
JT McHorse
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Spokane, WA, United States
Toptal member since May 18, 2022
James is a senior software engineer with over 12 years of hands-on experience building applications from the ground up—from early-stage startups to large-scale enterprise platforms. Known for his ability to deliver fast, scalable, and maintainable code, James specializes in full-stack AI technology. Whether you're starting from scratch or need expert support to level up your existing codebase, James brings the technical depth and practical insight to help you succeed.
Portfolio
Experience
- REST APIs - 11 years
- Git - 10 years
- Python - 10 years
- Node.js - 8 years
- React - 6 years
- Data Visualization - 6 years
- TypeScript - 5 years
- Claude Code - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Git, React, JavaScript, TypeScript, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Amplify, Next.js, Vercel, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Node.js
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on was a full event-hosting platform from scratch for a non-tech client, bridging the gap with clear communication and expert delivery.
Work Experience
Next.js Developer
Threshold Vote LLC
- Conducted a comprehensive technical and security audit, delivering an 870-plus-line report covering all seven audit domains.
- Identified critical dependency vulnerabilities, authentication and two-factor authentication timing attacks, back-end architecture limitations, and database indexing gaps, while delivering a scalability assessment with capacity numbers, developer gap analysis, and the 20-item prioritized remediation matrix.
- Established a stable development environment and resolved four P0 issues, including migrating from xlsx to ExcelJS, implementing Dockerfile version pinning, securing two-factor authentication with timing-safe comparisons, and converting JSONB structures to relational tables.
- Migrated the application from Next.js 14 to 15, resolving four CVEs that were blocking deployments, including implementing companion code changes such as async APIs, Web Crypto middleware, and a React 19 upgrade.
- Established infrastructure and observability foundations by integrating Redis, implementing a BullMQ job queue, enabling Pino structured logging, and scaffolding a Go service for the canvass-write and universe-query extraction path.
Senior Full-stack Developer
Athlete to Athlete
- Led a full modernization of marketing and onboarding flows, rebuilding key pages as reusable React and Next.js modules to improve maintainability, release velocity, and visual consistency across campaigns.
- Implemented a component-driven UI architecture in Material UI, including shared tokens, layout primitives, and form patterns that reduced one-off styling and improved team-wide development speed.
- Reworked authentication entry points and social sign-in UX to reduce onboarding friction, tighten session handling, and improve failure-state recovery for first-time users.
- Improved rendering performance through route-level code splitting, image optimization, and deferred loading of non-critical assets to increase Core Web Vitals performance on high-traffic pages.
- Hardened responsive behavior and browser compatibility across mobile and desktop breakpoints, resolving layout drift and interaction issues on Safari and Chromium-based browsers.
- Partnered closely with design and product teams to translate high-fidelity mockups into production-ready interfaces with strict adherence to accessibility and interaction standards.
Senior Front-end Engineer
Veteran Crowd Network
- Developed and shipped secure onboarding and account lifecycle features for a veteran-focused rewards platform, with emphasis on eligibility validation, identity confidence, and reliable multi-step enrollment.
- Implemented military verification and MFA-enabled authentication flows, including resilient edge-case handling for retries, partial completion states, and support escalation paths.
- Built complex client-side state workflows with Redux for member profile, rewards, and transaction views, improving data consistency and reducing UI desynchronization under high interaction load.
- Improved API orchestration and front-end caching strategies to reduce unnecessary network traffic and accelerate dashboard rendering for repeat user sessions.
- Strengthened accessibility and compliance posture through semantic markup, keyboard navigability, and improved form validation and error messaging across registration and account screens.
- Coordinated deployment-ready front-end changes with marketing-site constraints, aligning application experience with the production environment and partner-facing requirements.
Senior Full-stack Engineer
Atlanta Media Services
- Architected and solo-built Hybridely AMS end-to-end—a full-stack event management platform with 100+ REST API endpoints, 30+ data models, and three production applications (server, admin panel, and client).
- Designed and managed the complete AWS infrastructure, including S3 asset storage, CloudFront CDN distributions, Route53 DNS automation, and SES email delivery—handling deployments, cron jobs, and scaling.
- Engineered a Stripe-integrated payment system supporting checkout sessions, recurring subscriptions, multi-tier pricing plans, webhooks, and automated customer provisioning.
- Built a real-time virtual event platform with Zoom Web SDK integration, Socket.io live chat, activity tracking analytics, and a dynamic page-template rendering engine serving 13+ page types.
- Transformed the manual event site creation process into an automated platform, reducing deployment time by 80%.
- Developed a drag-and-drop email campaign system with a visual template editor, scheduled sending, group-based audience targeting, and AWS SES bulk delivery with background job processing.
- Implemented a granular RBAC permission system spanning three user tiers (platform admin, company admin, and event assistant) with 85+ permissions controlling access across organizations and events.
- Created an automated client deployment pipeline with CloudFront distribution provisioning, Route53 DNS record management, and one-click redeploy capability from the admin panel.
Senior Front-end Engineer
Smartsheet
- Developed a software as a service (SaaS) application empowering teams to rapidly build no-code solutions, align across the entire enterprise, and move with agility to launch everyone's best ideas at scale.
