Erick is available for hire

Erick Cardenas Mendez

Verified Expert in Engineering

Large Language Models (LLMs) Developer

Location

Toronto, ON, Canada

Toptal Member Since

November 6, 2018

Erick is a freelance web developer with ten years of professional web application development. Continuously learning to perfect and expand his skills, he's always open to creative and challenging projects. Erick is an agile thinker with the ability to quickly adopt new technologies and resolve problems with innovative approaches.

Code Review Back-end Full-stack Git JavaScript HTML5 Code Refactoring REST APIs Node.js Express.js API Development React Docker Test-driven Development (TDD)SQL

Portfolio

Toptal

SQL, Go, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Node.js, React, JavaScript, Python...

LumiQ

SQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), AWS Lambda, PostgreSQL, Redux, React, Node.js...

Orium (formerly Myplanet)

SQL, HTML Canvas, Webpack, Socket.IO, Sass, Redis, PostgreSQL, React, Node.js...

Experience

JavaScript - 11 years HTML - 11 years Node.js - 8 years React - 7 years PostgreSQL - 5 years TypeScript - 4 years Python - 2 years Large Language Models (LLMs) - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, Git, Linux, TypeScript, Python

The most amazing...

...application I've worked on is a multiplayer online game with synchronized animations, chat, and money transactions.

Work Experience

Freelance Web Developer

2018 - PRESENT

Toptal

Built sturdy, responsive front-end applications using React, Redux, and the latest JavaScript or TypeScript features.
Converted legacy JavaScript code to modern TypeScript.
Wrote well-architectured server-side code and microservices using Node.js, Python, and Go.
Designed sensible (mostly RESTful) APIs and created RPC APIs using Apache Thrift.
Created data models, queries, and stored procedures mainly with PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Cassandra.
Composed unit and integration tests to get optimal JavaScript, Python, and Go code coverage.
Reviewed the code of other team members and provided detailed feedback.
Provided insights and suggestions on user experience and code architecture.
Used multiple cloud services: AWS (ECR, ECS, IAM, Lambda, RDS, S3, SQS, and VPC) and Firebase (authentication and hosting).
Set up Docker images and configurations for production environments and local development.

Technologies: SQL, Go, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Node.js, React, JavaScript, Python, Back-end, APIs, Architecture, Docker, API Development, Full-stack, Software Architecture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), HTML5, GraphQL, Test-driven Development (TDD), CSS3, Poetry, Next.js, Code Refactoring, Code Review, API Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), REST APIs, Express.js, Linux, CSS, Jest, FeathersJS, TypeScript, MongoDB, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Git, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Functional Programming, Sublime Text 3, Front-end Development, Stripe, Payment APIs, Twilio, Flask

Lead Developer

2017 - 2018

LumiQ

Led the development team in building and maintaining various web applications as well as back-end scripts.
Developed applications including a job search platform, candidate review platform, customized job + events email notifications platform, and an admin console with content control and platform metrics.
Converted, in partial increments, a large AngularJS application to React.
Analyzed large amounts of behavior data using Python and the Anaconda stack.

Technologies: SQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), AWS Lambda, PostgreSQL, Redux, React, Node.js, Back-end, APIs, Architecture, API Development, Technical Leadership, Full-stack, Software Architecture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), HTML5, Test-driven Development (TDD), CSS3, Code Refactoring, Code Review, API Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), REST APIs, JavaScript, Express.js, Linux, CSS, AngularJS, Jest, TypeScript, Git, Functional Programming, Sublime Text 3, Front-end Development, Docker

Full-stack Web Developer

2015 - 2017

Orium (formerly Myplanet)

Served as a member and tech leader in agile teams building web applications for enterprise clients.
Provided tech leadership on a team creating a real-time, multiplayer, responsive game. Built with Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sass, SocketIO, Webpack, and canvas animations.
Worked on a financial tracking application which made use of AngularJS, Gulp, LESS, and Intern.
Delivered internal presentations on Go; JavaScript Generators, Promises, and how to combine them; the latest tools and best practices for CSS.
Mentored junior web developers on front-end and back-end software engineering.

