Intro
Hi! My name is Chris, and I'm a web developer living in Austin, Texas. My hobbies include metalworking, rock climbing, and customizing mechanical keyboards. When I'm not doing the former, you can find me hanging out with my wife, Haley, and cats, Jackson and Johnny.
Work
newtrious
trainmethod
FiveStar Prospects
ichbindev blog
whichCat
Psych
Note: Heroku has removed their free tier and some of these links are dead. I'm working on finding a new home for those the affected projects.
Hover over a project for more information.
About
I first started programming in 7th grade by writing text games on my handy TI-83 graphing calculator. Since then, I’ve been hooked on tinkering with code.
Years later I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. There, I was exposed to many different uses for programming, but I found the most enjoyment in building full stack applications, be it websites or native mobile applications.
After graduating in 2014 I started working full-time at HomeAway (now Vrbo), an online vacation rental marketplace. Over time, my role drifted more and more towards the backend (Java) where I built high-throughput APIs and owned an auto-translation service that was responsible for all machine translated text on the site. I also led DevJr, a group to help junior developers learn and grow, by finding monthly speakers to talk about a wide range of topics focusing on tech and career.
Unfortunately, I had to deal with a foot fracture that was diagnosed incorrectly. The pain continued to worsen until I had to to take a leave from work and focus on my health. The root cause was found and after two surgeries and physical therapy and I was ready to start coding again. As I was recovering from surgery, I decided to take a part in a full-stack coding bootcamp to get back into a routine and coding every day. This gave me some structured learning and experience with the latest web technologies.
When I was ready to begin full time work again I started at Cvent, where I worked on a SaaS product that allows users to create and customize rich forms, manage the responses, and create events to be managed through our product. I really enjoyed working on the newer applications, written in React and TypeScript and deployed on AWS. This role also gave me the opportunity to mentor other developers, which I find to be the most rewarding part of my work.
After a year, I joined ZenBusiness as a Senior Software Engineer, where I am continuing to learn and refine my skills. Although I am a full stack engineer, I have been working mainly on the frontend. This, coupled with my experience on the backend, allows me to feel comfortable in any part of the stack, whether it be SQL or CSS.
I'm currently working at ZenBusiness as a Staff Software Engineer, where I get to do the above as well as lead a team of 6 engineers. In addition to coding, I enjoy contributing to the product road map and helping my team grow technically and professionally.
Contact