Full-stack web developer.

20+ years in startup and corporate environments (WebMD, Rakuten)

I specialize in building web front-end applications (Next.js/React.js/Node.js/Express) with production experience in MongoDB, Redis, Docker, AWS and more out of Vancouver, Canada.

TL;DR: I build custom websites that scale using modern technology from start to finish or as a part of a team.

Meta: See the code I used to build & deploy this page on GitHub.

Read this CV as a PDF: Download.

My VS Code as I edit this web page.

Work experience.

Please note that I’ve arranged my experience in order of relevance. Below, you’ll find my entrepreneurial roles, open-source contributions, and education summary.

WebMD 2019-2024

Senior Software Engineer. Remote/Vancouver.

After my exit with QxMD, I continued my role at WebMD with integration and compliance responsibilities on the same stack but with more diverse APIs, codebases, management software, and stakeholders.

QxMD 2018-2019

Senior Software Engineer. Vancouver.

QxMD (now part of Medscape/WebMD) served medical professionals with interactive tools, a learning portal, and a scientific journal registry. I was the first full-time front-end engineer responsible for rewriting all the web applications and associated components.

In my first year, I transformed the company’s two main ten-year-old Perl/PHP/CSS/JQuery codebases into fast, SEO-friendly Next.js applications structured for easy readability and safe deployments with good unit and integration test coverage (various CI tech, from GitHub Actions to Jenkins to GitLab) and TypeScript.

Later the same year, I took over the Node.js/Pug project (learning portal) with TypeForm integration and rewrote it in React.js. My side quest was to build a JavaScript package for collecting and transmitting user interaction events in full compliance with GDPR.

By the end of my first year, QxMD was sold to WebMD. As a part of the founding team, I got to exercise my options.

Kobo Inc. (Rakuten) 2012-2013

Web Producer. Toronto.

Kobo is a Canadian e-reader and a bookseller that’s now owned by a Japanese retail giant. I built accessible and widely compatible email templates (which was very difficult at the time due to the email clients’ archaic rendering engines) and responsive microsites (vanilla HTML, SASS, & vanilla JavaScript) using the best practices of the time.

Henning Solutions 2009-2011

Web Developer and Art Director. Toronto.

Henning Solutions was a software engineering firm that built e-commerce websites and a video streaming service for children. I engineered various web components in PHP (and limited ASP.NET) with front-ends made with MooTools and SASS. See Dmitri’s Animation for a career link.

Matter tech accelerator group shot with Eureka King.

Founding roles.

I worked in a variety of capacities as a founder of three Canadian and one US-based businesses. This section summarizes a few highlights from this journey.

Analog.Cafe 2017-now

Founding Editor and Engineer. Chiang Mai/Vancouver.

Analog.Cafe is a Canadian web publishing/content platform with a custom CMS built mainly in Node/Next.js and a visual editor made with Slate.js. It uses MongoDB/Redis for content storage and user accounts/actions and integrates with Sendgrid and Cloudinary. It uses Passport.js for SSO and one-time-code authentication.

Analog.Cafe is a blog with public contributions (100+ authors). It has a growing readership of 100K UMV, 14K email subscribers, and hundreds of paying customers via Stripe.

I built many types of tools and apps to extend the website’s functionality. The most capable is a K8S deployment with autoscaling via Keda and an in-house queue management with MongoDB written in Typescript. This deployment uses libvips, sharp, libraw, and Dropbox API via Node.js (written with TypeScript) to batch-invert film negatives (typically large image files, up to 300 MiB) in the cloud.

filmQ film negative inversion app.

Eureka King 2015-2018

CTO. San Francisco/Chiang Mai.

Eureka King was a US-based startup that served journalist organizations (Associated Press, KQED) and the public with web-based marketing tools and analytics dashboards. I designed and built front-end components with Ruby on Rails, Cake/PHP, React.js, and Node.js.

My less technical responsibilities included hiring and managing a team of three full-time developers, coordinating interns, and various startup duties.

Hechnr Business Engines Inc. 2013-2014

Technical Co-Founder. Toronto.

HBE was a Canadian startup that designed iPhone applications. As a co-founder, I designed various components of an iPhone application and helped get the seed round funding.

Dmitri’s Animation. 2009-2012

Sole Proprietor. Toronto.

Dmitri’s Animation was a contracting business I started that produced video content and provided web services. I was paid through this busienss name by Henning Solutions and other clients, like Sheridan College who hired me to produce short animation videos for their stage producdtion. See the archived website.

`chat-bubble` UI

Open-source.

I’ve contributed to a number of projects on GitHub. Below is my most-used open-source project:

chat-bubble

Core maintainer.

chat-bubble is a simple vanilla JavaScript framework for building chat front-ends on the web quickly and with minimal setup. It was made to simplify bot interactions and had numerous contributions, including RASA implementation. While this project has been dormant since 2021, it has zero dependencies and thus needs no chore updates.

Last day of teaching at Prince Royal’s College.

Other jobs & volunteering experience.

This is a short list of other jobs I’ve held, which may give you a fuller idea of my general life experience.

Partnership for Change. 2016

Visiting Advisor. Nyang Shwe.

I volunteered to teach the basics of business opportunities and responsibilities to new entrepreneurs in the village of Nyang Shwe (Myanmar).

Price Royal’s College. 2013-2014

Computer Science and Design Instructor. Chiang Mai.

I taught 800 Thai children (ages 12-24) how to build websites in Chiang Mai’s largest private school.

University of Toronto 2004-2009

Research Assistant. Toronto.

I helped run and design psychology experiments on campus while studying for my degree.

Bryant Renovations 2005-2008

Carpenter Assistnat. Toronto.

This was my part-time job while studying where I helped with demoliton, drywall installation, roofing, etc.

After the graduating ceremony at the University of Toronto.

Education.

University of Toronto. 2003-2009

Graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in Psychology and Communication, Culture, and Information Technology.

Sheridan College. 2005-2009

Graduated with a certificate in Digital Communication.