly acted as a resource for the team in these areas.
• Acted as Engineering Lead for a project based around building and designing a feature for discovering new influencers who are invested in your brand.
• Worked closely with our Designer to build a team-wide Styleguide and enforce consistency in both the look and feel of different aspects of the application.
• Followed Scrum Process (Sprints, Sprint Planning / Review / Retro, Story Pointing). Worked with our Product Owner to prioritise User-Experience focused bugs, technical debt, and feature requests.

Vecna brought me on to help with building out their patient platform, used by numerous hospitals to improve a patient’s experience with preparing for appointments and procedures, as well as managing their finances.

• Improved build processes using Gulp to include more file watches, copies, and automated compiling.
• Worked with our Designer to begin implementing a sophisticated styleguide that included realistic mock patient data, built within our application.
• Began a process of becoming intimately familiar with the Torso framework for Backbone with the intent of acting as a core developer for the project.

I was the first front-end developer to be hired by Society of Grownups three months before the opening of our first location. With a combination of digital tools and both physical and online classes to educate, Society of Grownups seeks to empower people to take control of their finances.

• Acted as Lead Developer for a 6 month project, supervising 7 other developers and tasked with a complete rewrite of the website, including an upgrade from Ember 1.5 to 2.4, and the addition of Ember-CLI and Ember-Data.
• Assisted in building the team from the two developer it began as to more than ten. Partial responsibility for reviewing resumes, interviewing, and onboarding. Additionally, improved hiring processes, including writing a Javascript test based around creating a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.
• Routinely deployed code to test servers via AWS Code Deploy and helped other devs become comfortable with the process as well.
• Mentored two junior developers by citing practical examples of best practices, pairing, offering encouragement, and enforcing digiligent code reviews.
• Implemented improvements to the Team Culture with the creation of a quarterly 2-day Hackathon, and a monthly Game night, as well as an initiative around community volunteering called "Grownups Give Back".

At Vista Higher Learning, I was one of two developers tasked with overseeing the UX for our web application - an online language learning tool, serving several thousand requests per minute. While we both worked in the Boston office, I was the primary UX developer for a satellite team of 8 developers in Medellin, Colombia. I reported directly the Director of Engineering.

• Assisted Product Management in the writing and tasking of features and user stories.
• Drew wireframes and worked closely with the Graphic Designers on new features to ensure both good design and good user experience. Integrated designs ensuring cross-browser compatibility.
• Wrote 4 new XML tag parsers in Ruby on Rails for the purposes of creating online homework assignments for students to complete.
• Presented team-wide "tech talks" covering topics such as the benefits of SASS, cross-browser compatibility, JavaScript namespacing patterns, and solving the problem of having too many document ready calls.
• Maintained CSS and Javascript for a very large code base spread across 4 applications.
• Ensured that feature specifications were updated through the Agile development process, and that the QA Manager had accurate test plan coverage.

HomSurfin is a new startup currently in the Beta accelerator program. I am the only contractor on the project and am working closely with the founder to help build out the company. My responsibilities include:

• Leading development and feature planning of a prototype mobile application using Quasar.
• Assisting with branding and design work.
• Planning out post-funding hiring for an entire engineer team, in terms of roles needed, salaries, and so on. Also helping to codify broad company benefits.

I founded Neon Remedy Studios for the ongoing publication of an officially licensed digital graphic novel that I’m co-writing, called Half-Life: A Place in the West, which is the first stand-alone comic released via the Steam media distribution platform. Currently we have 8 chapters released, with more being developed.

• Managed company contracts and invoices, as well as the hiring and firing of contractors.
• Handled technical accounts including emails, Adobe and Dropbox subscriptions, the Steam store page, and more.
• Oversaw translations, worked alongside artists on different aspects of production.
• Calculated projected sales, handled discount schedules, and created budgets for 2020, 2021, and 2022 to allow us to meet our goals.

The years that I freelanced and contracted taught me a lot about working with other people, discerning their wants and needs, and working with second-hand code. During this time I did a lot of design integration for content management systems such as Drupal and Wordpress, and forum software such as vBulletin, PHPBB, and XenForo. I worked onsite or remotely, alone or with small groups, depending on what the client had available and what was required.

Essentially a “crash course” in user experience, this class covered many of the basics including writing specifications and the importance of having user stories drive your feature requirements. A large focus was also on wireframing and prototyping - creating effective mockups quickly, as well as the nature of iterative design.

I attended a wide variety of courses with a focus on English and Social Sciences. Courses included Criminal Law, Sociology, Popular Culture & Society, Environmental Science, Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Business Management, and English 2 Honors and World Literature. I was entered into the Dean's List for Excellence for 3 out of 5 semesters, graduating with a cumulative GPA of 3.5 / 4.