Background

GenUI is a software development consulting agency based out of Seattle Washington. GenUI, specializes in turning big ideas into digital realities. They focus on crafting software across various platforms like mobile, web, and AI, using. GenUI is all about collaboration and trust, making sure they're not just delivering projects but building partnerships that drive real impact​.

Although I legally cannot show images of my work at GenUI here is a picture of me with the team from their careers page :)

Working at GenUI

Working at GenUI was a really great transition into fulltime after freelancing for 4 years. I joined the company on a team that was collaborating with microsoft research. I came onto the project as a contributing developer, I soon took over as the technical lead on the project when the current lead left the company. I would go on to lead 3 major project teams as well contribute to other projects.

People I Worked With

Microsoft Research

When I started at GenUI in 2021 the COVID pandemic was in it last major leg, but vaccines were not yet rolled out nationally.

The first project I completed for GenUI was a data storage system that stored data used by a chatbot created by the Microsoft Research team to help people determine if they were eligible for the vaccine based on geological and personal health factors.

Once vaccines rolled out nationally and the first project wrapped, my team transitioned to building a tool that would allow non-profit organizations to cross collaborate in order to facilitate vaccine distribution to impoverished and individuals that would otherwise have difficulty accessing the vaccine.

The Native BioData Consortium (NBDC) is the first 501(c)(3) nonprofit research institute led by Indigenous scientists and tribal members in the United States. As a biorepository (or “biobank”), they ensure that advances in genetics and health research benefit all Indigenous people.

I led the technical team to build the first version 1 of the Native BioData's BioBank. My team used Next.js and Prisma to quickly build and deploy a full-stack Node+Typescript driven application that was hosted on premises on sovereign Native American land.

Cross Team Collaboration

In addition to being a team lead, I also contributed on several projects in varying capacities from Csharp to Elixir.

Leadership

While at GenUI I also mentored several junior engineers, supervised 3 direct reports, and conducted new hire interviews.

Internal Tools

I also worked on several internal tools at the company, from developing the internal company information hub, to creating reusable codebases that saved the company thousands of dollars in project startup costs.

Next Launch

Next Launch is one of the projects I'm most proud of at developing at GenUI. Next Launch is a toolkit that could be used to quickly jumpstart Next.js projects. Which was used by 3 different large scale projects at GenUI during my tenure.

It can be easy to overlook all of the little things that go into developing an app for the web. Even though web tech has come a long way. It isn't possible to just pull Next.js and expect to have an app that is going to function at a production level. There are still things to consider like ORMs, localization, adding analytics, authentication, decisions about linting, testing, deployment workflows, and the list goes on.

The primary goal of the project was to create a Next.js bootstrap with the minimal amount of tooling needed to launch a successful GenUI project to a production environment with confidence that it will work well and be easy to jump in to and get started. A secondary goal was also to standardize code across teams a little more, as many developers at the company would often jump between projects and limiting their transition time meant saving the company valuable resources.

The tool needed to be easy to use, easy to get off the ground fast, easy for new developers, and easy to customize. That meant needing consensus of other React developers at GenUI to find a solution that would work for everyone. (Or as many developers as possible). As well as looking back on other projects I had developed so far at GenUI and as a freelancer.

I created a toolkit that leveraged Next.js' full-stack capabilities, backed by typescript, Prisma, Tailwind, localization, prettier, eslint, and editorconfigs that matched GenUI's coding style principles, and a grab bag of other libraries that were necessary to make an app that was not just a functioning mvp, but production ready, fast.

One piece of the toolkit that I found very clever and useful was creating a config file that contained critical client information and theming that could be quickly hot swapped. This would allow a team to cut straight to developing the functioning parts of an app that our clients cared about saving up to 30 hours of developer timer per project.