Nick Landgrebe, SDK Development Developer in Chicago, IL, United States
Nick Landgrebe

SDK Development Developer in Chicago, IL, United States

Member since March 22, 2017
Nick is a full-stack engineer and former CTO who builds API-driven apps with sleek, cutting-edge front-ends, drawing on a lifelong love of programming starting from the age of 12. In his work, he forms complex technological ideas into human concepts and interfaces for everyday people to understand and enjoy. Nick authors and maintains many open source libraries in his free time and loves writing detailed documentation.
Nick is now available for hire

Portfolio

Experience

Location

Chicago, IL, United States

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Slack, OS X, SourceTree, RubyMine, Atom, Git

The most amazing...

...was building three open-source API-related libraries that allow developing full-stack and mobile API-driven applications with 40-50% less time and code.

Employment

  • Chief Technology Officer

    2019 - 2021
    Ideafire
    • Led design and development of web and mobile app for advanced note-taking and consumption of all forms of media in one feed, including Youtube, Twitter, articles, images, Kindle, TikTok, and Instagram using React and React Native.
    • Managed a programmer while leading product design in Figma and development across full-stack web and mobile.
    • Developed API and JavaScript SDK for internal and external developers based on open-source libraries that I wrote, making interacting with the API layer take only 30-40% less time than before and with half the code.
    Technologies: Full-stack, React Native
  • Front-end Developer

    2018 - 2018
    Alliance for a Healthier Generation
    • With a team, created the front-end for a new platform for a large nonprofit organization that provides nutritional assessments to schools.
    • Led the development of many different interactive page scopes that performed CRUD API operations.
    • Implemented custom CSS visualizations to help users gain an intuitive sense of the platform's core metrics.
    • Styled the application according to the mockups provided by the client.
    • Gained the client's appreciation for the ability to discover problems in the spec provided and offering suggestions to solve them.
    Technologies: Axios, Google Material Design, React Router, Redux, React
  • API/SDK Lead

    2014 - 2018
    Occasion
    • Headed an effort to re-engineer the foundation of the company’s entire code base—increasing quality, accelerating development, and lowering user interaction wait times.
    • Collaborated using Agile to release an enterprise API using the JSON API standard—elevating the company to a greater strategic position in the marketplace.
    • Followed the release of the company's JSON API by developing a robust JS SDK users described as "fun to use," creating an open-source JS ORM to meet complex demands not satisfied by existing libraries.
    • Single-handedly created the cutting-edge next version of the company’s critical product—its consumer-facing widget—using React Redux and the company's SDK.
    • Handled feature development involving advanced model architecture and data migration using PostgreSQL.
    Technologies: JSON API, PostgreSQL, Heroku, Square, React Router, Redux, React, Angular, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, Sass, HTML
  • Software Engineer

    2017 - 2017
    Doxel AI
    • Developed a full-stack cloud computing and CMS platform for giving real-time updates to construction project managers using highly innovative deep-learning computer vision AI and robotics currently disrupting the industry.
    • Built a 3D panoramic explorer similar to Google Street View that allows users to browse through and click on points in space and message others with instructions.
    • Constructed efficient SQL queries for building progress reports of millions of data points, implementing proprietary equations based on specs to detect changes in complex relationships across multiple tables.
    • Crafted sleek asynchronous front-end displays for varieties of graphs using Angular and Graph.js.
    • Completed the project by its original deadline after being brought on following unexpected setbacks.
    Technologies: Graph.js, Angular, SQL, Ruby on Rails API, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
  • Chief Technology Officer

    2014 - 2017
    Humanity Rising
    • Led the technical strategy, development, and operations for a 15,000-user scholarship platform that rewarded students for making a difference in their communities through service.
    • Developed a web-and-mobile application framework using Ruby on Rails, React-Redux, and my own open source libraries (see Experience below).
    • Designed and maintained a micro-service architecture by combining ad hoc and vendor APIs to scale student volunteer project tracking and leadership training events in Chicago and Memphis.
    • Created landing pages, application interfaces, and marketing materials meant to captivate our millennial audience with stunning visual beauty that spoke to the digital native in them.
    • Crafted pitches for our CEO to use with Fortune 500 executives, with one exec claiming our pitch was the best presentation they'd seen in their entire career.
    Technologies: Adobe Photoshop, WordPress, Heroku, Twilio, Zapier, Redux, React, Angular, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, CSS, HTML

Experience

  • ActiveResource.js
    https://github.com/nicklandgrebe/activeresource.js

    I'm the author of a persistable object-relational mapping (ORM) JS library. In the same way that RoR's ActiveRecord makes interacting with a database trivial in most use cases, ActiveResource aims to make interacting with RESTful API servers on the front-end just as easy.

