Human centered
10 years of psychology study and work. An empathic approach to collaborative development.
Professional Work
Somnology
Lead Software Engineer at Somnology, working on sleep health technology solutions. Currently leading product development on the main admin and user portal.
- Stack: React, Vercel, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, NodeJS, AWS, OAuth, tRPC, local LLMs
- Biggest Challenges: Becoming product owner on a fast paced startup and learning the product domain, while also architecting and building the product and taking over design responsibilities.
FemTech SaaS (Stealth)
As Founding Engineer for this stealth-mode FemTech startup, I architected, designed the UX, assisted product development, and and built a comprehensive SaaS platform from the ground up. The product leverages cutting-edge technologies to deliver innovative solutions in the women's health technology space.
- Stack: TypeScript, React, Vercel, tRPC, AWS, OAuth, Mixtrel, local LLMs, Open API
- Biggest Challenges: Architecting a scalable system that integrates advanced technologies like local LLMs while maintaining strict security standards. Implementing complex authentication flows with OAuth and ensuring optimal performance across the full stack.
Zulily
Zulily is a large ecommerce site owned by QVC. I would often call them the Amazon for Mothers. The primary app I worked on was called product onboarding portal. Before this app they relied on a team of people to process a spreadsheet that vendors would send in to process their products and add them to the system. This app automatied that process
- StackReact/Redux and Java and MongoDB
- Biggest Challenges:The backend system at Zulily was very complicated, and many different calls to many different services would cause stale data in different places throughout the app. And so very diligent state management was required to know which services needed to be called. On top of that, the many different states of UI for the numerous product types and how to interact with them and update all of their atributes.
Syndio Solutions
Syndio attempts to solve the ever so prominent issue of pay dispartiy in the work place. They did so by a satistical analysis that could be used by someone with no experience in math. The app would allow them to make potential changes to fix their disparity issues.
- StackReact/Redux and Python, Django, MongoDB, AWS, RabbitMQ
- Biggest Challenges:Solinvg the challenge of lengthy statistical calculations necessitating vertical scaling and a messaging system. And then once that was built, how to keep the UI informed and not blocked by the numerous asyncronous calls to different statistical analysis engines.
Montaia Global
A startup with a beautiful vision of connecting the world in a more deeply and mindful way.
- UI Framework: React And Redux
- Biggest Challenges: Getting every little detail on the UI right, percisely from the designers hand.
Fuzzstati0n
Deep security analysis company, focusing on Node JS applications.
- UI Framework: Mostly vanilla JavaScript and JQuery.
- Biggest Challenges:Choosing design patterns that worked well with what was already laid out.
Projects
Workin' It
Workout tracker app with the goal of simplicity and ease of use. Nothing more, nothing less.
Track your progress with charts. Share with your friends in app, and track their progress as well. Keep each other in check.
- UI Framework: React JS
- Server Tech: NodeJS, MongoDB, ExpressJS, Mongoose
- UX focused: Responsive, Material-UI design
- Biggest Challenges: Complex algorithms for complex data structures and presentation that data in an easy and intuitive manner for lay people to digest quickly and easily. This, as well as trying to make the easiest to use interface for inputting data as simple as possible, considering the complexity of all the data.
Give Me A Night
You know those days when you want to do something tonight and go out but not sure what? Here's a bunch of easy ideas. Just put in your mood and location.
- UI Framework: React JS
- Fun Tech: RxJS for the tough async stuff
- UX focused: Responsive, Material-UI design
- Biggest Challenges:How to conglomerate the data from 5 simeltaneous API calls at once? RxJS certainly helped with that, making for declarative code. That combined with a complex algorithm in the Redux reducer that makes it quite easy to swap out an API for another, very flexible for updates.
Transcriptor
Through my years as a student in psychology, qualitative research was often more interesting than quantitative, but nobody wanted to do it because of the amount of work involved! This app attempted to help in some manner to bypass the complexity of using private shared systems like google drive or dropbox, and make a single, simple and easy to use, proprietary interface to share transcripts, as well as to search and update them as needed.
- UI Framework: JQuery
- Server Tech: NodeJS, MongoDB, ExpressJS, Mongoose
- UX focused: Responsive, Material-UI design
- Biggest Challenges:Protecting every endpoint in the most secure way possible using PassportJS.
WatchTonight
- UI Framework: JQuery
- Server Tech: API calls; one which receives similar movies, TasteKid, and one which ranks them, IMDB.
- UX focused:Extremely simple, one page with one input
- Biggest Challenges:Implementing a lightbox for the video trailers from scratch.
Why Chad?
function considerChad() {
let happyHirerLevel = 50;
let goodIdea;
function hireChad() {
while (goodIdea) {
happyHirerLevel+=1;
}
return happyHirerLevel;
}
function searchOtherDevs() {
for(let i= 0; i < allOtherDevs.length || 3000; i+=1) {
if (!goodIdea ) {
happyHirerLevel-=1;
}
return happyHirerLevel;
}
if (needDev && likeHumanBeings && wantPassionateCoder) {
goodIdea = true;
return hireChad;
} else {
return searchOtherDevs;
}
}
const whyChad = considerChad()();
Sound good? Read on.
Contact
Thanks for looking over everything!
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions.
Ways to get in touch
Email me at chad.avalon1@gmail.com
Call me at (503)801-1095
My availability is flexible and so can be reached by phone easily.