Christopher Ksiazak

Upon joining Kinsta, I was a part of a new internal project from beginning to fruition. Utilizing React, Node, Typescript, GraphQL, and various Google Cloud services, we were able to create something from nothing asynchronously with a global team. Within that project, I led the integration of Mixpanel for user analytics and tracking.

Afterward, I was placed on a team within the core application and microservices and quickly learned from there. Here too was mainly Typescript-oriented, but I did have the opportunity to work with Helm, Kubernetes, Prisma, and diving deep within Docker and Google Cloud functionality. My most recent accomplishment was integrating Nixpacks as an additional toolchain within our application's build system for customers, integrating with Docker, GKE, and Google Cloud Build.

As with any feature I oversaw the development of, I continued to provide support and help regarding it. Whether it be documentation, or serving as a SME for those who needed it. The company, however, decided to reduce its force, in which I took the opportunity to exit and seek new ventures.

As a hobby and side project, along with friends, I founded and co-owned a local music venue specifically dedicated to Techno, House, and other underground music for the borderland area. Being a very different concept than anything I've ever dealt with, I learned to manage a business and deal with everything surrounding one, while growing from a small venue to one of the largest clubs in the southwest. We were able to push the local music scene further than I ever thought possible, and were able to host events that my city wouldn't normally have the opportunity to have.

In the end, it was exactly as tiring as it sounds, so we decided to end it and go our separate ways.

Although not long, I joined E-Dealer Direct and served as part of the core engineering team of 3. In my time there, I contributed to stack discussions in an agile environment, created wireframes and mockups using Figma, and planned and developed new features.

Unfortunately, due to COVID, I was part of the reduction in force for about 3 months. Afterward, I was asked to return to my position at E-Dealer Direct. While in that role, the engineering team shrunk and I took on additional responsibility in which I was able to lead the development and integration of a new B2B product while maintaining ownership of the mobile application and several features in the main product.

My typical day-to-day technologies were React, React Native, Redux, SCSS, and Ruby on Rails.

In my partnership with Patrick Thomas, I was the sole developer on creating a multi-tenant, distributed system using React (& React Native), GraphQL, Apollo Federation and Apollo Client, Styled Components, Typescript, Elasticsearch, and various AWS services (EC2, SQS, Lambdas). Through stakeholder discussions with my client, I was able to continually provide entire solutions whether it be on the web, or through Apple/Android applications.

I worked with our client, Castlight Health, across several time zones. I assisted in transitioning our program through several of our client's product launches. My regular workload was maintaining our knowledge base with current issues, assisting in broadcasting user issues to our team, triaging bug reports to the appropriate engineering teams, and making data-driven decisions through various analytics from Salesforce and JIRA. On top of that, I maintained our client's relationship with their partner by analyzing flat files and API request issues.