James Steinbach
Front-End Architect
Objective
To use modern technologies to create universally-usable digital products as part of a team where I can build strong relationships, grow professionally, and contribute to success.
Education
B.A. Bible, Bob Jones University (2005) – Summa cum laude
M.A. Bible, BJU (2007) – M.A. in Bible and Theology Student of the Year
Ph.D. New Testament Interpretation, BJU (2014)
Experience
Senior Front-End Engineer, Slack/Salesforce (2022-present)
Worked closely with designers for pixel-precise UI polish: matched expectations from both complete design specs and async conversations
Moved the team toward product release goals by contributing to multiple codebases: feature updates, bug fixes, and tech debt reduction
Took ownership of team accessibility tickets: resolved them to improve customer experience and meet a team quarterly goal
Took on monitoring responsibility for UI test alerts: triaged test failures, optimized test logic, and collaborated cross-functionally to improve stability
Lead team initiative to clean up deprecated feature toggles: organized status data, tracked progress, took over specific clean-up tasks from other engineers
Staff Front-End Engineer, Auth0/Okta (2020-2022)
Improved accessibility in templates used by millions of users
Built a no-code design customization tool for theming a white-labelled application
Integrated new content and features to existing React and node apps
Senior UX Developer, DockYard (2017-2020)
Led team initiatives in Web Components, Shadow DOM, and CSS Custom Properties
Mentored other front-end developers
Managed templates and style systems for Progressive Web Apps
Implemented advanced ARIA patterns for interactive components
Featured client work (under NDA)
- Built custom media playback Web Components in StencilJS
- Built embeddable data-driven microsite in StencilJS
- Set up Storybook to run instances of components for development and testing
- Maintained & added features to international product site
- Resolved scroll performance issues on mobile devices
- Styled moon phase indicator to respond to data-driven changes
- Developed performant gradient animation for dynamic app background
CEO/Owner, Summit Web Services (2017–Present)
Currently running a consulting/contracting business with availability: hire me.
Partner & Software Dev Lead, FleetCreature (2017)
Lead front-end / WordPress development teams
Built custom WordPress themes with attention given to accessibility and external API integration
Set and managed estimates and deadlines in collaboration with client support rep
- Developed WordPress theme to meet WCAG 2.0 accessibility requirements
- Fully keyboard navigable site: including sliders with nested focusable elements and a tab UI with embedded modal content
- Managed color compliance a11y issues and educated design team
- Built a CSS/JS UI pattern that uses aria attributes
- Advanced animation / content choreography on blog archive hover states
- Integrated 3rd party authentication with WordPress site
- Integrated multiple custom actions (including shipping API calls and automatic account creation) into WooCommerce hooks
- Developed an OOP class system for managing 3rd party APIs and custom tables, with custom endpoints exposed to both template PHP and client-side JS
Developed performant, SEO-friendly, responsive WordPress themes for lead generation sites
Collaborated with other team members making incremental improvements on several sites
Developed and implemented A/B tests to increase site revenue
- Built a custom WordPress theme with Sass and CSS
- Animated home page header & various UI elements
- Developed reusable style patterns for use across page templates
- WordPress custom Ajax endpoint for loading and modifying a custom post type dataset
- Custom YouTube embedding class designed to accommodate multiple markup patterns
- Integrated Algolia-based JS app into WordPress templates
- Used ACF to build a fully modular content management system for WordPress pages
- Wrote a class to manage ACF-stored custom fields with less server-side overhead
Senior Front-End Developer, The Idea People (2014–2015)
Developed custom responsive WordPress themes for client sites
Collaborated with several other team members using Git for version control
- Animated SVGs for neon lights on home page and in footer
- Designed and developed custom animation on “Events” page
- Refactored 10k+ lines of Sass resulting in more than 30% total CSS reduction
- Improved keyboard accessibility for all form elements
- Troubleshot issues in Ember view files
- Rebuilt existing WP theme, moving away from Bootstrap to a lightweight custom grid system
- Coded custom animation, including an animated Flexbox accordion
- Styled accompanying WordPress site as an app launched through PhoneGap
Director of Web Development, Drum Creative (2013–2014)
Integrated Sass into CSS workflow while developing 1–2 custom responsive WP themes per month
Managed development projects and oversaw additional development staff
- Built a custom WordPress theme with Sass and CSS
- Wrote custom jQuery and CSS3 animations to create dynamic homepage
Front-End Developer, Drum Creative (2012–2013)
Developed 1–2 custom WordPress themes per month using _s theme with CSS
Configured custom post types and fields to create powerful WP sites
Lead design team in implementing responsive web design workflow
- Used Sass to manage advanced CSS3 animation/layout with fallback for older browsers
- Wrote custom jQuery/JavaScript interaction for “Find Agent” feature.
Web Designer / Developer, Summit Web Services (2010–2014)
Designed and built sites with custom code and WordPress CMS
Optimized sites for multiple devices with responsive layout
- Wrote custom jQuery interactivity for displaying detailed content on a single-page WordPress site
Managed all duties related to a digital sales site running ZenCart (PHP eCommerce CMS) Wrote and ran custom MySQL queries to track sales and payments
Provided technical support for customers via phone and email
Site Manager, Joy Baptist Camp (2007–2008)
Expanded existing site with focus on content-driven page design
Skills
Technology
- HTML5 + CSS(3): animation, advanced layout, advanced design - examples at codepen.io/jdsteinbach
- WordPress: custom theme and plugin development
- Sass: extended default functions with Breakpoint, Susy, Compass, Bourbon, and Neat Sass: wrote custom mixins and functions - examples at gist.github.com/jdsteinbach
- jQuery + JavaScript: add interactivity to sites (see examples in “Experience” section)
- PHP + MySQL: manage my own development server (LAMP stack)
Communication
References
Available on request.
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