- Helped internal stakeholders plan, design, create, and launch both large- and small-scale customer-facing projects.
- Showcased new features within the SaaS application.
- Provided mentorship on project guidance and project-driven development.
- Built marketing pages aligning campaigns, creative operations, and more.
Senior Full-stack Developer
Shelton AI
- Delivered production AI features for private-markets workflows by building Python and Django services for document ingestion, extraction, and portfolio intelligence automation.
- Designed NLP-driven processing pipelines to transform unstructured financial documents into normalized entities and analytics-ready records.
- Built and maintained responsive Vue dashboards for portfolio performance, attribution, and operational KPI monitoring with clear analyst-focused interaction patterns.
- Integrated model inference services into existing application workflows and data pipelines, with observability, retry logic, and failure-safe fallbacks for critical processing paths.
- Collaborated with product, research, and platform teams to transition model prototypes into production-grade services with measurable quality and uptime expectations.
- Supported compliance and reliability objectives by implementing secure handling patterns, audit-friendly processing steps, and service-level monitoring practices.
Senior Web Developer
Wire Pulse
- Engineered v2 of an operational admin platform for physical asset intelligence, delivering a scalable dashboard architecture for telemetry-heavy workflows and cross-team visibility.
- Built high-density data interfaces for location, utilization, scheduling, and exception monitoring, including advanced sorting, filtering, and pagination strategies for large datasets.
- Designed and executed zero-downtime migration support from legacy data structures to a normalized schema, including compatibility layers and verification checks to preserve business continuity.
- Implemented near-real-time event and status tracking pipelines in the UI, enabling faster incident detection and improved operational response.
- Added automated reporting workflows that transformed raw operational data into actionable summaries for business and field operations teams.
- Improved reliability of dashboard interactions with robust loading and error states, idempotent request patterns, and defensive UI handling for partial back-end responses.
Senior React Developer
Tryon Creek Software
- Delivered three internal logistics dashboards supporting transportation operations, dispatch visibility, and subscription-driven workflows for a nationwide healthcare transportation context.
- Architected and implemented a complex nine-step nested form engine with conditional branching, cross-step validation, and save and resume behavior for long-running operational tasks.
- Built live tracking experiences for drivers and trip state transitions, integrating external service providers and third-party APIs into a unified operations surface.
- Modernized dashboard UX patterns with a reusable component approach, reducing duplicated UI logic and improving consistency across internal products.
- Improved API boundary reliability with standardized data adapters, validation guards, and clear fallback states for upstream service variance.
- Mentored junior developers through code reviews, pairing, and architecture guidance, raising front-end quality standards and long-term maintainability.
Senior Web Developer
Lilt Inc.
- Rebuilt key marketing surfaces with a Next.js and TypeScript architecture designed for high-content velocity, global scalability, and enterprise-grade reliability.
- Implemented a clean migration path from Strapi to Contentful, including content model alignment, publishing workflow updates, and schema-safe rendering components.
- Built modular page sections and content-driven layouts that enabled non-engineering teams to publish faster while preserving design and brand consistency.
- Reduced page load times by approximately 40% using targeted code splitting, static optimization, image strategy improvements, and render-path simplification.
- Implemented technical SEO enhancements, including metadata consistency, structured content patterns, crawlability improvements, and performance-conscious markup.
- Improved operational resilience through tighter error boundaries, safer content fallbacks, and stronger observability around CMS-fed pages.
Senior React/React Native Engineer
iService
- Contributed to a multi-team dealership platform ecosystem spanning company, customer, and technician experiences, aligning mobile and web functionality under shared business workflows.
- Built React Native applications with robust state architecture for service operations, vehicle status handling, and synchronized updates across connected web portals.
- Implemented and scaled real-time communication features using WebSockets to support live repair progress, cross-portal notifications, and operational event propagation.
- Rolled out a Material UI-based design system strategy across web interfaces, improving consistency, reducing UI drift, and accelerating feature delivery.
- Improved end-to-end reliability by strengthening integration, component, and workflow-level testing practices in an agile, high-cadence release environment.
- Led technical reviews and cross-functional refinement sessions that improved code quality, reduced regression risk, and supported junior engineer growth.
- Built bidirectional event channels for live vehicle lifecycle updates across technician, company, and customer contexts.
- Implemented event sequencing and reconciliation logic to keep React web and React Native clients aligned under intermittent network conditions.
- Delivered real-time broadcast pipelines for repair-stage transitions, ETA shifts, and completion notifications with user-role aware payload handling.
- Designed live operations dashboards for location, queue state, service stage, and completion tracking to improve support and dispatch response times.
Senior Front-end Engineer
JMFA
- Built the Advantage website using React, TypeScript, and Bootstrap with a C#/.NET back end.
- Integrated Power BI for advanced analytics and customer insights.
- Developed geolocation features for customer targeting and market analysis.
- Implemented responsive design for optimal mobile and desktop experience.
Senior Front-end Developer
Embrace
- Built a custom autocomplete module with multi-select, preview, tagging, filtering, custom layout, and pop-out options.