    It maps JavaScript classes to server endpoints, allowing you to query resources much like ActiveRecord, including related resources (even nested) and building the response into interrelated JS objects/resources. Then you can save changes to these resources to your server.

    An "API layer" on the front-end usually means moving around flat objects of JSON data to hardcoded URL endpoints using basic jQuery AJAX (or similar) and a lot of elbow grease.

    Managing complex resources and relationships doesn't scale well using this method. ActiveResource allows anyone to navigate their resource server from the frontend so easily: fetching and filtering resources and collections and their relationships, updating attributes and relationships of resources, deleting resources and collections, and more.

    It makes development go way more smoothly when making SPAs. There is also an immutable mode for such architectures.

    It is a great framework to build SDKs with.

  • Caprese
    https://github.com/nicklandgrebe/caprese

    I'm the author of an open source RubyGem called Caprese.

    Caprese is a Rails library for creating RESTful APIs in as few lines as possible. It handles all the CRUD operations on resources and their relationships for you, allowing you to customize the behavior of your endpoints—rather than the dirty work of writing repetitive code for each endpoint of each resource in your application.

    The library uses the robust JSON API standard (http://jsonapi.org/format/) to power its complex set of features for managing resources via a RESTful API.

  • Cause Based Consulting

    It's great when you can work on projects that are making a difference in the world, and cause-based consulting (CBC) was one of them for me. As a web designer and developer, I created for them an HTML website, and it highlights the aesthetic side of my work that creates a modern look and feel for the functional applications that I usually create.

    CBC sells consulting services to design and implement social impact programs for companies. Some companies aren't convinced this is necessary, or that it is the best use of their resources.

    CBC wanted to speak to the hero in these people—evoking a sense of greatness by improving the world that would inspire and lead to action. I created landing pages to do just that, and the team at CBC was very happy with the result.

  • Humanity Rising Leadership Event Network

    For three years, I worked as CTO of the Chicago nonprofit called Humanity Rising—scaling their operations from one school in Chicago to over 15,000 students nationally.

    Over the years, I was critical in strategizing and launching Humanity Rising's programs: a scholarship engine that enabled companies to award scholarships to students who performed service in causes the company supported as well as a leadership event network that started in Memphis and then expanded to Chicago.

    In October 2016, we invited 67 students from across Chicago Public Schools to attend a one-day leadership event at George Westinghouse College Prep in East Garfield Park, where they'd receive the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) training.

    The training gave the students the knowledge and confidence to intervene in situations that frequently lead to violence, as well as information about bullying, healthy relationships, and gender roles and stereotypes.

    Keynote speakers were interspersed between breakout groups, one of which I led. Overall, the day was very rewarding, and many students who came said they were going to go back and tell their friends they should've come!

  • ActiveResource.js: Building a Powerful JavaScript SDK For Your JSON API, Fast (Publication)
    As simple as your RESTful API may be, even internal users will want a JavaScript package that will do all the heavy lifting for them. Why build each CRUD request by hand, or worse, deal with related resources using custom code for every scenario? With ActiveResource.js, you don't have to.

Skills

  • Languages

    HTML5, ECMAScript (ES6), Object-oriented JavaScript (OOJS), JavaScript, Ruby, Haml, SQL, HTML, CSS, C++, Sass, GraphQL, Java, Python 3
  • Frameworks

    Ruby on Rails (RoR), React Native, Jest, Underscore.String, Bootstrap, Jasmine, AngularJS, MUI (Material UI), PixiJS, Angular, Redux, Sails.js, Django
  • Libraries/APIs

    Moment.js, API Development, React Redux, React, JSON API, Underscore.js, RequireJS, Ruby on Rails API, Graph.js, Twilio API, React Router, jQuery, Immutable.js, Node.js
  • Paradigms

    Asynchronous Development, Agile, Functional Programming
  • Other

    Open Source, API Design, SDK Development, APIs, Full-stack, Mind Maps, Graphs, Responsive Design, Axios, Open Source Customization, Square, Google Material Design, Enzyme, Economics
  • Tools

    Babel, RSpec, Terminal, GitHub, Webpack, Git, Atom, RubyMine, SourceTree, Slack, Zapier, Adobe Photoshop
  • Platforms

    Linux, MacOS, OS X, Twilio, WordPress, Heroku, Docker
  • Storage

    PostgreSQL, MongoDB

Education

  • Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics
    2013 - 2017
    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

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