Technologies: SQL, HTML Canvas, Webpack, Socket.IO, Sass, Redis, PostgreSQL, React, Node.js, Back-end, APIs, Architecture, API Development, Technical Leadership, Full-stack, Software Architecture, HTML5, Test-driven Development (TDD), CSS3, Code Review, API Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), REST APIs, JavaScript, Express.js, Redux, CSS, AngularJS, Git, Functional Programming, Sublime Text 3, Front-end Development, Docker

Lead Kiosk Software Developer

2013 - 2014

MappedIn

Built Chrome Apps: desktop apps that are built with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, running on top of Chrome's WebKit engine.
Built components using cutting-edge web technologies, such as IndexedDB offline storage, WebRTC peer-to-peer video streaming, WebWorkers and CSS Flex display.
Used modern web development tools, such as Grunt, Sass (with Compass) and Handlebars.
Took on managerial duties, such as: leading a team of two other developers and a QA coop, implementing Scrum, meeting with our teams outside of Kiosk Development.
Met with various clients to demonstrate our products and discuss technical challenges.

Technologies: MongoDB, Sass, Grunt, WebRTC, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Technical Leadership, Software Architecture, HTML5, CSS3, Windows, Linux, Git, Functional Programming, Front-end Development

Experience

Workshop: Unlocking Advanced Hooks Skills in React (2020)

https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/torontojs/events/ptxplrybccbsb/

Gave a workshop for the TorontoJS meetup group on React Hooks, how they can be used to replace Higher Order Components, how you can create custom hooks and how they can be combined with React Context.

The link to the related GitHub repo: https://github.com/travellingprog/hooks-workshop

The Next Groove (2019)

https://github.com/travellingprog/the-next-groove

A music blog (https://www.thenextgroove.com/) about beat-driven music created with React and NetlifyCMS, with the entire source code available as open source. I designed and implemented the front-end and also created custom CMS components.

Riot, Redux-like, Minimal Async Application (2017)

https://github.com/travellingprog/riot-reduxlike-async-example

In this project, I'm recreating Redux's async example, but I'm using Riot, my own Redux-like Flux implementation and I'm not using any module bundler (like Webpack or Browserify). This was a proof-of-concept for the sake of research.

Research into Styling (2015)

https://gist.github.com/travellingprog/c9122c0db23980601a0f

This was some research I did that looked at lessons learned in CSS styling. I made a comparison between different CSS Preprocessors (e.g. SASS), wrote on how to document styling guidelines, and touched on best practices around implementing a responsive design.

Skills

Languages

TypeScript, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, CSS, GraphQL, Sass, Go, Python

Frameworks

Jest, Redux, Express.js, Next.js, FeathersJS, AngularJS, Flask

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, React, Node.js, API Development, Socket.IO, Stripe, WebRTC

Tools

Git, Sublime Text 3, Sublime Text, Webpack, Grunt, Canvas, Amazon SageMaker

Paradigms

Functional Programming, Test-driven Development (TDD), Code Refactoring

Platforms

Docker, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MacOS, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Twilio, AWS Lambda, Windows

Other

Back-end, APIs, Architecture, Front-end Development, Full-stack, Software Architecture, Code Review, API Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Technical Leadership, Poetry, Payment APIs, HTML Canvas, Physics, Language Models, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Text Generation, Machine Learning, LangChain, Large Language Models (LLMs), Pinecone

Storage

Amazon S3 (AWS S3), SQLite, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Redis, MongoDB

Education

2005 - 2010

Bachelor's Degree in Physics

University Of Waterloo - Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Certifications

FEBRUARY 2024 - PRESENT

LangChain - Develop LLM Powered Applications

Udemy

DECEMBER 2023 - PRESENT

Generative AI with Large Language Models

DeepLearning.AI

Collaboration That Works

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