- Developed cross-platform, responsive email templates using Twillio on Daily Digest, Network Error, and First Seen cases.
- Worked directly with the Design team to collect UI/UX requirements to meet end client needs.
Senior React/React Native Developer
Taste
- Developed profile, reaction, and rating pages, which are cross-browser, responsive, and feature live updating on level up and new comments.
- Built several React components that support interactive visualizations of community reactions and analysis.
- Created level-up animations on the mobile application and fixed API integration issues using Trello.
- Participated in UX improvement discussions and made suggestions on better product design.
Senior React Engineer
Riviera Partners
- Developed a Sutro dashboard with a world-class machine learning proprietary to find the best chief experience officer (CXO) candidates in engineering, product, and design on a retained basis.
- Upgraded the platform UI framework version from three to four and migrated the styling system from Less to Sass.
- Replaced Bootstrap JavaScript-powered components with React-Bootstrap components, which purges unnecessary dependencies like jQuery.
- Ran migration against enterprise-scaled projects, frequently rebasing to newly developed features.
Experience
T-Mobile Prepaid
https://prepaid.t-mobile.comSmartsheet
https://www.smartsheet.comAtlanta Media Services
https://atlantamediaservices.comMizzen
https://www.mizzen.orgTaste
I created engaging level-up animations for mobile applications, improving user retention through gamified progression experiences. I also resolved critical API integration issues using Trello for project coordination, ensuring reliable data flow between front-end and back-end systems.
My work also included actively collaborating with UX and product teams in improvement discussions, providing technical insights that influenced design decisions and enhanced overall platform usability. This project showcased expertise in real-time social platforms, interactive visualizations, mobile-responsive design, and cross-functional product development.
Shelton AI
https://sheltonai.com• Designed NLP-driven processing pipelines to transform unstructured financial documents into normalized entities and analytics-ready records.
• Built and maintained responsive Vue dashboards for portfolio performance, attribution, and operational KPI monitoring with clear analyst-focused interaction patterns.
• Integrated model inference services into existing application workflows and data pipelines, with observability, retry logic, and failure-safe fallbacks for critical processing paths.
• Collaborated with product, research, and platform teams to transition model prototypes into production-grade services with measurable quality and uptime expectations.
• Supported compliance and reliability objectives by implementing secure handling patterns, audit-friendly processing steps, and service-level monitoring practices.
Education
Associate's Degree in Graphic Design
Seattle Central College - Seattle, WA, USA
Certifications
Professional Certificate in Coding: Full-stack Development with MERN
MIT xPro
Full-stack Development with JavaScript
University of Washington
Full-Stack Web and Mobile App Developer
nucamp
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js, REST APIs, AWS Amplify, React Redux, Redux-Saga, React Router, Zod, Playwright, jQuery, Chart.js, Vue, MobX, Vuex, ApexCharts.js, Stripe, Leaflet, Google Maps API, Mapbox API
Tools
Slack, Jira, Trello, Git, GitHub, Webpack, JavaScript Testing, Firebase Authentication, Shadcn, Prisma, Microsoft Teams, Figma, Redux Thunk, Sequelize, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Cron, RealtimeBoard, Microsoft Power BI, GIS, Web GIS, Claude, Claude Code, Amazon ElastiCache, PM2
Languages
HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, ECMAScript (ES6), GraphQL, SCSS, CSS, HTML5, CSS3, PHP, Sass, Python, ES7, SQL, C#, Rust
Frameworks
Redux, Next.js, React Native, Express.js, Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, Material UI, Ant Design, Cypress, Jest, .NET, tRPC, Django, Flask, Laravel, NestJS
Paradigms
HTML DOM, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Test-driven Development (TDD), Agile, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Automation, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Performance Optimization (WPO)
Platforms
MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Mobile, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, Drupal, Netlify, Vercel, Firebase, Contentful, Android, iOS, Web, Mapbox, Amazon EC2, Ubuntu
Storage
MongoDB, JSON, PostgreSQL, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Other
Gatsby, Responsive Email Templates, Bootstrap 4, Bootstrap 5, Front-end, UI Development, RESTful Web Services, Storybook, WebSockets, Supabase, Web Dashboards, Charts, Data Visualization, Back-end, APIs, Serverless, Semantic UI, CI/CD Pipelines, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Apollo, DOM, Cloudflare, Email, HTML Email, PDF, SEO Tools, Accessibility, Security, Web Notifications, Push Notifications, Headless CMS, Strapi, Design, Fine Arts, User Experience (UX), User Experience Design, User Interface (UI), Mobile Apps, Healthcare IT, Travel, Content Management Systems (CMS), Data Analysis, Geolocation, API Integration, Full-stack Development, Full-stack, CRM, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Political Campaigning, Code Review, IT Security, SaaS, Responsive UI, OAuth, Core Web Vitals, Performance Optimization, Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Performance Tuning, Amazon Route 53, AWS App Runner, Email Campaigns, AWS Auto Scaling, Load Balancers, Database Table Optimization, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Vite, Dashboards, Document Processing, Machine Learning, Analytics, Data Analytics, Large Language Models (LLMs)
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